#Pay
Songwriters
Songwriters make the music possible. They aren’t paid from the recorded side of the business. We’re changing that.
Happening now: the Phono V rate fight →
Phono V: the fight over streaming rates
The Copyright Royalty Board, the federal court that sets what streaming services must pay songwriters, is deciding rates for the next five years. The case is called Phonorecords V, or Phono V.
NMPA has filed its proposal on behalf of songwriters and publishers. Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube have filed theirs too, and they’ll be made public in the coming days.
Fair pay for the songwriters who make these streaming businesses possible in the first place.
Royalty rules work like the tax code: give tech companies five years and they’ll find ways around them. Loopholes like bundling, where a service packages music with other products to shrink what it owes songwriters, need to be shut down.
Tie songwriter pay to several measures at once, so no single number can be gamed.
Under NMPA’s proposal, songwriters get whichever is highest of four measures
- 20%of the revenue streaming services take in from subscribers
- 40%of what record labels and artists get paid in their free-market deals
- $2.40per subscriber, adjusted every year for inflation
- Per streamA new minimum for every stream, to fight streaming fraud and make sure the right songwriters get paid
Who gets paid from a stream
In the U.S., songwriters receive only about 15.3 percent of streaming revenue. That share is then split between publishers and every collaborator on the song.
- $31.7B
Generated by the global recorded music industry in 2025. Songwriters made that music possible, but don’t share in recorded music revenue.
- Credit grabs
In some cases, artists or their representatives take publishing on songs they didn’t write, cutting what the real writers earn.
- No union
Songwriters are classified as independent contractors, so federal labor law keeps them from unionizing to negotiate pay, benefits or conditions.
We call on record labels to act
- Per diems
Non-recoupable per diems for songwriting sessions and label-organized camps.
- Song fees
Non-recoupable song fees for the first commercial use of a composition.
- Master points
Points on the master for the first commercial use of a composition.
Change is already happening
Add your voice
Tell record labels to adopt per diems, song fees and master points.
Our #PaySongwriters town hall, recorded on Instagram Live.
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Following the Ivors Academy’s lead
We’re following in the footsteps of The Ivors Academy of Music Creators and its #PaySongwriters campaign in the UK, and the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance’s guidelines on song fees and master points.