Register Your Song: The Complete Step-by-Step Order

Most stalled catalogs aren't stalled because someone forgot to register. They're stalled because the registrations happened in the wrong order, and each one was missing the identifier the next one needed.

There is a correct sequence. It exists because each step produces something the following step requires, and skipping ahead means registering with a blank where a code should be.

Short answer: join a PRO and get your IPI, register the works there, retrieve the ISWC your PRO assigned, then register at the MLC with that ISWC and splits totaling 100 percent. SoundExchange is a separate lane for the recording side.

Step 1 — Join a PRO and get your IPI

Nothing works before this. Your performing rights organization issues your IPI number, the global identifier that ties you as a writer to your works. Until you have one, your performance share has nowhere to land.

In the US you join ASCAP or BMI — one or the other, never both. SESAC and GMR are invitation-only and not a decision you get to make. If you're weighing the two open options, the full comparison covers cost, structure, and payout timing.

Outside the US, you join your home country's society. The directory lists every one with its joining cost and payout cadence.

Also open a publisher account. This is the step independent writers most often skip, and it's expensive to skip. Registering only as a writer collects only the writer share; the publisher half of every royalty your songs generate sits unclaimed.

Step 2 — Register the works at your PRO

Registering yourself is not registering your songs. Those are two separate actions and only the second one gets a specific song into the system.

Each work needs its title, every writer with their IPI and society, and splits that total 100 percent. If a co-writer belongs to a different society, their side has to be registered consistently there — split conflicts between societies stall payment until they're reconciled, and they stall it for everyone on the work, not only the writer who filed incorrectly.

Step 3 — Retrieve your ISWC

Your PRO assigns an ISWC when the work is registered. It will not email it to you. You have to go and look it up — ASCAP's ACE database or BMI's Songview — and record it yourself.

This is the step almost nobody knows about, and it's the hinge of the whole sequence. The ISWC is what the next registration needs.

Step 4 — Register at the MLC

The MLC collects every US streaming mechanical royalty. Registration is free, and it is a completely separate registration from your PRO — being at ASCAP does not put you at the MLC.

Each song needs:

• Its ISWC, from step 3
• Its ISRCs — every recording of the song, issued by your distributor
• Splits totaling 100 percent on both the writer and publisher sides

Without the ISWC, the MLC and foreign societies fall back on fuzzy title matching, which is unreliable against common titles. That failure is silent — nothing tells you it happened.

While you're there, search the unmatched pool. The MLC received over $424 million in accrued historical unmatched US streaming royalties when the blanket licence began, and the pool is publicly searchable. Money from your own past streams may be sitting in it.

Step 5 — SoundExchange, but only if it applies to you

SoundExchange pays the recording, not the composition. It applies if you own the master or were a featured performer on it. If you only wrote the song, this pool is not yours and you can skip the step entirely.

If it does apply, register both the performer and the rights-owner side, and make sure every ISRC matches exactly what your distributor reported. ISRC mismatches are the main reason this money goes unpaid.

Step 6 — International

Your PRO is domestic. It collects abroad only through reciprocal agreements with foreign societies, and those agreements can only pay you if the foreign society can match the work to you. How that actually works is its own subject, but the practical instruction is short: the ISWC and complete splits from the earlier steps are what make international collection possible. There is no separate international step that rescues a work registered thinly at home.

The order, condensed

1. Join a PRO — as writer and publisher. Get your IPI.
2. Register each work there, with all writers, IPIs, and splits to 100 percent.
3. Look up the ISWC your PRO assigned.
4. Register at the MLC with that ISWC, your ISRCs, and full splits. Search the unmatched pool.
5. SoundExchange — only if you own the master or performed on it.
6. International follows from steps 1 to 4 being done properly.

What goes wrong

Registering at the MLC before the PRO. You end up submitting without an ISWC, and the match becomes unreliable from the start.

Writer-only PRO registration. Half of every performance royalty stays unclaimed indefinitely.

Splits that don't total 100 percent. The work holds rather than paying. This is the single most common data problem in independent catalogs.

Assuming one registration covers everything. Performance, mechanical, and the recording side are three separate systems. None of them talks to the others on your behalf.

Where Davincii fits

This is the sequence we run for every artist we take on — the PRO publisher side, the MLC, and the international societies, with the identifiers carried correctly from each step to the next. No upfront fee, you keep 100 percent of your copyright, and we earn a commission only on royalties we actually collect: 15 percent on performance, 20 percent on mechanicals.

You can do all of it yourself. The order above is the whole method. What it costs you is attention, per song, forever.