{"id":4935,"date":"2026-05-12T18:15:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/glossary\/what-is-performance-royalty\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:41:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:41:27","slug":"what-is-performance-royalty","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/glossary\/what-is-performance-royalty\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Performance Royalty? PROs, Radio, and Public Play Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

A performance royalty is the money owed to songwriters and publishers every time a song is publicly performed \u2014 on radio, on TV, in a venue, on a stream, in a coffee shop, in a stadium.<\/p>\n

It is paid by the venue, broadcaster, or platform to a Performing Rights Organisation, which then routes it to the songwriter and publisher of the underlying composition.<\/p>\n

This guide is for songwriters who write but do not necessarily release, and self-releasing artists who write their own songs and want to understand the half of their income their distributor does not handle.<\/p>\n

What is a performance royalty?<\/h2>\n

A performance royalty pays the composition<\/strong> side of a song. It is not the master royalty. Master royalties (the recording) flow through your distributor from the DSP. Performance royalties (the underlying song) flow through your PRO from anyone who publicly performed that song.<\/p>\n

In most territories the law gives the songwriter the exclusive right to authorise public performance of their work. Rather than chase every coffee shop and radio station individually, songwriters license that right collectively through a Performing Rights Organisation (PRO)<\/strong>. The PRO licenses blanket repertoire to broadcasters and venues for a fee, then distributes the fees back to writers proportional to actual usage.<\/p>\n

There are two royalties on the composition side: performance and mechanical<\/a>. Performance covers public play. Mechanical covers reproduction. A Spotify stream triggers both, in different proportions.<\/p>\n

Why does a performance royalty exist?<\/h2>\n

Songwriters who do not perform their own songs would otherwise earn nothing from public play. The Hot 100 is full of writers whose names never appear on the recording’s artist credit. Performance royalties are how those writers eat.<\/p>\n

The system traces back to 1851 in France, when a composer named Ernest Bourget sued a Parisian caf\u00e9 for playing his music without payment and won. That ruling created SACEM, the first PRO. Every modern PRO inherits that logic: public play is licensable, and the writer is owed.<\/p>\n

For a self-releasing artist who writes their own songs, performance royalties are usually 20-50% of total streaming income depending on territory. Skipping them is voluntary income loss.<\/p>\n

How does a performance royalty work in practice?<\/h2>\n

The flow:<\/p>\n