One stream, two cheques, and most AI artists only ever cash the first. When a track plays on Spotify, two different rights earn money. The master, the recording itself, pays through your distributor. The composition, the melody and lyric underneath, pays through a performing rights organisation and a publisher. DistroKid, TuneCore and the rest handle the first pipe. In India, the second pipe runs through the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS), and for a large share of independent AI-assisted catalogues it is not connected to anything.
Short answer: register the songs, not just the account. Get an ISWC for each work alongside the ISRC your distributor assigns to each recording, join IPRS as an author and composer if you wrote the lyrics and directed the melody, keep an authorship file per release that records the human decisions, and audit both pipes quarterly. The rest of this piece is that sequence, written for Indian creators with a global twin where the mechanics differ.
The five royalties on one stream
| Royalty | Right | Who collects it | Identifier |
|---|
| Streaming / master | Sound recording | Distributor (DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby) to you | ISRC |
| Performance | Composition, public performance including streaming | PRO (IPRS in India; ASCAP, BMI, PRS abroad) to writer and publisher | ISWC + IPI/CAE number |
| Mechanical | Composition, reproduction | PRO or mechanical society, or a publishing administrator | ISWC |
| Neighbouring / performer | Performance on the recording | Performer societies where they exist (ISRA in India for singers) | ISRC |
| Sync | Both master and composition, licensed for picture | Negotiated per use | Both |
If you generate a track, write the lyric yourself, direct the melody with iterations and choices, and upload through DistroKid, you have connected exactly one row of that table. The performance and mechanical rows sit empty until a work is registered. The money is not lost immediately; societies hold unmatched income for a period and then distribute it by market share. Which means the biggest catalogues get paid for your unregistered song.
ISRC versus ISWC: the split everyone blurs
An ISRC identifies a recording. Your distributor assigns one per track, per version. A remaster, an instrumental and a radio edit each get their own. An ISWC identifies the underlying work, the composition and lyric, and one work can sit under dozens of ISRCs. It is issued when a PRO or publisher registers the work with writer splits.
The failure mode is treating the ISRC as proof of ownership of the song. It proves ownership of the recording. Cover the same composition twice with two Suno generations and you have two ISRCs and, until you register, zero ISWCs. When a society tries to match a stream to a writer, it is the ISWC and the writer's IPI number it is looking for.
What Indian law says, and what it does not
Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, 1957 defines the author of a computer-generated literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work as "the person who causes the work to be created." That clause predates generative AI by decades and has not been tested in court against a Suno output, which is why Indian commentary in 2026 leans on the human authorship doctrine: the more a human directed the result through lyric writing, selection, refinement and arrangement decisions, the stronger the claim that a human-authored work exists. The US Copyright Office takes a stricter line and requires human authorship in the protected elements. IPRS has been reviewing its own AI framework and, as of mid-2026, formal rules were still pending.
The operating consequence is not "claim everything." It is claim what you actually did, and document it before the claim is questioned. A lyric you wrote is a literary work whether the melody came from a model or a guitar. A melody you selected from twenty generations, edited and arranged is a stronger claim than one you accepted on the first try. Prompts alone are not a chain of title; decisions are.
The IPRS sequence that registers works
Membership is not registration. Plenty of creators join, receive a member number and never register a single work, which earns exactly nothing.
Join in the correct capacity. Author (lyricist), composer, or both. If you also want to hold the publisher share, that is a separate publisher membership or a deal with a publishing administrator.
Get your IPI number. This is your identifier across every society worldwide. Keep it with your ISRC list.
Register each work with title, alternate titles, writer splits, and the ISRCs of every recording of it. This is where the ISWC is issued.
Attach the recordings. Link ISRCs to the ISWC so streams match to the work automatically.
Repeat per release. Automate it: a spreadsheet row per work with title, writers, splits, ISWC, ISRCs, release date, distributor, and the path to the authorship file.
For the global twin: a US writer does the same through ASCAP or BMI plus a mechanical registration (the MLC), a UK writer through PRS and MCPS. The identifiers and the ISRC-to-ISWC link are identical everywhere.
