What SNR does
Two sides, two different answers. The recording is simple and absolute: the master is the binding constraint — no master grant, no stream, no fallback.
The composition is licensed the same way — directly, per writer, per right. What makes it conditional is the people, not the route: a share nobody has accepted is held, and a performance right with no grant behind it blocks the whole recording.
Direct licences only, in the US only. Blanket and society routing is not wrong, and nobody here is calling it that. It is how it works elsewhere — it is simply not what SNR does at launch.
Status — read this before the diagram
SNR holds no blanket licences at launch, so no share routes to a collective: a writer’s accepted share is paid by name, in the normal payout cycle. What is still not built is the reporting a direct-only service still owes — a Notice of Nonblanket Activity and the monthly usage report to the MLC — which is why every page here states the mechanism and not a track record.
- Licensing resolution
- live
- Settlement engine
- wired — drained by each monthly close
- MLC filing as a nonblanket licensee
- not built
Everything below describes the rules that govern the money each monthly close settles. They are written, derived in code and tested — they are not a track record, and the reporting a direct-only service owes the MLC is not built yet.
Source: src/snr/ledger/settlement_engine.py; src/snr/worker/tasks/payouts.py (close_period_task); ToS/licensing-policy.md §9, §13
The launch model
Direct licences only, in the US only.
At launch SNR holds no blanket licences — not the MLC’s, not any society’s. Each right is licensed directly from the person who controls it: they accept their share and SNR’s licence before the release can publish, and are paid by name from the first stream or sale. Everyone who receives money is in the US, streaming is for US listeners, and downloads, backing and memberships are for US buyers. The collective system — an MLC blanket for mechanicals, a PRO for performance — is how most services license. It is how it works elsewhere, and it returns to this platform only when SNR holds a blanket of its own.
Not all of the model is built. Direct resolution and direct payment are live; publishing that still waits for every writer, the US-only participant checks and licence withdrawal are on the policy’s own list of what is not done yet.
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §2, §3, §7, §9, §12, Appendix A; docs/DECISIONS.md 2026-09-24
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §13
One play on SNR
The recording — direct, or not at all
A grant from the rightsholder, by name. There is no statutory fallback behind it: without the grant the recording is not on the service. This is the part that is live and enforced today — it decides what can stream at all.
The song — one of five outcomes
Resolved per writer, per right, per territory. Which of the five below applies decides both whether a person is paid by name and how long it takes. At launch only the ones marked here are reachable — nothing routes to a collective.
| Class | Reaches the writer? | When | At launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| direct | By name | Same payout cycle | Yes |
| society_matched | By name | Months — the MLC, per the usage report | No blanket held |
| society_allocated | Not reliably | The society’s cycle | No blanket held |
| unmatched_held | Recoverable — registering the work reclaims it | Until distributed | Yes |
| unmatched_redistributed | No — pro-rata across songs played on SNR | From 2027 | No blanket held |
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §2, §3, §9, §12
The class that doesn't reach a writer
One of the five is a hole in the thesis. Here it is.
While money sits in unmatched_held, it is still the writer's, and registering the work converts it. It is the one class that is still mutable — every other class is fixed once settled. It does not sit there forever though: the collective distributing its balance ends the wait too, and that is the outcome nobody wants.
unmatched_redistributed is that outcome. From 2027 the MLC plans monthly pro-rata market-share distributions per song, per service. Where any of that money reaches SNR it is meant for a work played here, and it would redistribute across songs played on SNR — which is still pro-rata, just in a smaller room. It is a violation of the thesis this platform is built on, and it is reported every month as pro_rata_leak_pct rather than rounded off.
There is one pro-rata pocket inside a user-centric system, and it is ours to admit.
Source: COMP-23; ToS/licensing-policy.md Appendix A (the planned distributions)
When a work is unregistered the mechanical royalty it earns has no one to pay, and the statute says accrued royalties are eventually distributed to copyright owners in proportion to market share — which would send unclaimed independent money largely to the biggest catalogues. In practice the MLC has never made that distribution: roughly $243.9M was still held for 2021–2024 usage, with monthly distributions planned from 2027.
Source: Unmatched accrued royalties are to be distributed by relative market share — 17 U.S.C. §115(d)(3)(J); the held balance — ToS/licensing-policy.md Appendix A
The claim discipline
Routing changes who is paid and when. It never changes how much.
The composition money is carved out of the subscriber’s dollar before any affiliation applies, and the routing choice happens inside that figure. No cent is created, destroyed, or misdirected by it — a work whose writers all license directly earns exactly what the same work earns where a collective does the paying.
A writer’s accepted share moves out of composition_hold to their payable, on the same payout cycle as recording royalties. A share nobody has accepted stays on the books in composition_hold: a legacy track with no songwriting split, a right withdrawn after release, a co-writer who has not accepted yet. Both are recorded as settlement lines, so nothing is untracked — and with no blanket held at launch, a collective is never a destination.
A play with no registered work is held, not reallocated. Its share of the obligation stays in composition_hold, owed to writers we cannot yet name. It is never invented into a line and never handed to the writers who happen to be registered.
reached_by_name_pct, recoverable_pct and pro_rata_leak_pct, per listener per month. A collecting society is never counted as an "artist" to make the first number look better.
Source: COMP-41; ToS/licensing-policy.md §1 (the division is fixed before any affiliation applies) · UCPM-16; src/snr/ledger/settlement_engine.py · UCPM-17; src/snr/ledger/settlement_engine.py · COMP-23; ToS/licensing-policy.md §9
Before any of this applies
The money being settled is your money, not a national pot.
Everything on this page is about how a payment finds a person. What decides the size of that payment is upstream of it: a subscription here is sealed and split across the artists that subscriber actually played, rather than pooled by market and divided by share of total streams. The arithmetic, the take rate and the receipt are on the pages that own them.
Region
This section is the US, and at launch only the US.
US-only at launch: streaming and subscriptions are for US listeners, downloads, backing and memberships are for US buyers, and everyone who is paid is in the US. International societies (SACEM, GEMA, PRS…) and treaty withholding come later.
Almost every rule on these pages has a different answer elsewhere — most visibly terrestrial radio, which pays performers in most of the world and not here. Treat the whole section as US treatment until this line says otherwise.
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §7