This May 2026 edition covers what changed in April.
The useful material this month was mostly operational. It showed how to identify the right governance seat, read a distribution calendar, separate writer income from recording income, and prepare catalogue data for systems that increasingly exchange it automatically.
What changed
Indie publishers had a chance to help govern unmatched royalties
On April 2, The MLC invited suggestions for publisher candidates for one Board seat and five seats across its Dispute Resolution, Operations Advisory, and Unclaimed Royalties Oversight committees, with submissions due May 4 (The MLC). Its published definition requires a publisher to hold assigned exclusive reproduction and distribution rights for covered Section 115 activities, and all of the roles allow virtual participation (The MLC candidate call).
What it means if you are trying to get placed. If you formed a publishing entity for licensing paperwork, do not assume that alone makes it a “Publisher” under the MLC bylaws. Read the rights-assignment test. A self-administered writer whose entity has not received the defined exclusive rights may fit a songwriter seat rather than a publisher seat. Publisher suggestions are due May 4, so there is still a short window if you meet the definition and have the experience and time to serve; the MLC’s news index also showed a separate songwriter call later in April. Even if governance is not your goal, the committee names give you a useful diagnostic. Conflicting shares are a dispute-resolution problem. Missing or unmatched ownership can become an unclaimed-royalties problem. Bad delivery and registration flow is an operations problem. When you contact support, describe the problem in those terms and bring the underlying documents: split sheet, work registration, distributor metadata, and statement line. “Where is my money?” is hard to route; “the publisher share conflicts with the registered writer shares” is a problem somebody can investigate.
Record society revenue did not translate into record payouts
SOCAN reported 2025 revenue of CA$587.1 million, up 5%, and distributions of CA$511.9 million, slightly below the prior year’s CA$512.4 million (SOCAN). The release also broke out CA$232.8 million in digital revenue, CA$141.7 million in international revenue, and CA$11.8 million in reproduction-right distributions (SOCAN annual results).
What it means if you are trying to get placed. Read the difference between revenue and distributions before celebrating an aggregate record. A society can collect more in a year without paying more to members in that same period, and neither total predicts your statement. Use the breakdown to check your own administration instead. International performance distributions were a major line, so any Canadian placement or co-write should have consistent writer names, shares, affiliations, and work identifiers on both sides of the border. If your publishing administration is US-only, confirm the separate route through which non-US performance income reaches you. Reproduction rights are also a distinct line from performing rights; do not let a contract or conversation merge them into a vague promise of “backend.” On your own statement, classify each payment by right, territory, and usage period. That will tell you whether a missing amount is likely a cue-sheet issue, a registration mismatch, a threshold, or an ordinary reporting lag. The numbers are Canadian dollars and society-wide, with no audiovisual share disclosed. Their value is not a forecast. They show where to ask sharper questions about your own collection map.
Your streaming placement may pay long after the scene first airs
PRS for Music’s April distribution update reported a £166.5 million payment on April 15, including £15 million from video-on-demand and more than £57 million from international royalties (PRS for Music). It also listed delayed Amazon Prime and TNT Sports usage, named older NBC Universal and Disney periods that had finally paid, and explained its main-distribution and threshold schedule.
What it means if you are trying to get placed. Build your tracking sheet around usage periods, not the month money reaches your bank. PRS’s update showed 2025 usage arriving in April 2026 while some TNT Sports usage dating to 2023 remained delayed. That means a missing UK audiovisual line may be early, delayed at the service level, held below a payment threshold, or genuinely unmatched. Check the society’s current distribution update before escalating. Record the program, episode, territory, air or availability date, exact cue title, duration, and expected reporting route for each placement, then compare that log with the usage periods named in the update. Know the cadence: PRS says broadcast and VOD sit in the main April, July, October, and December distributions, while some online uses pay monthly. Also read for “Notice of Payment” lines, which can represent international money received without itemized usage. The new Samsung TV+ licence is a reminder that FAST and connected-TV services can sit inside VOD reporting. Ask whether a placement’s distribution includes those services and make sure the cue sheet names the work consistently. This is UK collection, so maintain a non-US route rather than assuming a US-only administrator handles it.
