Performance Royalties vs Mechanical Royalties: The Two Halves of Publishing

Both are publishing, split in two

Performance royalties and mechanical royalties are often discussed as if they were rivals. They are not. They are the two halves of the same thing.

Both are publishing royalties. Both are owed on the composition, the song itself, not on the recording. What separates them is the kind of use that triggers each one. A performance royalty is owed when the song is performed or broadcast. A mechanical royalty is owed when the song is reproduced.

In the streaming era these are not sequential events. They happen at the same instant. As Spotify for Artists explains, every interactive stream generates both a mechanical royalty and a performance royalty for the songwriter simultaneously, because the stream both reproduces and performs the work.

Performance royalties: when the song is heard

A performance royalty is generated when a composition is publicly performed or broadcast. That includes live performances, radio and television play, music in venues and public spaces, and the public performance element of streaming.

In the United States, performance royalties are collected by performance rights organizations, the PROs, such as ASCAP and BMI. They license public performance of compositions on behalf of their members and distribute the royalties they collect to songwriters and publishers. The U.S. Copyright Office describes these organizations as a core part of how compositions are licensed and paid.

The important detail for an independent songwriter is that a PRO collects only the performance side. It does not touch mechanicals.

Mechanical royalties: when the song is reproduced

A mechanical royalty is generated when a composition is reproduced. Historically that meant physical copies such as vinyl and CDs. Today it most often means digital reproduction, including each interactive stream and each download.

For U.S. streaming, mechanical royalties are administered by The Mechanical Licensing Collective, known as The MLC, created under the Music Modernization Act to collect and distribute digital audio mechanical royalties from streaming services and pay songwriters and publishers. The U.S. Register of Copyrights continued The MLC's designation as the statutory mechanical licensing collective following its first periodic review, as announced by The MLC in June 2026.

Crucially, The MLC administers mechanicals only. As The MLC itself states, it does not replace SoundExchange or the PROs; each organization administers a different right.

Why you have to register in two places

This is where independent songwriters most often lose money, and it is not subtle.

A songwriter has to join both a PRO and The MLC to collect their full streaming royalties in the United States, because the two systems are separate. As Spotify for Artists puts it directly, a songwriter cannot collect mechanical royalties simply by being a PRO member, and cannot collect performance royalties simply by registering with The MLC. Songwriters in a publishing or administration deal may have their mechanicals handled for them, but the principle stands: both halves have to be claimed somewhere.

Register in only one place and half of the publishing income from every stream goes uncollected, or sits unmatched in a pool waiting for a claim that never comes. This is the same leak described in how streaming royalties are actually calculated: the loss is almost never the per-stream rate. It is the royalty that was never registered to be collected.

How to think about it as an operator

Treat performance and mechanical as two collection jobs, not one.

For the performance side, join a PRO and register every composition you write, including co-writes, with your splits documented before release. For the mechanical side, make sure your streaming mechanicals are being collected, either by registering with The MLC directly or through a publishing administrator that collects on your behalf.

Then verify both are actually arriving. The two royalties pay on different schedules through different systems, so a missing mechanical statement is easy to overlook when the performance royalties look fine. Checking that both halves show up is the difference between collecting your full publishing income and quietly collecting half of it. The relationship between this composition income and the recording side is laid out in master royalties vs publishing royalties.

FTSMusic analysis is based on anonymized aggregate artist data, internal campaign observations, and publicly available industry documentation. Individual outcomes vary by catalog, genre, audience quality, and release strategy.