Royalties and money
Statements, splits, payouts and licensing — what a catalog earned and where it went.
Concentration risk: what the store breakdown on your statements is telling you
If one store is most of your earnings, one company's playlist, payout and enforcement decisions govern your income. How to read the breakdown, what the thresholds mean, and what the long tail of small stores is worth.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
Editorial versus commercial: licensing photographs of people without a model release
A photograph of a person can be licensed for a story about them without their permission, and cannot be licensed for an advertisement without it. What a model release is, what editorial use covers, and what a licensor has to tell a licensee.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
Sync licensing for an independent catalog: what a music supervisor needs from you
A sync placement is two licenses, one for the recording and one for the song, and the supervisor has a deadline. Here is what has to be true about your catalog before anyone can license it, and what "one-stop" means.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
Why a per-stream rate is the wrong number to quote
Streaming services do not pay per stream, a statement's units mix streams with downloads and video views, and the quotient changes with the listener's country and plan. What to measure instead.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
How to combine royalty statements from three distributors into one report
Labels and artists who run more than one distributor have never seen their catalog in one view. Here is what has to be normalised — money, periods, stores, territories, units — and what a combined report should look like.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
Switching distributors without losing a month of royalties
The tail from the old distributor and the ramp from the new one overlap for two to four months. Here is how to move a catalog so no month goes unaccounted for, and how to tell an overlap from a double count.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
How to read an AWAL statement, and what "Fraudulent Streams" means on it
AWAL's revenue export has more than thirty columns and two currencies. Here is which columns hold the money, why Net Share Account Currency is the one you were paid, and why the most common transaction type on the file can be one you were paid nothing for.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS
How to read a DistroKid royalty statement, column by column
What each of the fifteen columns in a DistroKid earnings export means, which three matter, and the two traps — Reporting Date versus Sale Month, and sub-cent rows — that make a total look wrong when it is right.
Caleb Gottfried
Founder, SNVRKOTICS