You made it. You keep it.
U-Rock® is built by people from the underground, not the boardroom. When you upload a track to a U-Rock® station, here is exactly what happens to your rights — in plain language, because the old music business made a fortune on artists not reading the paper.
Two copyrights live inside every track
The composition — the song itself: melody, lyrics, arrangement. Owned by the writers/publishers.
The master — the actual recording of it. Owned by whoever paid for/made the recording (you, if
you're unsigned).
You keep both. U-Rock® never takes either. If anyone — us included — ever asks you to sign over a copyright to "get played," walk.
The licensing paperwork is our job, not yours
Radio play generates royalty obligations. The network carries those: performing-rights licenses for broadcast (ASCAP held today; BMI in application; country societies abroad are opened as real listening appears — Australia's APRA AMCOS/PPCA are in motion now). On recordings the network is direct-rights-only: your track airs because you said yes, not under a statutory license — which is exactly why your direct permission form matters, the statutory webcast license for sound recordings, and the reporting that goes with them. Every station's plays are logged automatically — title, artist, ISRC — and exported per-play by the network's reporting engine, so what aired is what gets reported and countable. You never pay U-Rock® anything to be played. Anyone who charges artists for airplay is running the old hustle (and in the US, undisclosed pay-for-play is illegal).
Do these once and royalties can actually find you
1. Join a PRO (US: BMI or ASCAP — pick one) as a writer, and register your songs. This is how
composition royalties reach you when anyone, anywhere, plays your song.
2. Register at SoundExchange (free) as artist and rights owner — that's where digital-radio recording
royalties accumulate. Unclaimed money sits there with your name on it.
3. Get ISRC codes on your recordings (free through many distributors) so your plays match to you.
4. Outside the US: your national society (APRA AMCOS, PRS, SOCAN, JASRAC, GEMA...) does the writer side.
Three honest things
1. Only upload what's yours. All writers/co-owners on board, no uncleared samples.
2. Give us real metadata — real title, all writers, ISRC if you have one. That's how you get paid. The upload form now asks for
writers, master owner and ISRC right on the page — fill them once and they ride with the track into every
station log and royalty report automatically.
3. Tell us if anything changes — you sign a deal, a co-writer objects, you want a track pulled.
Takedown requests are honored. It's your music.
From upload to royalty report — the pipeline you're on
1. Upload — your writers, master owner and ISRC are captured with the track and shown back to you
on your submissions page ("direct license on file").
2. Approval — the track lands on a real station transmitter and enters the shared library carrying
your rights data with it.
3. Every play is logged — per-play, per-station, automatically.
4. Reports go out — the network files usage reports with the societies it holds licenses with, in
the countries where people are actually listening. We license markets when listeners exist there, not as
decoration — that's why registering yourself (module 03) matters: the money routes through those societies
to you.
Real people answer
Rights questions: licensing@urock.network · anything else: your local station's desk. This page is guidance from working broadcasters, not legal advice — for a signed deal in front of you, a one-hour session with a music attorney is worth it.