Royalties
Royalties are the money the platforms pay you for plays and sales of your music. Here you will find out how much of it is yours, when you will see it, how to request a payout and where to find the details.
How much of the royalties is yours
Bez Labelu keeps only 10% of the royalties collected. Another 20% stays in the distribution chain your music passes through on its way to the platforms. The remaining 70% is yours – the same for new and established artists alike.
Most distributors only state their own percentage, calculated from an amount that has already been reduced by the margins of the other links in the chain. We tell you the whole split straight. The only exception to the percentage split is the Spotify fee for artificial streams – it is passed on to you in full and you see it separately in the overview.
How royalties are generated
Each platform pays according to its own model – streaming services divide their subscription and advertising revenue according to the share of plays, while stores such as iTunes pay for each sale. The royalty for a single play therefore varies by platform, country and the listener's type of subscription. What this looks like on the biggest platform is described in the article How much money Spotify keeps and how much it pays out.
In addition, Spotify only pays for recordings that have reached at least 1,000 streams in the last 12 months. You can find out which of your recordings are below the threshold using the article Check which of your recordings Spotify does not pay you for.
When you will see your royalties
Platforms report plays with a delay, which is why royalties appear in your account roughly 3 months after the plays – for example, in September a statement labelled August arrives, containing plays from June. This is common practice across the whole industry – more in the article The standard time lag in royalty statements. You will see preliminary play counts, without the money, earlier in the daily statistics.
Where to find your royalties
Monthly statement
In the Revenue section, you see a breakdown for each month by platform, country, release and recording. You can also download the statement as a spreadsheet.
Account balance
Your current balance, the history of all transactions and an estimate of when you will reach the payout threshold.
How to request a payout
Wait until your balance reaches CZK 1,000. We do not pay out lower amounts – the only exception is when the cooperation ends. The reason is explained in the article No exceptions: The minimum royalty payout threshold.
Check the details in your profile. You cannot request a payout without a phone number and a bank account number. We send the money to the account saved in your profile at the moment of the request. You can enter a foreign account (IBAN), but payments to an account with a Czech bank are the fastest and carry no extra fees.
Request the payout. In the Revenue section, confirm that your details are correct and click Request Payout. The entire balance is always paid out, and you can only have one request at a time.
We usually send money to an account with a Czech bank within a few hours to a few days, and payments in euros within a few days. The terms and conditions guarantee 30 days at the latest. You will find details in the articles How long a royalty payout takes and Which account we pay royalties to. If your account is managed by a label, we pay the royalties to the label in a single sum.
You can use your royalty balance for add-on services – when buying in the client area, choose offset against royalties and the service is activated immediately, with no transfer and no waiting.
Documents and taxes
You can download the annual payout confirmation, a receipt for each payout and an overview of transactions for any period yourself in the Revenue section – more in the article Payout confirmations and royalty statements. Royalties are your income and you pay tax on them yourself, because Bez Labelu is a service provider, not an employer.