When we report royalties, you’ll begin to see the different ‘saletypes’ listed within the Royalties tab of your EmuBands account. Saletypes help you distinguish exactly how your royalties are being earned. Here’s a quick breakdown of the different saletypes you can expect to see in royalty reports:
Adjustment
Adjustments refer to changes to previously published royalty reports. For example, if a DSP reports extra income to us for a given month after we have already reported the royalties for that month, this would show in your account as a positive adjustment.
Breakage
Breakage refers to extra money that we receive from DSPs that don’t relate to specific plays or streams. An example of this is where a DSP has guaranteed a minimum amount that they will pay out over the term of a deal but the total of their monthly payments fell short of that guaranteed amount. In this instance, they will make a ‘top-up’ payment to cover the difference – and we will allocate this pro-rata across all earnings covered by that deal during the applicable time period.
Bundle
A bundle is a royalty generated from a “bundled” download, it means that a user has purchased an entire product (single, EP or album) rather than just an individual track. Bundles exist on services with an a-la-carte permanent digital download element, e.g. iTunes or Amazon MP3.
Content ID
These are royalties generated through YouTube’s Content ID service.
Locker
This is for a cloud-based locker service. The best way to explain this is if someone purchases one of your tracks on iTunes on their laptop, it is stored not only on their laptop but in a cloud-based locker service called iCloud, so that they can access this track on their other devices (e.g. their tablet or phone) without actually adding the file they’ve downloaded onto their computer to their tablet/phone. This is made possible by streaming the file they’ve purchased from their locker to their device. Even though they’ve purchased your track already, and you’d be paid for that through EmuBands as a download, a small royalty is still generated each time they stream your music from their personal locker, and paid to you under this saletype.
N.B. – because this service is for streaming personally downloaded files, it is possible for you to receive locker royalties for tracks which you’ve asked us to remove from stores, because the files will still exist in these user’s personal lockers.
PGC Creation
This is where a user adds a sound recording selected from the social platform’s audio library into their video and then publishes it on the platform. It’s important to note that the Units figure you will see is the number of Creations, not the number of Views of those videos. This is the basis on which any platform where you see the sale type PGC Creation pays royalties. An example of where you would see PGC creations would be from users choosing to share your music in their Instagram stories, by selecting it via the Instagram music sticker tab, or from the TikTok music library.
PGC Creation (Artificial)
This is where the platform has detected that the creation happened artificially, for example using bots to create videos to attempt to manipulate earnings.
Settlement
These are rare, but sometimes a platform will make a general payment to the music industry, usually if they have been using unlicensed recordings. Sometimes this will be because the music industry has taken action against the platform, but more often it will be because the platform is now agreeing properly licensed terms and is making a payment as compensation for previous unlicensed usage. When this type of money is reported to you we will give you more information on the circumstances by e-mail.
Stream
These are regular streaming royalties, e.g. the money you receive each time someone listens to your music on services like Apple Music, Deezer or Spotify.
Stream (Artificial)
These are streams which have been identified as being artificially generated, e.g. by bots or other artificial means. When digital streaming services like Apple and Spotify identify these streams, they zero rate them, so they do not earn any royalties, but they still report the number of streams to us.
Stream (Discovery Mode Discount)
If you set up any Discovery Mode campaigns on Spotify for Artists, the streams generated via this campaign would show with this saletype. This would allow you to track how much each Discovery Mode campaign would “cost” you.
Stream (Monetized Noise Content)
From February 2024, Spotify have reduced the value of any streams of what they class as ‘noise’ content (i.e. non-music, non-spoken word tracks) where the duration of the track is over two minutes. These streams will be identified with the saletype “Stream (Monetized Noise Content)”.
Stream (Spatial Audio)
These are streams generated on any Spatial Audio tracks we have delivered on your behalf to Apple Music.
Stream (Un-Monetized Noise Content)
From February 2024, Spotify have de-monetized any streams of what they class as ‘noise’ content (i.e. non-music, non-spoken word tracks) where the duration of the track is two minutes or less. These streams are still being reported but will be identified with the saletype “Stream (Un-Monetized Noise Content)”.
Track
A track royalty is shown when someone purchases an individual track on a download service like iTunes or Amazon MP3.
UGC Creation
This is when a user uploads a video to a social platform that already contained sound recordings from the user’s own library. It’s important to note that the Units figure you will see is the number of Creations, not the number of Views of those videos. This is the basis on which any platform where you see the sale type UGC Creation pays royalties. An example of where you would see UGC creations would be from users choosing to share your music in their TikTok clips, but not by using the TikTok Music Library, instead uploading a video which already contained your sound recording.
UGC Creation (Artificial)
This is where the platform has detected that the creation happened artificially, for example using bots to create videos to attempt to manipulate earnings.