A royalty payment is a trust event.
What came in. What came out. What is mine, and where is it?
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.
A number without a lineage invites doubt.
The statement says what came in. The agreements decide what everyone gets. The payment should preserve the connection between the two, and usually it does not, because the two live in different documents.
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. 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. The artist asks where their money is, and the honest answer takes a while to assemble.
Statement in. Period closed.
- Calculate the splitsArtist share, featured-artist share, producer points and songwriter splits are calculation rules attached to the release rather than a formula rebuilt each quarter.
- Apply recoupmentAdvances are recouped before the payable amount, so a recouping artist shows a correct balance instead of a payment that has to come back.
- Approve and payOne approval releases the run. Everyone on it is paid over the fastest delivery method their account can accept.
- Reconcile the periodEvery payment resolves back to the calculation that produced it, so the next statement opens against 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
- 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
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.
Artists should not have to understand your back office to trust it.
They should be able to answer three questions without calling anyone: what did I earn, what was deducted, and what was paid. A number with a traceable source is worth more than a faster one.
Close this statement before the next one arrives.
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