When royalties can't be matched to a songwriter or recording owner, they don't just sit there indefinitely. Each collection organization has its own process for handling unclaimed funds — and in most cases, the money eventually goes to someone else.
MLC unclaimed mechanicals: After a holding period, the MLC distributes unmatched royalties based on market share. Major publishers like Sony, Universal, and Warner receive the lion's share. Your uncollected mechanical royalties literally fund major label profits.
SoundExchange: SoundExchange holds unclaimed digital performance royalties for a period, then distributes them similarly. They make reasonable efforts to find rights holders, but if your registration is missing or incomplete, the money moves on.
PRO unmatched performances: ASCAP and BMI each have their own processes for handling performances they can't match to registered works. Generally, unmatched performance royalties are redistributed within the system.
The urgency: Every day you're not properly registered is another day of royalties entering these unmatched pools. The longer you wait, the more money has already been redistributed.
The fix is simple:
- Find out what's missing — run a free audit at RoyaltyCoPilot.ai
- Register your songs with the organizations where they're missing
- Start collecting going forward
You can't get back royalties that have already been redistributed. But you can stop the bleeding today.