The statement arrives. Everyone should be paid before the next one does.
Labels pay artists, featured performers, producers, songwriters and session players out of royalty statements that arrive on somebody else’s schedule, split by agreements that differ per release and per track. DiscoFi calculates each recipient’s share, pays it, and reconciles the run so the next statement starts from a closed book.
The payment is easy. The split is the work.
A distributor statement is a spreadsheet of streams and territories. Getting from that to a payable amount means applying the artist agreement, the producer points, the featured-artist share and the songwriter split, then subtracting whatever is still recouping against an advance. Every release has slightly different terms, and the terms live in a contract rather than in the system doing the paying.
So the run happens in a spreadsheet, once a quarter, and the artist asks where their money is. The split gets recalculated by hand, a session player from two years ago is missing a W-9, one bank account bounced, and the whole thing is reconciled by comparing a bank export against the sheet that produced it.
From statement to paid, in one run.
- Calculate the splitArtist share, producer points, featured splits and songwriter shares resolve per recipient, with recoupment applied before the payable figure.
- Review the runLabel finance approves a royalty run, not a bank file, and the approval is on the record.
- Pay everyoneArtists, producers and session players are paid to their own accounts, built for instant delivery.
- Close the periodEvery payment reconciles against the statement it came from, so the next quarter opens on a closed book rather than an argument.
Every payout is built for instant delivery.* See Instant Pay disclosure Your team decides who gets paid and how much; the payout API handles everything after that.
What a quarterly royalty run settles like.
Quarterly royalty run, illustrative
- Artist royalties34 artists, post-recoupment$284,120.00
- Featured artists19 features$41,300.00
- Producer points12 producers$63,750.00
- Songwriter splits47 writers$58,900.00
- Session players28 players, per-session$21,400.00
- Settlement$469,470.00
140 recipients · 1 run · One ledger
Illustrative figures for a hypothetical operation, not a DiscoFi customer or a DiscoFi metric.
Questions this raises.
Can DiscoFi handle splits that differ per release?
Yes. The split is a calculation rule attached to the release rather than a formula someone rebuilds each quarter, so a release with unusual producer points pays correctly without a special case in a spreadsheet.
Does it handle recoupment against an advance?
Recoupment is applied before the payable amount, so an artist still recouping shows the correct balance rather than a payment that has to be clawed back.
What about a session player we paid once, two years ago?
They stay a recipient with their payment details and tax information on record. Paying them again does not mean re-onboarding them, and their annual total is already tracked for reporting.
Do we still need our distributor?
Yes. DiscoFi is payout infrastructure, not a distributor. It takes what you are owed and what you owe, and handles the calculation, the payment and the reconciliation from there.
Run your next settlement on DiscoFi.
Starts at $1,000/month plus 0.28% of successful payout volume.
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