Independent Latin artists are leaving real money on the table every time a song goes live without a complete royalty registration stack behind it. The issue is not streaming numbers. It is paperwork that never got finished, or was never started, because the distributor handled "distribution" and the artist assumed the rest was handled too. It is not. Distribution and publishing registration are separate jobs, and the gap between them is where royalties disappear.
An analysis published by Artistrack in 2026 puts the average unclaimed royalty figure at roughly $800 per year per artist for independent musicians who have not completed their publishing registrations. That number compounds with every release that goes live without the paperwork behind it, because royalties that go unclaimed long enough eventually get absorbed into the general pool and distributed to artists who did register.
This article covers the four registrations a song needs to collect fully, how they work in Mexico and Puerto Rico specifically, and ends with a short audit you can run against one already-released song today.
Why Distribution Does Not Equal Registration
When an artist delivers a track to DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, or any other distributor, the distributor pushes the master recording to platforms. That master recording earns performance royalties when people stream or play it. But the song underneath the recording, the composition, the melody and the lyrics, earns entirely separate royalties through entirely separate channels.
The distributor's job ends at the master. Nobody at the distributor is filing your composition with a performing rights organization. Nobody is registering your songwriter and publisher split. Nobody is claiming your mechanical royalties. Nobody is registering you with SoundExchange so you collect when SiriusXM or Pandora spins your track. Those are four separate actions, each requiring a separate account and registration, and all four are on the artist unless the artist has a publishing administrator doing it for them.
Most independent Latin artists do not have a publishing administrator. Most assume the distributor handled it. The gap is structural, and the industry built it that way.
The Four Registrations a Song Needs
Performing Rights Organization Membership
This is the foundational step. A performing rights organization (PRO) collects public performance royalties on your behalf: the money that flows when your song plays on radio, in a restaurant, at a venue, on a TV show, or on a streaming platform.
In Mexico, the relevant organization is SACM (Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de México). SACM membership is mandatory for any songwriter who wants their compositions protected and their performance royalties collected under Mexican copyright law. The registration covers the songwriter, not just the recording.
In Puerto Rico, both ASCAP and BMI operate actively. Puerto Rican artists have registered with both organizations for decades, and because Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, U.S.-based PROs have full jurisdiction. Artists based in Puerto Rico can join either ASCAP or BMI and register works directly. ASCAP charges a one-time $50 application fee for songwriters. BMI is free for songwriters, with a $150 fee for publishers.
Membership alone is not enough. After joining, every released work has to be registered individually with your PRO. The organization cannot collect royalties on a song it does not know exists. A membership card is just the door. Walking through it means logging in and registering each song.
The Songwriter and Publisher Split
When you register a work with your PRO, you are filing more than a title. You are filing a split: what percentage of the composition belongs to each writer, and whether there is a publishing entity attached.
This matters for two people in the same song. If two writers co-wrote a track without agreeing on a split beforehand, the PRO may default to an equal split, or hold the royalties until a split is filed and agreed upon by all parties. Royalties for unresolved splits sit in a holding queue. They do not get paid out.
For solo artists who wrote the song alone and have not formally established a publishing entity, the standard approach is to register both the writer share and the publisher share under your own name. PROs allow this: you can be both the songwriter and the self-publisher on a work, capturing both sides of the royalty. Most independent artists leave the publisher share unclaimed because they do not realize they are entitled to it without a formal publishing company.
Establishing a simple DBA (doing business as) publishing name and registering it with your PRO takes less than an hour and immediately doubles the royalty share you can claim on your own compositions.
Mechanical Rights Registration
Mechanical royalties are a separate royalty type from performance royalties. They are triggered when a song is reproduced: a physical CD pressing, a download sale, or a stream on a platform that licenses mechanicals. In the United States, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) is the central body that administers mechanical royalties for streaming in the U.S. market under the Music Modernization Act.
If you are not registered with the MLC as a songwriter and publisher, your mechanical royalties from U.S. streaming are sitting in their unmatched royalty pool. The MLC publishes this pool publicly. As of recent reporting, it has held hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties that could not be matched to a registered claimant. That money eventually gets distributed to registered publishers based on market share, meaning larger publishers collect a portion of royalties that were earned by unregistered independent songwriters.
Registration with the MLC is free. It requires creating an account, registering your works, and filing your ownership share. The process is online and the MLC has built onboarding specifically for independent songwriters who do not have a publishing administrator.
For artists whose primary market is Mexico, SACM handles both performance and mechanical licensing under one membership, which is one structural advantage of the Mexican system over the U.S. split-body model. Puerto Rican artists operating under U.S. jurisdiction need both their PRO registration and the MLC separately.
