3 Royalty Mistakes Record Labels Make
I really hope you’ve found all of our resources on managing your label’s royalties to be helpful!
I wanted to take a second to share 3 common mistakes that a lot of us (I’m the most guilty) make when managing our record label’s royalties.
1. Not keeping a consistent reporting schedule. Guilty! This one is the hardest. But I am trying to get better at planning a quarterly, dedicated time-slot to download all of my income sources and calculate what my artists are owed.
2. Project Accounting vs. Artist Accounting. Keeping track of the accounting for each artist release individually versus managing the accounting for the artist’s entire relationship with your label. The latter option allows you to use profits from future releases to help pay down debt from previous releases. (aka. cross-collateralization 🤮)
3. Failing to keep the raw data. Most income streams (Bandcamp, Distrokid, The Orchard, Shopify, etc) provide you with downloadable spreadsheets to help you see all of the important data on your releases. Make sure to file these safely away, and to ensure that your artist has access, should they care to review them.
Don’t let this stress you out. Just go slow, be honest and transparent, and talk to our pals at Infinite Catalog if you need help!
- Scott
Ps. Visit Infinite Catalog to get a free demo of their accounting platform!