The uncomfortable truth: Your venue paid your PRO a licensing fee the night you played. That money is sitting in a pool right now, waiting to be claimed. It stays unclaimed until you submit your setlist. Most artists never do — so the money gets redistributed to artists who did submit.
What Are Live Performance Royalties?
When you perform original songs at a licensed venue — a bar, club, concert hall, festival — that venue has paid a blanket license fee to your Performing Rights Organization (PRO). The PRO's job is to collect those fees and distribute them back to the songwriters whose music was performed.
This is separate from streaming royalties, mechanical royalties, or sync fees. Live performance royalties exist specifically because of the act of performing your songs in front of an audience in a licensed space.
The catch: your PRO has no way of knowing which songs you played unless you tell them. That's what a setlist submission is.
How Much Can You Earn?
Bar / Club
$2–6
per original song
Mid-size Venue
$5–18
per original song
Theatre / Hall
$28–100
per original song
Festival / Arena
$50–280
per original song
These are writer's share figures only. Self-published artists collect both writer and publisher share — effectively doubling these numbers.
The annual math: A bar artist playing 50 shows a year with 12 original songs per set could be sitting on $2,400–$3,600 in unclaimed live royalties every year. At festival pace, that number climbs into the tens of thousands.
How to Submit — By PRO
Every PRO has a slightly different process, but the core data they need is the same: your setlist, the venue, and the date. See the full step-by-step guide for every PRO →
💡 Log into memp.socan.com → Set Lists & Performances → Register New Set List. Add each song, attach to the performance, submit.
💡 Log in at ascap.com/members → Works → OnStage. Build your setlist, create a Performance, attach and submit.
💡 Log in at bmi.com → Online Services → BMI Live → Add a Performance. Search songs by title, submit.
💡 Log in at prsformusic.com/login → Live Music → Submit a setlist. PRS pays a minimum per-gig rate even for small venues.
What You Need to Submit
The Problem Most Artists Face
The submission process is straightforward once you know it. The real problem is remembering what you played. A 12-song set at 11pm after soundcheck and load-in is hard to reconstruct accurately the next morning.
That's why most live royalties go unclaimed. Not ignorance of the system — friction at the data capture step.
Setlistr automates the capture step. It listens during your set, detects songs via audio fingerprinting, and builds your setlist automatically. After the show, you confirm in under 90 seconds — then the submission data is ready and formatted for your PRO.
Stop leaving royalties on stage
Setlistr automatically captures your setlist during the show. Free to start.
Start Your First Show →