The AI authorship documentation pack
One folder per release, created before upload.
release-2026-09-21-title/
lyrics-v1.txt # first draft, your words
lyrics-final.txt # with edits and dates
style-sheet.txt # the structured prompt / style string used
generations.csv # id, date, kept/rejected, why
arrangement-notes.md # what you changed and why
mix-notes.md # decisions, not settings
credits.json # per-component AI disclosure + human roles
ids.json # ISRC(s), ISWC, IPI numbers, splits
This is the same file that protects you under Spotify's identity review and the distributor AI declarations described in the identity stack. One folder serves three purposes. If your distributor statements arrive as JSON exports, our free JSON to CSV converter flattens them into the same sheet.
Publishing admin versus doing it yourself
DistroKid and several distributors sell a publishing administration add-on that registers works and collects on your behalf for a percentage. It is a reasonable choice for a catalogue of a few hundred works across many territories, because society-by-society registration is tedious. It is a poor choice if you never check that the works were actually registered, because the add-on is a service, not a guarantee. Either way, you still need your own IPRS membership and IPI number; the administrator represents your publisher share, not your writer share.
The quarterly two-pipe audit
Distributor statement: every ISRC with streams. Any ISRC missing from your works sheet is an unregistered song.
PRO statement: every ISWC with performance income. Any registered work with streams and zero performance income for two quarters is a matching problem; raise it with the society with your ISRC list attached.
Splits: confirm co-writer percentages add to 100 and match the credits you published.
Metadata drift: titles that differ between distributor and PRO break matching. Fix at the PRO.
New territories: a catalogue that suddenly streams in Germany needs the German society to see the work through IPRS's reciprocal agreements. Check that the work carries the ISWC, not just the ISRC.
When a tiny catalogue is still worth registering
A five-song catalogue with a few thousand streams a month will not make you rich through IPRS. Register it anyway, for two reasons. First, matching is retroactive only within the society's holding window; income from unregistered months is redistributed and gone. Second, the registration record is the evidence of authorship you will want the day a platform, a distributor or a lawsuit asks who wrote the song. For creators working in Indian genres, the Regional Indian Music Pack and the Bollywood Hit Song Factory include the credits.json and ids.json templates above, pre-filled for the common lyricist-plus-composer case.
Co-writers, splits and the clone-voice credit
Three edge cases come up in every AI-assisted catalogue and each has a clean answer. A human co-writer who contributed a verse gets a writer split on the work and appears in the ISWC registration; the recording credit follows separately. A vocal that is a disclosed clone of your own voice is still your performance for credit purposes, so you are the named performer and the AI disclosure sits on the vocals component, not on the writer line. A track where the melody came from a generator and you wrote only the lyric is registered with you as author of the literary work and the composer field handled according to what you actually did: if you selected, edited and arranged the melody, document that and claim the composer role; if you accepted the first take unchanged, the honest registration is lyricist only. Splits that do not add to 100, or that name a generator as a writer, are the two errors that stall registrations for months.
Quick answers
Does DistroKid pay composition royalties?
Not by default. It pays the master recording. Composition income needs a PRO registration, either directly or through a publishing administration add-on, and you should verify the works were registered.
Can I register a Suno-generated song with IPRS?
You can register the parts you authored. A lyric you wrote is a literary work. Melody and arrangement claims are stronger the more you selected, edited and arranged. Document the decisions and claim only what you did.
What is the difference between ISRC and ISWC?
ISRC identifies a recording and comes from your distributor. ISWC identifies the underlying work and comes from a PRO or publisher when you register it with writer splits. One work can have many ISRCs.
Where does unregistered performance income go?
Societies hold unmatched income for a period, then distribute it by market share to registered rightsholders. Unregistered songs subsidise the biggest catalogues.
Is any of this legal advice?
No. It is the registration path we run for our own catalogues. Copyright treatment of AI-assisted works is unsettled in India and elsewhere; consult a qualified professional for your situation.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial or tax advice. Copyright treatment of AI-assisted works is evolving. Consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation.
Two pipes, one folder, one quarterly audit. Every product mentioned is available at wowhow.cloud β pay once, ship forever.
Originally published at wowhow.cloud
Top comments (0)