The amount you are owed is dependent on a variety of factors including the type of royalty earned, the country that the use occurred in and which society is retrieving the money.
For example, if your song gets streamed on Spotify in Canada, you will earn both performance and mechanical royalties. To collect these, in a perfect world, you would have to register with SOCAN (the Canadian PRO) and become a publisher affiliate at CMRRA (the Canadian MRO), and be done. However, doing both of these steps does not mean that you are collecting the royalties you are earning, maybe in Germany, unless you register with GEMA (the CMO in Germany) as well.
While your home society is meant to register and collect your royalties from other societies in other countries, not all of these organizations are built to scale. This means that you could be totally covered for the use of your song in your home country or territory, but aren’t guaranteed that you’re collecting outside of that area. See how this can easily get confusing?
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Because of these complexities, sometimes this money goes into limbo, essentially royalty purgatory, because they cannot be matched to a songwriter or publisher for payout. After a period of time – usually 2-3 years or more, depending on the society, these royalties can no longer sit and wait to be collected by the rights-holders.
