The Triple-Payment Stream Breakdown

The Stream Payout Architecture

Every time a track is streamed on demand (e.g., a user clicks play on Spotify), it triggers three independent royalty transactions representing the two primary copyrights (Composition and Master Recording):

1. Master Recording Royalty (~65% - 70% of payout): Paid to the sound recording owner (record label) and performance artists, routed through the digital distributor (e.g., DistroKid, TuneCore). - *Estimated Rate*: ~$0.003 to $0.004 per stream.

2. Mechanical Royalty (~22% - 25% of payout): Paid to the owner of the composition (the publisher/songwriter) for the reproduction and distribution of the underlying lyrics and melodies, routed through The MLC. - *Estimated Rate*: ~$0.0006 to $0.0008 per stream.

3. Public Performance Royalty (~8% - 10% of payout): Paid to the songwriter and publisher for the public performance of the composition, collected and paid in a 50/50 split by PROs (ASCAP/BMI/SESAC). - *Estimated Rate*: ~$0.0003 to $0.0004 per stream.

Visualizing the Split

` Interactive Stream Payout (approx. $0.005 USD) ├─ Master Recording Royalty (70% - paid to label/distributor) -> ~$0.0035 ├─ Mechanical Royalty (20% - paid to MLC/publisher) -> ~$0.0010 └─ Performance Royalty (10% - split 50/50 to writer/publisher by PRO) -> ~$0.0005 `

• Note: Payout rates vary wildly based on the user's tier (premium vs ad-supported), country of origin, and platform pool math.*