SoundExchange for Digital Radio
SoundExchange is the fourth registration, and it covers a royalty type that is entirely separate from both performance and mechanical royalties. It collects and distributes digital audio performance royalties from non-interactive digital radio services: SiriusXM, Pandora, internet radio stations, cable music channels, and fitness platforms like Peloton.
The critical distinction: SoundExchange collects on the master recording, not the composition. That means it pays the recording artist and the sound recording rights holder, not just the songwriter. An artist who performed on their own track is entitled to SoundExchange royalties for those performances, regardless of who owns the publishing.
SoundExchange registration is free. Like the MLC, SoundExchange holds royalties for unregistered artists in an unclaimed pool. Unlike streaming royalties that flow through your distributor, SoundExchange royalties do not go through DistroKid or TuneCore. They go directly to SoundExchange, and if you are not registered, they do not go to you.
Latin artists with any significant radio play, especially reggaeton, regional mexicano, or trap latino tracks that cross over to U.S. digital radio, are particularly exposed here. The royalty is per-performance on non-interactive services, and a track with sustained Pandora or SiriusXM airplay accumulates real money that sits unclaimed until the artist registers.
How SACM and ASCAP/BMI Actually Differ in Practice
Artists working between Mexico and the U.S. market face a practical question: which PRO covers what.
SACM covers works that are registered under Mexican copyright. If a Mexican artist is releasing music primarily in Mexico and Latin America, SACM is the correct registration body. SACM has reciprocal agreements with PROs in other countries, meaning a song registered with SACM can collect royalties in the U.S. through the reciprocal agreement with ASCAP or BMI, but the artist must be an active SACM member with the work formally registered.
Puerto Rican artists who are U.S. citizens are generally better served registering directly with ASCAP or BMI, since they are operating under U.S. copyright jurisdiction. A Puerto Rican artist signed to no label, distributing independently, can join ASCAP or BMI, register their works, and collect U.S. performance royalties directly without relying on a reciprocal agreement pathway.
The failure mode most Latin independent artists hit: they registered with a PRO years ago, filed a few works, and never went back to register subsequent releases. Every unreleased catalog song is unregistered. Every song released after the initial filing may be missing from the PRO database entirely. The PRO collects what it knows about. It does not track your Spotify for Artists dashboard to see what you dropped last quarter.
The Failure Mode No One Talks About
The conversation around unclaimed royalties usually focuses on registration as a one-time setup problem. It is actually an ongoing workflow problem.
Every new release triggers a new registration requirement. Releasing four songs a year means four new PRO work registrations, four new MLC registrations, four new SoundExchange recording claims. Artists who are active independent releasers and treat registration as a one-time event are falling behind with every drop.
The other failure mode: unresolved splits on collaborative work. A feature credit, a co-write with a producer, a beat purchased with a split agreement never filed anywhere formally, these all create works that cannot be fully paid out. The PRO may have the track in its database but with an incomplete or contested ownership record. Royalties that cannot be attributed to a confirmed owner do not get paid. They queue.
For Latin artists who work heavily in collaborative production environments, where producer credits, co-writes, and feature arrangements are common and often informal, this is where the most royalties disappear. A handshake split with a producer that was never filed with the PRO means neither party is collecting the publisher share cleanly.
The Audit: Run This Against One Released Song
Take one song you have already released. Run it through the following checklist.
First, search your PRO's work database for the song title. If it does not appear, it is not registered and you are not collecting performance royalties on it.
Second, check whether the publisher share is filed separately from the songwriter share on that registration. If you are listed only as a writer with no publisher attached, you are leaving half the performance royalty unclaimed.
Third, log in to the MLC at themlc.com and search for the work in their repertoire search. If it does not appear under your ownership, your mechanical royalties from U.S. streaming are sitting in the unmatched pool.
Fourth, log in to SoundExchange or create a free account and check whether the recording is registered under your name as the featured artist and rights holder. If you have never registered with SoundExchange, this step is creating the account.
This audit takes 30 to 45 minutes for one song. If you find gaps on song one, every other song in your catalog likely has the same gaps. The fix is not complicated. It is administrative work that was skipped at release time and can be done retroactively. Retroactive registration does not recover royalties that were already distributed out of the unmatched pool, but it starts the clock on everything going forward.
BCKSTG's Guest List and release infrastructure handle the artist-to-fan side of a release. The publishing registration described here is a parallel workflow that happens at the same time, not a replacement for distribution or fan outreach, but a necessary second track that independent artists building a real business cannot skip.
The $800-per-year figure is an average. It is higher for artists with more catalog, more airplay, and more collaborative tracks with unresolved splits. It is recoverable, song by song, starting with the audit above.