What percentage of due royalties will I receive from sales?

Songwriters

You retain complete control of your work. When selling your songs at Songbay, our license contracts assign 100% of all royalties to you, the songwriter/composer. Songbay takes no percentage of your royalties or sale fees.

We also give you free copyright registration and protection for each song upload. The average price for this service from a copyright registration office is around $35 per upload, so this can represent a useful saving for songwriters and lyricists.

We also provide free completed contracts, saving users the cost of expensive music contract drafting. Users may of course use their own contracts, but ours are intended as a clear and practical starting point so everyone understands the terms.

Lyricists

Sometimes lyricists confuse lyrics with songs, using the two terms interchangeably. They are different. A lyric is text; a song is audio and text combined, except in the case of instrumental-only songs. Lyrics by themselves do not generate royalties. They must be combined with audio to form a complete song before royalties can be generated.

When a lyric is turned into a completed song, Songbay contracts specify a minimum 25% song royalty share for the lyricist. This is not because we undervalue lyrics; strong lyrics are vital to a successful song.

However, from our extensive experience, 25% is a fair and workable share because the songwriter, composer, or producer usually makes the additional creative and financial investment required to turn a lyric into a finished, recorded song. This may include years of composition and instrumental study, recording equipment, studio hire, production costs, session musicians, mixing, mastering, and often multi-instrumental performance.

For this reason, 25% is already higher than the usual industry norm, where lyricists may receive around 10-15%, or sometimes only a one-off fee with no royalty share.

In practical terms, if a royalty share is set too high, many songwriters will simply choose to write their own lyrics rather than give away 50% of the finished song. Our 25% contract position is designed to protect lyricists while still keeping the arrangement attractive and realistic for songwriters and producers.

You are free to negotiate your own contracts at Songbay, but ours are a strong starting point and are designed to be advantageous to lyricists while remaining realistic for songwriters. Also of note, when a lyric is turned into a song, a songwriter can sometimes claim joint ownership of the lyric and prevent it from being used again, because the lyric becomes integral or fused with the song. Songbay contracts for lyricists help prevent this. They are non-exclusive, meaning even if a lyric is purchased and used in a song, the lyricist retains control and can use the lyric again elsewhere without hindrance.

An important word of advice. Be very careful of companies offering free lyric uploads in return for straight 50/50 royalty shares. This can sound tempting until you look at the detail. In some cases, this may mean handing over 50% of your copyright in perpetuity. Worse, even if they do not sell anything, they may still be free to use your lyric and claim ownership of a percentage of it.

At Songbay, you always control and own 100% of your lyrics unless you choose otherwise. We also provide free copyright registration and protection for each lyric upload.

Songbay takes no percentage of your royalties or sale fees. We are transparent: we charge an inexpensive monthly admin fee to pay our bills and provide a fair platform to present, sell, and protect your work.