US radio still pays performers nothing. A new push could change that
SoundExchange said on April 20 that artist Mýa had met lawmakers in support of the American Music Fairness Act, which would create sound-recording compensation for AM/FM airplay while protecting certain small and noncommercial stations (SoundExchange). Under current US law, songwriters and publishers are paid for terrestrial radio uses, while featured artists and sound-recording copyright owners are not.
What it means if you are trying to get placed. Correct the way you value a radio result from a placement. If you wrote the song and performed on the master, US AM/FM airplay currently pays the writer and publisher side through the PRO system but not the featured-performer and master-owner side. That makes accurate work registration and cue-sheet data especially important, because the writer-side pipe is the one that exists today. It also means “radio exposure” is not a substitute for a fair sync fee or a master royalty that federal law does not presently provide. Register with SoundExchange anyway in both applicable capacities; it already administers eligible digital and international recording-side income and would be a relevant collection route if the law changes. If you engage with the proposal, use its bill numbers and current status rather than saying artist radio royalties are imminent. No vote or enactment was announced in April. Set collaborators’ expectations from the law as it stands: one composition-side revenue path, no US terrestrial recording-side payment, and no basis for projecting a future amount from pending legislation.
The companies delivering your music gained more influence over its metadata rules
On April 23, DDEX said Believe would become its twentieth Charter Member on May 1, represented on the Board by TuneCore operations executive Michael Ceglio (DDEX). DDEX says its standards can be implemented without membership, and the announcement did not introduce a new standard or deadline.
What it means if you are trying to get placed. Nothing in your delivery specification changed that day, so there is no new form to submit. The useful point is who is helping shape the formats through which music data moves: societies, platforms, labels, services, and now a large distributor group with direct exposure to independent-artist workflows. Your response should be to maintain one canonical metadata record and reuse it everywhere. For each musical work, keep the exact title, writers, shares, affiliations, IPI or CAE numbers, publisher or administrator, and ISWC. For each recording, add version name, ISRC, master owner, performers, duration, release status, and any AI-provenance note needed for clearance. Use the same spelling and identifiers in distribution, PRO, MLC, SoundExchange, and sync deliveries. Add a date and source for every correction so you can explain why two systems briefly disagree during an update. DDEX membership is not required to align internal tools or spreadsheets with published standards, but do not pretend you are implementing a specific message format if you are only maintaining a good spreadsheet. The immediate win is consistency. Automated exchange makes clean data travel faster, but it also makes one bad field travel farther.
A production-music placement could become an award credential
During April, the Production Music Association opened submissions for the twelfth Mark Awards and said it had added categories reflecting changes in production music (Production Music Association). The fetched primary page did not give a publication date or name the new categories, so those details should be checked before anyone writes toward them.
What it means if you are trying to get placed. Do not build a writing plan from the phrase “new categories” when the category names are not available in the evidence. Go to the current rules, confirm the category and eligibility period, and only then decide whether a track fits. Production music awards are also a rights exercise: establish who owns the master and publishing, whether the library or composer submits, how collaborators will be credited, and whether the track’s release or commission date is eligible. Keep those facts in the catalogue record now so a future deadline does not become an ownership investigation. If this market matters to you, add the Mark Awards to an annual summer calendar and check the official page regularly for a firm deadline. Treat an entry as positioning and professional recognition, not as a route that guarantees representation, licensing, or income. The useful signal in April is that the trade body is updating how it categorizes work. The next action is to read the actual categories when published and compare them with the work you already control cleanly.
April showed where administration becomes visible: in committee eligibility, distribution timing, legislative gaps, and machine-readable data. Before chasing a new contact, make one authoritative catalogue record and use it to reconcile every organization already handling your music. Add the applicable deadlines and statement dates to that same record so follow-up is based on the right clock.