A Guide to Understanding Performing Rights Organizations (PROs)

Your music has value beyond the initial release. When your compositions are performed publicly, broadcast on radio or television, or streamed through digital services, they can generate performance royalties. Understanding how these royalties work and how they're collected is an important part of managing your rights as a music creator.

A Guide to Understanding Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) is a 20-page educational resource designed to make music publishing and performance royalty collection easier to understand. It introduces independent musicians to the role of Performing Rights Organizations, explains how they operate and explores how songwriters and composers can register their work and participate in royalty collection.

Inside the Guide

• What Performing Rights Organizations are and why they exist.
• How performance rights and performance royalties work.
• The relationship between songwriters, composers, publishers and PROs.
• How music registration and royalty collection operate.
• Understanding performance royalties from radio, live performances, television and streaming.
• The role of PROs in licensing music for public performance.
• How to approach performance rights management as an independent music creator.

Why It Matters

Many independent musicians focus on releasing and promoting their music without fully understanding the publishing and royalty systems operating behind the scenes. Knowing how performance rights work can help you identify potential income streams, understand your rights and make more informed decisions about managing your catalogue.

The guide also helps distinguish performance royalties from other forms of music income. For example, mechanical royalties and digital performance royalties for sound recordings are handled through different collection systems, such as The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) and SoundExchange in the United States.

Whether you're a songwriter, composer, producer or independent recording artist, understanding these distinctions is an important step towards taking greater control of your music rights.

Format: 20-page digital e-book. Suitable for printing or reading on your preferred digital device.

Take a closer look at how performance royalties work and make your music rights work harder for you.