I have been making music for most of my life. Long before I became CTO of a company whose entire purpose is to make sure artists get paid correctly, I was the artist in the booth who had no idea what I was signing, what I was owed, or where to begin asking.
I believe there are many collaborators, implicit and explicit, in every artist’s life. And for every piece of art created by that artist, there are just as many collaborators who helped breathe life into it: the teachers1 who shaped the artist, the songwriters who helped write lyrics, the producers and sound engineers who created the underlying beat and set up the physical space, and the teams who helped bring the work to an audience.
But not everyone who helps bring a song into existence owns part of it. The difficult part of ownership in art is documenting which contributions create an ongoing claim to the composition’s copyright and its earnings, which contributions are paid services, and what the participants have agreed upon. Artists and their teams need contracts and clear records to keep track of those decisions. Otherwise, a conversation that felt settled in the studio can become an unresolved question when it is time to get paid.
Making Music and Documenting the Split
In a typical studio session, the studio itself is a revolving door or third space for artists. Consider the following hypothetical session: I, the artist, am writing lyrics for my song, whose instrumental track is mostly complete. The instrumentalists have recorded their parts, the producer has pieced them together, and the sound engineer has set up the recording space. I am holding pen to paper alongside my producer, listening to the track repeatedly, trying to think of a word that rhymes with “heart.” A musician I know, Musician A, walks through the door and asks what I’m stuck on. I know them to be a talented lyricist, and just like that, they’ve offered me the next four lines of my song.
In this example, Musician A is signed to a publisher, but my team does not know that at the time of the session. Because it is only a few lines, Musician A and I discuss co-writing credits after the session over text messages. We never formalize the agreed ownership shares in a split sheet, so my label’s spreadsheet tracker has the song’s title and release date, but not a settled record of who owns what portion of the song. My label’s spreadsheet, once adequate for my small catalog, becomes a liability as my catalog of songs and roster of collaborators grow.
When ownership percentages are not clearly documented at the beginning, someone may have to reconstruct the agreement later before disputed royalties can be allocated. That reconstruction is where many disputes live. A missing split sheet does not erase rights or make every claimed percentage equally valid. Musician A’s contribution to the composition may generate songwriting royalties when the song is streamed or performed live, but it does not automatically give them a share of, say, my concert fee or the recording’s royalties. Those are different rights and revenue streams.
Releasing Music and Learning on the Job
Now imagine we are ready to release that same song. We upload it to a distributor like DistroKid or TuneCore. For independent recording artists and their teams, there are many steps to learn through trial and error or diligent research. Even diligent research may leave gaps if artists don’t know what questions they should be asking.
The distributor asks for a title, an artist name, a genre, and a release date. It can supply an ISRC (a unique 12-character alphanumeric identifier for the recording) if we do not provide our own. What the platform doesn’t handle is the other half of what that song generates. The composition (the melody, the lyrics, and the underlying song itself) needs its own identifier, called an ISWC, which we do not file for. Instead, it is generated once the artist registers with a PRO, which handles composition performance royalties. And the streaming mechanicals (the royalties paid every time someone plays the song on Spotify or Apple Music) flow through the MLC. The work and its ownership shares need to be registered with the relevant collection organizations by the people authorized to do so. The MLC administers US digital mechanical royalties under its blanket license. A publisher or publishing administrator does not always handle MLC registration and collection for us; a self-administered songwriter may need to do that directly. An ISWC is not a prerequisite for registering a work with the MLC.
Some distributors explain these distinctions or offer publishing administration as an additional service. But uploading a recording is not confirmation that every registration and collection step has been completed. For our hypothetical song, we still need to know who is registering each composition share and whether the information matches what we, as collaborators, agreed upon.
Post-Release
Months after the song’s release, a statement arrives. The number on that statement is real. What it doesn’t tell you, the artist, is whether it’s complete. A recording-distribution statement covers recording revenue: your share of what Spotify and Apple paid for streams of your master. On its own, it does not account for the composition’s performance royalties, US digital mechanical royalties, or amounts that may be awaiting collection abroad. For our song, a payment for the recording would not establish that Musician A’s composition share, or mine, had been registered and paid correctly.
The MLC currently holds approximately $397 million in historical unmatched royalties. That is money that was collected for songs but never successfully matched to a registered owner. It was then held, waiting for someone to show up with the right paperwork and claim it. Most of it belongs to independent artists and small labels who didn’t know the claiming step existed.
For an artist, the practical question is where the trail breaks between the session and the statement. Was the split documented? Did the right administrator register it? Can the payment be traced back to those records? These are questions our hypothetical song leaves unresolved even after it has been released.
Solving that problem is why I joined the team at Cadence as Chief Technology Officer. Making music from the initial idea to the finished song has taught me how naturally collaboration happens and how easily its administrative details can be left for later. As CTO, my goal is for the infrastructure we build to keep those details connected to the payments they govern. An artist should be able to understand what they agreed to and follow it through to what they were paid. We are building for artists like me, who didn’t know where to start or what to ask.