Every collaboration starts with a handshake. You split the track, divide the credits, and move on to the next session. But if each writer registers the song differently — different percentages, different titles, or one person doesn't register at all — the royalty system can't figure out who to pay. That money goes into a holding account. And most of the time, nobody tells you it's there.
How Song Registration Works (And Where It Goes Wrong)
When you write a song with co-writers, each of you registers independently with your performing rights organization — ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or GMR. You fill out your own claim with your own percentage. There's no automated cross-check between PROs that catches discrepancies in real time.
So here's what happens: you register the song as a 60/40 split in your favor. Your co-writer registers their side as 50/50. The PRO now has two conflicting claims on the same song. Some PROs flag this immediately. Others don't catch it until performance royalties are ready to go out, and suddenly the payment gets held while someone tries to sort out who's right.
What makes this worse is that ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are separate organizations. If you're at BMI and your co-writer is at ASCAP, the song lives in both databases — and there's no single place where someone checks that the two registrations agree. If you're still figuring out which PRO is right for you, that decision also affects how your co-registration coordination works.
The MLC Adds Another Layer
Since 2021, streaming mechanical royalties in the US have flowed through The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC). The MLC matches streaming payments to songs using metadata — specifically ISRC codes, ISWC codes, publisher information, and split percentages.
When two co-writers have registered the same song with inconsistent data, The MLC's matching algorithm can fail. The royalties don't disappear, but they do go into the unmatched royalty pool — a holding account that has at various points contained hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed mechanical royalties. You can learn more about how to register correctly with The MLC to avoid this.
A common failure scenario: one writer registers the song with an ISRC from their distributor. The other writer registers it with slightly different metadata — a stage name spelled differently, a different release date, or no ISRC at all. The MLC can't connect the dots, and the payment sits. See our guide on ISRC codes and how to get one if you haven't sorted this out yet.
The Most Common Registration Conflict Scenarios
These are the situations that show up most often:
Mismatched percentages. You agreed on splits verbally or over text. Later, both of you register — but one person misremembered the breakdown, or rounded differently. The PRO now has a 50/50 claim and a 60/40 claim for the same song. This is exactly why getting a split sheet signed before you register matters so much.
One writer never registered. If a co-writer didn't sign up with a PRO, or signed up but never submitted the specific song, they're invisible to the royalty system. Even if you listed them as a co-writer in your registration, their share can't be paid out to someone who doesn't have an account.
Different song titles in the database. A working title, a remix descriptor, or a typo can split a song into two separate entries. "Late Night Moves" and "Late Night Moves (ft. Mara)" are not the same song to a database.
Producer splits confused with songwriter splits. A producer who received 20% of the master sometimes assumes that carries over to the publishing side and registers themselves as a co-writer at the same percentage. Master recording ownership and songwriting splits are two completely separate rights. Mixing them up creates a conflict at the PRO level that can take months to unwind.
SoundExchange missing co-performers. For digital performance royalties — Pandora, SiriusXM, internet radio — SoundExchange pays the sound recording copyright owner and the featured artist separately. If a co-performer isn't registered or isn't listed on a Letter of Direction, their share of digital performance royalties goes unclaimed indefinitely.
What Happens to the Money
When a PRO or The MLC identifies a conflict, they have a few options:
- Hold the payment until the conflict is resolved. This can take months, and nobody is required to proactively notify you that it's happening.
- Pay the registered party and note the discrepancy internally. The unregistered or conflicting party may never be told.
- Flag the song as disputed and route it to a manual resolution queue, which can take even longer.
The common thread: the responsibility for catching and resolving conflicts falls on you, not the PRO. Collection societies are processing thousands of registrations. They're not going to track you down to tell you there's a problem.
How to Prevent Registration Conflicts Before They Start
The most reliable prevention happens before anyone distributes anything:
Get a split sheet signed before release. A split sheet locks in the agreed percentages, each writer's PRO affiliation, and contact information. It doesn't prevent someone from registering incorrectly, but it creates an authoritative record when a dispute comes up later. A signed split sheet is often the document PROs ask for when resolving conflicts.
Register the song identically across every PRO. If you're at BMI and your co-writer is at ASCAP, you each register with your own organization — but the title, ISRC, writer names, and percentages should match exactly. Confirm this with your co-writers before you submit.
Share ISRC and ISWC codes with every co-writer. These codes are how databases connect performance data to your song. If one writer's registration has the correct ISRC and another writer's doesn't, you're creating a mismatch the algorithm may not resolve on its own.
Ask your co-writers what they've actually submitted — not what they planned to submit. Confirm it, and keep a record.
What to Do If a Conflict Already Exists
If you suspect royalties are being held — or your song has generated plays but your PRO statement shows nothing — here's where to start:
Search your PRO's public works database for your song. Check the title, the co-writer names listed, and the percentages. If something doesn't match what you agreed on, flag it directly with your PRO's member services team.
Search The MLC's Works Database at portal.themlc.com. See how the song is listed there — or whether it's listed at all.
Contact your PRO and ask specifically whether any royalties for that song are being held. Ask the same of The MLC if you think streaming mechanicals are involved.
Once you and your co-writers agree on the correct split, submit corrections to every relevant organization simultaneously. A fix at BMI doesn't automatically update the ASCAP entry or the MLC database. The correction needs to happen everywhere at once.
Keep all documentation: the original split sheet, the correction submissions, confirmation emails. If the conflict gets disputed later, your paper trail is your only leverage.
If you've been releasing music over multiple years with different collaborators, there's a real chance registration conflicts exist that you haven't found yet. A Catalogue Audit checks your songs across PROs, The MLC, and SoundExchange — identifying conflicts, missing registrations, and unmatched royalties before they age out of the system. Artist audits start at $497.