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Mechanical Royalties Explained for Indian Artists

Mechanical royalties are paid when your composition is reproduced — pressed onto vinyl or CD, downloaded, or streamed on an interactive service. The name comes from the era of piano rolls and player pianos, when songs were reproduced mechanically. Today, every stream on Spotify or Apple Music generates a mechanical royalty for the songwriter and publisher, separate from the recording royalty that goes to the master owner. If you write your own songs, you are owed both.

Who pays, and who collects

Mechanical royalties are paid by whoever reproduces the composition: a record label pressing physical copies, or a streaming service for digital plays. In the US, digital mechanicals are administered by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) under the Music Modernization Act, and songwriters can register directly as self-administered writers. In India, mechanical royalties for compositions are handled through IPRS. In other markets, local collection societies or publishing administrators do the job. If your songs are not registered anywhere, the money sits in an unclaimed "black box" and may eventually be redistributed to other rightsholders.

Statutory rates: the US example

In the US, physical and download mechanical rates are set by the Copyright Royalty Board. The rate sat at 9.1 cents per track from 2006 until 2022, then rose to 12 cents in 2023 with annual cost-of-living adjustments — reported at around 13.1 cents at present, with a proposed settlement that could reset it. Streaming mechanicals work differently: they come from a negotiated percentage-of-revenue pool, not a flat per-stream rate. Rates change over time, so always check current figures rather than relying on old guides.

Streaming mechanicals vs. physical mechanicals

There is one more distinction worth knowing. Physical and download mechanicals are paid per unit at a statutory rate. Streaming mechanicals are not paid per stream at a flat rate — they come out of a negotiated pool based on a percentage of the streaming service's revenue. That is why your mechanical income from streaming arrives as part of a blended royalty statement rather than as a simple per-play figure, and why accurate song registration matters so much: the pool is divided using usage data matched to registered works.

What Indian artists should do

First, understand that your distributor collects recording royalties, not mechanicals — two different systems. Second, register your compositions with IPRS so your mechanical and performance royalties have somewhere to go. Third, if your music earns streams in the US, consider registering with the MLC or a publishing administrator that covers the US market. Mechanical royalties are slow, quiet money — but over a catalog's lifetime, they add up to a significant share of a songwriter's income.

TIR distributes your recordings worldwide — register your compositions to collect the rest →