The Black Box Royalties Checklist: Where to Check If Your Money Is Stuck

There is a very good chance some of your streaming royalties are sitting in an account you have never heard of. When the Mechanical Licensing Collective was created in 2021, streaming platforms handed over $424 million in royalties they could not match to a songwriter. A lot of that original pool has since been claimed, but the same mechanism that created it is still running every month, which means new unmatched money keeps landing in the same account.

This is the checklist we promised in our black box carousel. Three things to check, in order, about twenty minutes total.

What Is a Black Box Royalty?

Every time a song streams, two royalties are supposed to go out. One belongs to whoever owns the recording. The other belongs to whoever wrote the song. When a platform cannot match a stream to a songwriter, that second royalty does not disappear. It gets set aside in a holding account, and by law it has to sit there for at least three years before it gets redistributed to other rights holders based on market share.

That last part matters. The artists with the biggest catalogues already, the major labels and major publishers, get the biggest slice of a pool that includes money independent songwriters never claimed. Every year you do not check is a year that money has a better chance of ending up somewhere else.

Step One: Check Your Name Spelling

Pull up your name on every platform where it appears: your distributor, your PRO, your publisher if you have one. It needs to be spelled exactly the same everywhere, down to the punctuation. A missing middle initial or a stylized version of your name on one platform and your legal name on another is enough to break the match. If anything is inconsistent, fix it before doing anything else on this list.

Step Two: Check Your ISRC to ISWC Link

Every recording gets a code called an ISRC, usually assigned by your distributor. Every song, separate from any specific recording of it, gets a different code called an ISWC, usually assigned by your PRO. Streaming platforms log plays using the ISRC. Your PRO uses the ISWC to know who to pay. If those two codes were never linked, the platform has no way to connect the stream to you, even if your name is registered correctly everywhere else.

Most distributor and PRO portals show you this link directly, usually somewhere in the metadata or catalogue section. If you cannot find it, or it is showing as missing, that is very likely where your money is stuck.

Step Three: Register With the Right Bodies

In Canada, that means registering with a performing rights organization for public performance royalties, most commonly SOCAN, and separately with a mechanical rights organization for reproduction royalties, most commonly CMRRA.

If your music streams in the United States, and unless you are performing live only with no digital release, it almost certainly does, you also need your own account directly with the MLC. Registration is free and takes about ten minutes. This is the step most self-released Canadian artists skip entirely, because nobody tells them a Canadian PRO membership does not automatically cover US mechanical royalties.

The Quick Version

• Check that your name is spelled exactly the same on your distributor, your PRO, and any publisher.

• Confirm your ISRC is linked to your ISWC through your distributor or PRO portal.

• Register directly with SOCAN, CMRRA, and the MLC if your music streams in the US.

None of this is complicated once you know where to look, but almost nobody tells independent songwriters it exists. That is the kind of unglamorous, unsexy business education we walk members through inside Beatcave. Join Beatcave to get the next one before it hits Instagram.

Sources

• The Mechanical Licensing Collective (themlc.com)

• U.S. Copyright Office, Music Modernization Act unclaimed royalties rulemaking

• CMRRA (cmrra.ca)

• SOCAN (socan.com)