The Two Halves of a Recorded Song
Every piece of recorded music consists of two distinct copyrights:
- The Master Recording: The specific audio capture owned by the artist or record label.
- The Musical Composition: The underlying lyrics, melody, and chords written by the songwriters and publishers.
What is a Mechanical Royalty?
Every time your song is streamed on Spotify or Apple Music, a mechanical royalty is generated for the reproduction of the composition. In the United States, these are collected and distributed by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC).
