Unclaimed music royalties and the Glastonbury 2025 effect

Major live performances like Olivia Rodrigo’s headline set at Glastonbury 2025 highlight a critical gap in the music industry: the way unclaimed music royalties accumulate when live sets are not properly registered. When a song is performed at a festival of this scale, it generates performance royalties that are separate from the recording income paid by a distributor. If you are an independent songwriter or producer, these live performance royalties can remain sitting in collection society accounts if your metadata and setlists are not managed correctly.

Monetunes helps you identify where these gaps exist in your catalog. We focus on the publishing administration layer that sits beside your distributor to ensure that when your music is played live, broadcast, or streamed, the composition-side revenue actually reaches you.

How does a live performance generate royalties?

Every time a song is performed in a public venue or at a festival like Glastonbury, it generates a public performance royalty. These royalties are owed to the songwriters and publishers of the compositions performed. In the United Kingdom, these are typically collected by PRS for Music. However, if the performing artist is not the only songwriter, or if the setlist is not officially filed with the correct identifiers, those royalties may become part of a black box of unclaimed funds.

It is a common misconception that your distributor handles this income. A distributor's job is to get your recording onto platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Publishing administration is a different job that involves registering the underlying lyrics and melody with societies worldwide. You can learn more about this distinction in our guide on music distribution vs publishing.

Why do publishing royalties often go uncollected?

Publishing royalties go uncollected because the infrastructure of the music industry is fragmented. A song might be written by four different people, each with a different publisher or no publisher at all. If the metadata—such as the IPI numbers for the writers or the ISWC for the song—is missing or incorrect, collection societies cannot match the money to the rightful owner.

For an event like Glastonbury 2025, the broadcast of the performance on television and digital platforms generates additional layers of income. This includes mechanical royalties and international performance royalties. If you do not have a publishing administrator, you are responsible for registering these works in every territory where the music is consumed. Most independent creators do not have the time to manage dozens of international society registrations manually.

How can independent creators protect their performance income?

You keep ownership of your music when you work with a service like Monetunes, but you gain the benefit of global registration infrastructure. To protect your income, you should ensure that every collaborator has agreed on split percentages and that these splits are documented.

Monetunes works on a commission-only basis to help you recover these funds. We take 15% of collected royalties and 25% on sync fees, with no sign-up fee for the standard service. This allows you to audit your catalog for missing income without an upfront financial commitment. The goal is to move your catalog from a state of being merely distributed to being fully administered.

If you have music that is being performed live or streamed internationally, you can start the process of securing your publishing rights today.

Book a catalog review with our team