Performance royalties from abroad: money for your own songs many bands never claim

When a band performs its own songs live abroad, the songs' writers – the composer, lyricist and arranger – are owed a performance royalty. This is money many bands never claim, because they don't know it exists or don't report their gigs.

The good news: you don't need to be a member of foreign societies. Your home society collects the royalties for you through its sister societies – but only if you report the performances. This guide explains who the royalty belongs to, how to report your gigs abroad, and what to expect.

When a song is performed publicly live, the organiser obtains a performance licence from the local collecting society and pays a royalty. This money is paid to the writers of the song, not to the performer as such.

So the royalty follows authorship, not performance. If a band has its own songs, the royalty goes to their writers – even when they perform them themselves. If you only play other people's songs (covers), the royalty goes to the original writers, not to you.

Music royalties split into three, and they're easily confused. Your own live performance falls under the first:

Right	What it covers	Who gets it · collected in Finland by
Performing right	Performing a song live	The writers (composer/lyricist/arranger) · Teosto
Neighbouring right	Playing a recording in public	Performers + producers · Gramex
Mechanical right	Recording and reproducing a song	The writers + publisher

Your own live show is a performing right (Teosto). Your recording played over a bar's speakers is a different matter (neighbouring right, Gramex). This guide covers the performing right – the royalty owed to a song's writers at a gig.

Your home PRO – Teosto in Finland, GEMA in Germany, SACEM in France, PRS in the UK and so on – has reciprocal representation agreements with societies in over a hundred countries (the international CISAC network). When your song is performed abroad, the local society there collects the royalty from the organiser and remits it to your home PRO, which pays it on to you.

So you don't need membership in a foreign society. Your home society handles the collection reciprocally. The system works both ways: your home PRO also collects foreign writers' royalties for performances in your own country and remits them to their societies.

Each country has its own performing-rights organisation (PRO), and they all hold reciprocal agreements with one another through CISAC. You don't deal with these yourself – they collect the royalty and remit it to your home PRO – but it helps to recognise the names. The right-hand column shows the recordings (neighbouring rights) society for contrast.

The royalty is paid to you only if the performances are reported. You report a gig abroad in your home PRO's online service the same way as domestic gigs, and your PRO passes the information to the local society. (If someone else has performed your songs abroad, you can report that too.)

A performance report needs, above all, three things:

• The actual setlist – the songs you really played, with their durations (not the planned list).
• The venue.
• The date.

Report it yourself even if the foreign organiser collects the setlist on the night – don't rely on that alone. Reporting is free and doesn't require PRO membership. Getting paid for your own songs, however, requires the works to be registered with your PRO and you to be its member or customer (see Teosto & Gramex for bands).

The setlist, the venue and the date are exactly the details KIERTUE already stores for every gig. When the show is over, you have the performance-report details ready to take to Teosto's service – and you won't leave the royalty unclaimed just because the setlist was forgotten.

• The sums are often small from a single gig – but they add up, and many bands leave them entirely unclaimed.
• Royalties arrive with a delay, typically about 1–2 years, because the foreign society collects, processes and remits first.
• Report in good time. A foreign performance can usually be reported retroactively only for a limited period (with Teosto in Finland, up to about three years after the show; check your own PRO's deadline) – after that the royalty is lost.

• A covers-only band doesn't get a performance royalty – it goes to the original writers of the songs played.
• A performer who isn't a writer doesn't get a performing-rights royalty just for playing. Their rights fall under neighbouring rights (Gramex) – and only if their recording is played in public, not from a live performance.

In other words: a performance royalty is the song writer's royalty. If you write your own songs, it's yours – from abroad too.

When your own songs are performed live abroad, the writers are owed a performance royalty, which your home PRO collects through its sister societies – without you joining any foreign society. The only condition is that you report your gigs: the actual setlist, the venue and the date in your PRO's online service. The sums are small and arrive with a delay, but many bands leave them unclaimed for nothing. A performance royalty belongs to the song's writer – for covers it goes to the original writers, and a recording played in public is a separate, neighbouring right (e.g. Gramex in Finland, PPL in the UK).