Mondo Knows Facts
America sets a fixed mechanical royalty per song
The rate for 2023 to 2027 is 12.4 cents for recordings of five minutes or less A mechanical royalty is paid to publishers whenever a song is reproduced, whether on a CD, a download or a stream. US law makes the rate statutory rather than negotiated, and the Copyright Royalty Board sets it periodically. Longer songs earn a per-minute rate instead, which is why some writers trim a track to fit. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
ASCAP was founded in 1914 to collect performance feesComposers pooled their rights so venues could be licensed in one dealSoundExchange pays royalties for digital radio playsThe body splits non-interactive streaming money between artists and rights ownersA stream pays a fraction of a centSpotify's payouts have run at roughly three to five tenths of a cent per streamOne song pays out through several separate streamsPublishing, performance, mechanical and sync money are collected differentlyTin Pan Alley sold songs as sheet musicPublishers on West 28th Street hired pluggers to push tunes into vaudevilleBroadcasters founded BMI in 1940 as a rivalRadio stations wanted an alternative to ASCAP's licensing fees
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Tags: royalties, publishing, law
America sets a fixed mechanical royalty per song: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The rate for 2023 to 2027 is 12.4 cents for recordings of five minutes or less. The figure is taken from US Copyright Office, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.