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Music vocabulary · The Music Industry

Royalties

Meaning in music, with examples

/ˈrɔɪəltiz/nounCore term

In music, royalties means: Payments made to songwriters, composers, performers and rights owners each time their music is sold, streamed, broadcast, performed in public or used in media.

In Turkish: telif ücreti, telif geliri, telif

How it is used

Usually plural. Musicians 'earn', 'collect' or 'receive' royalties and read 'royalty statements'. Main types: performance royalties, mechanical royalties and sync fees. Collecting societies such as MESAM and MSG in Türkiye, or PRS and ASCAP abroad, collect them for members.

Example sentences

  1. Register your songs with a collecting society, or you may miss out on royalties from radio.

  2. She still earns royalties from a song she co-wrote fifteen years ago.

Common collocations

  • earn royalties
  • collect royalties
  • royalty statement
  • performance royalties
  • mechanical royalties
  • copyrightThe legal right that protects original creative work and lets its owners decide how it is copied, performed, recorded, adapted or shared.
  • music publishingThe business of managing songs as compositions: registering them, licensing them, collecting the royalties they earn and finding new uses for them, such as in films and adverts.
  • streamingListening to music over the internet without downloading it to keep, through services such as Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube Music. It is now the main source of recorded-music income.
  • record labelA company that finances, releases, distributes and promotes recordings, usually in exchange for ownership of the recordings or a share of their income.
  • lyricsThe words of a song. The person who writes them is a lyricist, and the words are protected by copyright just like the music.

More terms: The Music Industry

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