InstrumentaList <> Song Bounty: A Partnership Built to Get Independent Artists Paid
InstrumentaList <> Song Bounty: A Partnership Built to Get Independent Artists Paid
We're thrilled to announce an official partnership between InstrumentaList and Song Bounty - two platforms that, together, cover something most independent artists never get to see: the money their music already earned but never received.
At InstrumentaList, our mission has always been to help independent artists get heard and get placed. We connect you with real curators, real playlists, and the outreach tools that turn a finished track into an actual placement. But the work does not end when the streams come in. It ends when the money from those streams reaches the people who made the music. That second half is exactly where Song Bounty comes in.
What Song Bounty Does
Song Bounty is a music royalty finder built for artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels. Its job is deceptively simple: find the royalties you are owed and have not been paid, then tell you exactly what to do to collect them.
One free royalty audit searches for what is missing across the places royalties actually live:
- Mechanical royalties at The MLC - the publishing-side money generated when your recordings are streamed or downloaded.
- Performance royalties at ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC - the writer and publisher share owed when your songs are performed publicly, broadcast, or streamed.
- Neighbouring rights at SoundExchange - the royalties owed for the use of a recording on digital radio and non-interactive streaming, which many artists never register for at all.
- International collections and live performance - foreign societies and live royalties that are among the most commonly missed streams for independent acts.
The audit does not just hand you a number. It flags your registration gaps - the specific missing registrations, unmatched works, or split problems that are quietly blocking payment - and gives you a ranked checklist so you can work through them in order of what is worth the most, instead of guessing where to start.
And the economics are refreshingly simple: you keep 100% of what you claim.
Run a free royalty scan and see what you're owed before you pay anything! Start your free Song Bounty audit here.
Why This Fits What We're Building
We talk to independent artists every week who are doing the right things on the promotion side: releasing consistently, pitching curators, landing placements, watching their streams climb. Then we ask what those streams are actually paying them, and the answer is often "very little" - not because the streams are not generating royalties, but because the registrations behind those royalties are incomplete.
That gap is not a talent problem or a work-ethic problem. It is an information problem. Royalties are spread across four or five collection systems with different registrations, different identifiers, and different rules, and nobody explains any of it to an independent artist in plain language.
Filling that gap is squarely part of our mission: to make an impact and help independent artists and curators thrive. Getting an artist heard and getting an artist paid are the same project - a sustainable independent music career. A placement only compounds if the money behind it is actually collected and reinvested in the next release.
That is why we wanted to work with Song Bounty specifically. It is built for the artist who owns their own recordings and does not have a publisher or a label back office handling this for them.
Who It's For
- Independent artists and songwriters who have released music and never checked whether it was registered correctly.
- Bands with multiple members, split sheets, and releases recorded across several years and lineups.
- Labels and small catalogs carrying a roster of releases where a single missing registration can quietly block income across an entire discography.
If you have released music and never audited where it is actually registered, the honest answer is that you do not yet know what it is earning.
How to Get Started
- Run the free audit. It costs nothing and shows you what is missing before you commit to anything - start here.
- Read the ranked checklist. Work from the top. Fix registrations before chasing individual claims; the registration gaps are usually what unlocked everything else.
- Claim what is yours. You keep 100%.
Where to Learn More
We have added Song Bounty to the InstrumentaList Resource Library, where you will find the partnership details alongside our other artist tools and guides. If you want the background first, start with our longer explainers on where royalties go missing and how label and band catalogs get audited - both are linked from the Resource Library.
Our goal as a platform has never been just to help you pitch harder. It has been to make an independent music career genuinely survivable. Getting paid for the work you already did is the most basic version of that.
Run your free royalty scan and see what you're owed before you pay anything - then get back to making the next record.
InstrumentaList connects independent artists with verified human curators. Explore the full set of artist tools and partners in our Resource Library.
