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Unclaimed streaming royalties: the April 2027 deadline, and what to do before February 10, 2027

From April 2027, unmatched and unclaimed US streaming royalties from 2021 are paid out to other rightsholders by market share, one usage month at a time. The deadline that matters is earlier: whether January 2021’s money can still reach you is fixed by a database snapshot taken on or around February 10, 2027, and a registration or claim has to be processed before it. Later months of 2021 follow, one a month.

Dates and amounts checked against the sources at the foot of this page on 2026-10-28.

What happens in April 2027?

US streaming mechanical royalties for songs are collected and paid by the US mechanical licensing collective, created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018 and designated by the US Copyright Office, which has licensed streaming services under a blanket licence since January 2021.⁴ When a stream cannot be matched to a registered song, or the song is matched but a share of it has nobody claiming it, the money is held. The law says it must be held and worked on for at least three years from when it arrived,⁵ and that what is still unclaimed after that is paid out to the copyright owners the collective does know, in proportion to their market share, with interest.⁵

No such payout has been made yet. On September 29, 2026, the collective announced the first one: April 2027, covering the remaining royalties from January 2021 usage, and then one usage month in each month after it.² By then January 2021’s money will have been held for just over six years, twice the legal minimum.¹

When is the deadline for one month of streaming?

The January 2021 figure is the collective’s own, as of its September 2026 distribution, and it expects it to keep falling as matching continues.¹ Only the February 10, 2027 snapshot is named by it; the later months follow its stated rule, one snapshot on or about the 10th for each usage month, as does the April 2021 first payout in the chart.¹ The other amounts are from a news report of October 6, 2026 citing the collective; the whole-year figure is described there as tentative.³ Royalties from 2007 to 2020, held separately, have no distribution date yet: of about $397 million handed over, over $317 million has been matched and nearly $239 million paid.¹

Who gets the unclaimed royalties?

Each month’s remaining pool is split, service by service and offering by offering, among every song or share of a song that earned royalties in that month, in proportion to what it earned. A song that earned nothing in that month gets nothing from it.¹ The payments appear on the normal monthly statements, broken down by service.¹ A publisher or administrator who receives one must pass a share to its songwriters in proportion to their works’ usage, and the law sets a floor: no songwriter gets less than half of what their works brought in, whatever the contract says.⁵

An unclaimed share can still be claimed at any time. What a late claim cannot recover is the money for the usage months that have already been paid out by market share: once January 2021 is distributed in April 2027, a claim made afterwards is paid for later months only.¹

What do I have to do before the February 10, 2027 snapshot?

The collective snapshots its database on or about the 10th of every month, and processes a usage month against one fixed snapshot. For the April 2027 distribution that is the snapshot of on or around February 10, 2027: it processes January 2027 usage and fixes what remains from January 2021. A registration, claim or match suggestion counts only once a snapshot has captured it, and the collective says registrations and claims typically take up to 21 days to process and match suggestions about 30, with no guarantee.¹ It recommends acting well before the February snapshot.¹

1. Find every registration behind the writer. Works filed under another spelling, a stage name or a second IPI name number are where unclaimed shares hide, because nobody searching the main name sees them. Look the writer up and Songlinks groups the registrations it can join to the same person, with the evidence.
2. Check the whole roster, not one name. Paste IPI name numbers into a writers check, or have a catalogue review run on the list.
3. Register what is missing and claim what is yours in the collective’s portal, or through whoever administers the works. Only a registered work with a claimed share can be matched.
4. Suggest matches for recordings the collective has not linked to the song. A registered song can still have releases that are not linked to it.
5. Do it in 2026. Twenty-one days of processing before a February 10 snapshot means a January filing is a gamble, and each later usage month has its own snapshot a month on.

What can this page not tell you?

• Whether any particular song has money waiting. That is visible only in the collective’s own portal and statements. Songlinks reads public registration data and shows what is registered under which name; it cannot register, claim or match anything for you.
• How much a market-share payment will be. The pools are known; the shares depend on each month’s usage and on how much is matched before the snapshot.
• When the 2007 to 2020 royalties will be distributed. The collective says it will announce that well ahead of time.¹

Songlinks is in beta, and no person has checked its groupings: treat an answer as a lead to confirm in the registrations themselves. How registrations get corrected: works registered under another spelling or IPI number.