How to Get Paid for Your Music
- Apr 24
- 2 min read
This is a summary of the "Get Paid! Understanding Rights & Royalties" panel at Take Action x SXSW Music Summit 2026, produced by Artist For Artist®
Most artists know they should register their songs. Fewer know that registration is step one of about four. A lot of times, money they're owed sits stuck in a queue while awaiting the correct paperwork. The gap between registered and paid was the throughline of the opening panel at Take Action x SXSW, presented by Let Music Fill My World and Artist For Action®.
The foundation: How registration & royalties work
Moderator Hillel Frankel of Entertainment Law Group set the frame: every song has two sides. The master (the recording) and the composition (the underlying song). Each side has its own collection bodies, its own rules, and its own way of holding on to royalties if nobody comes to claim them.
Tiara Guy of SoundExchange explained how digital performance royalties from non-interactive platforms like SiriusXM, Pandora, and iHeart work. Registration is free - but it only sets up your profile. After having registered, you need to log into SX Direct to claim your specific recordings. A lot of people skip that step, Guy noted.
On the composition side, Mitch Ballard of BMI and Jamie Dominguez of The MLC mapped how performance and mechanical royalties actually move. Performance royalties come from anywhere music is played publicly: radio, TV, streaming, bars, restaurants, Peloton, Instagram Reels. Mechanical royalties from U.S. streaming now flow exclusively through The MLC. Ballard made the case that even independent artists should set up their own publishing entity - which can be done for a one-time fee of $175. That simple step changes what's possible when a music supervisor calls at 3pm needing a song cleared by 5pm. Without it, the sync opportunity walks.
Frankel pushed every manager in the room to finalize split sheets before a song is released, not after. Casual publishing giveaways in the writing room ("you were here, here's 10%") are forever. And direct deposit is worth the five minutes. BMI has checks sitting unclaimed for years because an artist moved and the mail never caught up.
What about AI music?
On AI music: The U.S. Copyright Office currently treats AI-generated compositions as non-registrable. "AI-generated compositions" are songs that are more than 50% AI-generated. Below that threshold, disclosure is required - and misreporting can disqualify the entire copyright. BMI, SoundExchange, and The MLC will not pay on fully AI-generated works. Dominguez pointed to a case where someone tried to collect $10 million in AI-generated royalties. They never saw a dollar.
In summary...
The pattern across all four speakers: the artists getting paid in full are the ones who treat their rights infrastructure like an actual business. At Artist For Artist®, we build teams and strategies around exactly that kind of operational discipline, so artists can focus on the work while everything behind them actually holds. If you want to talk about what's being left on the table, reach out at artistforartist.com.
