Mechanical Royalties
ASCAP, BMI, etc do NOT collect mechanical royalties.
Spotify, Apple Music, Google, Amazon, etc etc pay these mechanical royalties directly to publishers (via collections agencies). NOT PROs. I repeat. Streaming services do NOT pay mechanical royalties to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN or any other PRO.
So how do you get mechanical royalties?
You need a publisher, admin publishing company or royalty collections company to collect these for you. Yes, technically, the DSP (Digital Service Provider – the streaming service) is required to pay you even if you don’t have a publisher, but the thing is, most don’t know how to FIND you. Hence all the lawsuits against Spotify and Apple.
So make it easy for em. Work with a company who they know. If you distribute with CD Baby, you can opt in to use CD Baby Pro Publishing (however, they will NOT collect your songwriter royalties for songs you write but are distributed by anyone other than CD Baby distribution – like if another artist records your song and releases it themselves). If you use other distributors, other companies you can use to collect your mechanical royalties include, Kobalt, Tunecore Publishing and Sentric Music Publishing. These companies help you collect your mechanical royalties but don’t own your copyrights and have fairly short terms (for a small commission of 10-20% or so).
For more info about the music business: https://www.patreon.com/TruWerdz