Non-US Artists: The Registration Path That Applies to You

Most royalty registration guidance is written around a US-centric system, ASCAP, BMI, the MLC, SoundExchange, and if you're releasing music from outside the US, following that sequence literally doesn't work. Here's what actually applies to you, and in what order.

The organizations that are the international equivalent of ASCAP or BMI depend entirely on your country, and this is the first registration to sort out. In the UK, that's PRS for Music. In Germany, GEMA. In France, SACEM. In Australia and New Zealand, APRA. In Canada, SOCAN. Each of these functions as your local performing rights organization, collecting when your composition is publicly performed, on radio, in venues, through streaming's performance royalty component, inside your home territory.

Mechanical royalties, the ones tied to reproduction rather than performance, are handled differently depending on your country, and in several major territories they're bundled with performance rights into a single membership. GEMA in Germany and SACEM in France both handle performance and mechanical rights together, so joining one organization covers both. Canada's SOCAN works the same way through its combined structure. The UK splits it: PRS handles performance, and its sister organization MCPS handles mechanicals, though you typically apply to both through the same PRS for Music application. Australia's APRA AMCOS is also a combined membership covering both sides. Check your specific country's structure rather than assuming a split system, since the bundled model is common enough to be the default expectation, not the exception.

Does SoundExchange pay non-US artists? Only under specific conditions. SoundExchange collects strictly under US law, for digital performance royalties generated inside the United States. It has reciprocal agreements with roughly fifty foreign collection societies, so a non-US artist whose music gets non-interactive digital play in the US can potentially collect through those reciprocal arrangements, but SoundExchange itself is not your primary registration if you're not a US-based rights holder.

Should a non-US artist register directly with the US Copyright Office? This is a legal question outside what a technique guide can answer definitively, and copyright registration in your own country generally establishes protection there regardless of US registration. If your work has meaningful US commercial exposure, sync licensing, US-based sales, direct US Copyright Office registration is worth discussing with an attorney familiar with international copyright, but it is not a required first step the way PRO registration is.

Does a non-US artist need to register with the MLC? No, and this is one of the more common points of confusion. The MLC collects mechanical royalties strictly from US-based interactive streaming, under US law. It has no jurisdiction over streams that occur outside the US. If your local PRO or mechanical rights body already handles your home-territory mechanicals, the MLC isn't part of your registration sequence at all, unless you're specifically trying to capture the US portion of mechanical royalties, in which case a publishing administrator that handles international mechanical collection is generally a more practical path than direct MLC registration.

The registration sequence for a non-US artist is shorter than the US sequence, and the order matters less because most of it happens through one organization instead of several. Identify and join your local PRO first, since that single membership typically captures both performance and (where bundled) mechanical rights in your home territory, plus routes foreign performance royalties, including US ones, back to you through reciprocal agreements with ASCAP, BMI, and other foreign societies. From there, decide whether direct US registration through ASCAP or BMI is worth the added complexity of split membership, which some local PROs permit and others don't. Check with your local society before assuming you can hold both.

The single most important registration to complete first is your local PRO membership, because it's the one organization doing double duty, covering your home territory directly and routing your international royalties back to you through the reciprocal network, without requiring you to individually register with a US organization at all.

Josh, Founder, JG BeatsLab