Why a PRO Does Not Collect Global YouTube Revenue

YouTube has transformed the music industry, providing artists with a platform to reach millions of listeners worldwide. However, many songwriters and publishers struggle to effectively monetize their content. Understanding the strategies for collecting YouTube music revenue can significantly impact financial success. This blog post will explore actionable strategies that can help maximize earnings on YouTube.

Performance and Mechanical Royalties are often collected by different societies. This can leave royalties unclaimed.

To understand why PROs miss YouTube money, you have to understand the nature of a YouTube view.

When your song plays on the radio, it generates one primary type of royalty for the songwriter: a Performance Royalty.

When your song plays in a YouTube video, it’s different. Because YouTube is an interactive audiovisual stream, it generates two distinct pots of money for the composition at the same time:

1. Performance Royalty: The right to publicly perform the music.

2. Mechanical Royalty: The right to reproduce the music (technically, your computer or phone is making a temporary "copy" to stream it).

3. Here is the crux of the issue: Your PRO (like ASCAP or BMI) is only legally mandated to collect royalty #1 (Performance). In most territories, they have absolutely no right or ability to collect royalty #2 (Mechanicals) from streaming.

If you only have a PRO, you are only collecting from one of the two buckets YouTube is filling up.

1. The Geographical Fragmentatiom (The "Patchwork Quilt")

The music industry does not have one single global database or collection agency. It is a fragmented patchwork of local societies.

Your home PRO is excellent at collecting performance royalties in your home territory. If you are with SOCAN, they have Canada covered. If you are with BMI, they have the USA covered.

But what happens when your video goes viral in Germany, Japan, or Brazil?

Your home PRO relies on "reciprocal agreements" with foreign societies (like GEMA in Germany or JASRAC in Japan). Your PRO trusts that foreign society to:

• Accurately identify your streams in their country.

• Collect the money from YouTube in that country.

• Take their administrative fee off the top.

• Send the remaining money to your home PRO.

• Your home PRO then takes their fee and pays you the rest.

  
  

This game of "global telephone" is slow, inefficient, and notoriously "leaky." Data gets lost in translation between disparate systems, meaning foreign views often go completely uncollected by the time the money gets back to you.

2. The Missing Mechanicals

As mentioned above, YouTube generates mechanical royalties. In the US, for example, PROs do not touch mechanicals. That money goes to a completely different entity (The Mechanical Licensing Collective, or The MLC) for audio-only streams, or directly to publishers for video streams.

Outside the US, some societies collect both performance and mechanicals (these are called CM20s), but the pathways are complex.

If you do not have a publishing administrator specifically tasked with collecting global mechanicals directly from YouTube and foreign mechanical societies, that money sits in a "black box" until it eventually disappears back into YouTube's pocket or is distributed to major publishers by market share.

3. The Data vs. The Robot Issue

Finally, there is the issue of identification. PROs largely rely on metadata registrations and cue sheets. YouTube, however, relies on Content ID—its automated audio fingerprinting robot.

If your song isn't correctly ingrained in the Content ID system, YouTube doesn't know it’s being played. If YouTube doesn't know it's being played, they don't report it to the PROs.

PROs are generally "passive" collectors. They collect on the data they are given. They do not typically have the technology or the mandate to actively scan YouTube's billions of videos to hunt down unauthorized uses of your song, or to resolve complex conflicts where two different distributors are claiming the same asset.

The Solution: You Need a Second Partner

This is not meant to bash PROs. They are essential for radio, TV, bars, and live venue performance collections. You absolutely need one.

But in the modern streaming era, a PRO is only half the solution.

To collect all your global YouTube revenue—both performance and mechanical, from every corner of the globe—you need a Publishing Administrator in addition to your PRO.

A Publishing Admin sits on top of your PRO. Their job is to register your works directly with YouTube’s Content ID system and directly with mechanical societies around the world, bypassing the slow, leaky reciprocal network.

Don't blame your PRO pr publisher for not doing a job they weren't designed for.

Recognize the gap and take the necessary steps to fill it so you get paid for every view, everywhere. Hire Recover Royalties to manually claim your unclaimed royalties and to register your mechanical YouTube royalties globally.