A Taiwanese karaoke machine is licensed through a joint fee of 9,400 New Taiwan dollars, and 31 percent of the songs on the top machine belong to no society and earn nothing. In South Africa, unregistered streams sit in a suspense account for three years before they pay other writers. In both systems, whether a song is matched to a rightsholder decides who gets paid, and play counts do not.
Karaoke pricing counts songs, not plays
Taiwan does not meter karaoke plays. Royalties are priced by how many of a society’s songs are loaded into each machine. The joint fee of 9,400 New Taiwan dollars splits 5:2:2.4 between MÜST, ACMA and TMCA. On that ratio, MÜST takes 5,000, ACMA takes 2,000 and TMCA takes 2,400.
The consequence for a writer is structural. A song only contributes to a society’s share if a society claims it. The 31 percent of the top machine’s songs with no society behind them have no route into any of the three shares. A heavily sung track on that machine can earn nothing for its writer, because no society counts it and no one is owed its portion.
For an independent writer, the question is not how often the song is sung. It is whether the song is in the repertoire of a society that Taiwanese operators actually pay.
CAPASSO’s suspense account runs on a clock
South African streaming income splits into two payments. CAPASSO mechanical royalties are a separate streaming payment that a distributor never collects. A distributor delivers the recording to digital service providers (DSPs) and collects the recording income. The composition-side mechanical income goes through the society.
The scale is large enough to matter: CAPASSO collected R269 million in a year. The mechanics that govern how much of it reaches you are specific:
- Fee: CAPASSO charges 12.5 percent. On R1,000 collected for your works, R125 is deducted and R875 is distributed.
- Timing: DSP payouts to CAPASSO arrive quarterly, so the money for a stream is not available at the moment of the stream.
- Unmatched money: streams of unregistered works go to a suspense account. After three years they pay other writers, not the writer who failed to register.
- Deadline: songwriters must register before CAPASSO’s December distribution for the works to be included in it.
The three-year limit is the figure to plan around. Income from a work registered in year two can still be claimed. Income from a work registered after year three can only be claimed to the extent it has not already been redistributed to other writers.
Brand posts move the claim to licensing
A third route works differently, and it is not collective. Major music companies have sued retailers, hospitality businesses and a college sports programme over alleged unlicensed music in social media and influencer content. The defendants are brands, not artists, and the use at issue is a track under a post.
This income does not pass through a society’s repertoire count or a suspense account. It depends on a licence from whoever controls the rights. A brand that wants to use a track in a post needs a person or company that can say yes, set terms and invoice. A catalogue where nobody can answer that question has no way to turn the use into income, and no basis for a claim when the use happens without permission.
What to do with a catalogue
The three systems share one failure point, which is a song that cannot be matched to an owner. A practical audit covers four items:
- Society membership by territory. For each market where your songs are sung, streamed or used, confirm the writer and publisher are registered with the society that collects there. In Taiwan, that means being claimed by one of the three societies that share the joint fee. In South Africa, it means registering works with CAPASSO.
- Work-level registration. Membership alone does not place individual works. List every song and confirm each is registered with the correct writers and splits.
- Age of the gap. For South Africa, sort unregistered works by the date they started streaming. Anything approaching three years old is the first to register, because that is the income closest to being redistributed.
- A named licensing contact. Decide who answers a brand asking to use a track in a post, and what the standing terms are. Without that, you have neither income nor leverage when unlicensed use appears.
Run the numbers on your own works
Take the number of songs in your catalogue and count how many are registered with a society in each territory where you expect income. The unregistered remainder is your exposure. For South African streams, multiply the quarterly income you can see by 87.5 percent to estimate what a registered work returns after the CAPASSO fee. For Taiwan, the 31 percent unclaimed figure shows how much of even a top machine’s content gets nothing. The register-or-lose decision is cheaper to make now than after a distribution has gone to other writers.
