Royalty & Payout Terms

1. What these terms cover

These Royalty & Payout Terms explain how Outloud calculates the royalties you earn, how your balance works, and how you withdraw money. They are part of your agreement with us under the Terms of Service.

2. How royalties are earned

When your music is streamed or sold on a Store, that Store pays revenue for those streams and sales. Outloud receives the streaming and sales revenue generated by your music and shares it with you according to your plan.

Your share by plan:

"You keep 100%" on the Pro plan means Outloud takes no percentage cut of your streaming and sales revenue. Your plan also determines other features and limits described in our pricing section and in the Terms of Service. Your royalty share is about royalties — it is separate from the cost of actually sending you the money, which is described in Section 4.

A few important clarifications about how this works in practice:

• Earnings are recorded after we receive revenue from the Stores. Stores report and pay on their own schedules, which are typically delayed by some weeks or months after the activity happens. Your earnings appear in your dashboard after we receive and process the corresponding revenue — not in real time.
• Earnings are recorded per track, for a given month. Your balance is the sum of those recorded earnings, less amounts already withdrawn or pending withdrawal.
• Only released, identifiable tracks earn. A track earns through the payout system once it has been approved/distributed and has its standard recording identifier (ISRC) assigned.

3. Your balance

Your dashboard shows three figures:

• Lifetime earnings — the total royalties recorded to your account.
• Reserved — amounts tied up in withdrawal requests you have made that have not been paid out yet, whether they are still awaiting review or already approved.
• Available balance — what you can currently withdraw: your lifetime earnings, minus everything reserved, minus everything already paid out to you.

Your available balance is calculated from these figures; it is not a separately held cash account.

4. Withdrawals

Minimum. You can request a withdrawal once your available balance reaches at least $10.00.

How to request. Request a withdrawal from your dashboard and provide a payout destination — currently a PayPal address. Additional methods may be added over time.

Processing fee. Sending a payout costs money, and that cost is deducted from the withdrawal. Where a fee applies to the method you choose, we show you the exact amount before you confirm — the withdrawal amount, the fee, and what you will actually receive — and the fee is fixed at that moment, so the figure you confirm is the figure that applies. The fee is deducted from the amount you withdraw, not charged separately, and it never makes a payout negative. Your plan's royalty percentage is unaffected: it applies to the royalties you earn, not to the cost of paying you. The $10 minimum applies to the amount you withdraw, before the fee.

Review and payment. Withdrawal requests are reviewed and paid manually by Outloud. A request moves from requested to approved to paid, or may be rejected. A payout that has been sent can also come back to us — see returned below. We do not currently process payments automatically, so there is a processing time between your request and payment.

If a request is rejected. If we reject a withdrawal request, the reserved amount returns to your available balance. We will tell you the reason.

If a payout is returned. Sometimes money we send does not reach you — most often because the PayPal address was slightly wrong, or because the payment went unclaimed and the provider sent it back. When that happens we mark the withdrawal returned and the full amount goes straight back into your available balance. Nothing is lost and nothing is kept. We will email you to say so, and you can request the withdrawal again once you have checked the destination.

Payment method accuracy. If a payout comes back to us, we return it to your balance in full — see above. But money that reaches the wrong person is a different matter: you are responsible for the accuracy of the payout destination you provide, and we are not responsible for funds sent to an incorrect PayPal address that you entered.

5. Money we hold for you

Your balance stays yours. Royalties recorded to your account are owed to you until they are paid to you. We do not take back, expire, or absorb an unwithdrawn balance, and it does not shrink over time. It is not reduced by inactivity, by your plan ending, or by moving to the Free plan.

The $10 minimum, in plain terms. You can only request a withdrawal once your available balance reaches $10.00 (Section 4). Below that, the money is still yours and still recorded — it simply waits in your balance until it reaches the minimum. There is no time limit on how long it can wait.

How we hold it. Your balance is a record of what we owe you, not a bank account or a separately held fund, and it does not earn interest. We are not a bank and we do not hold your money in trust or in a segregated account.

If you close your account. If you close your account with a balance, email us and we will pay it out — including below the $10 minimum — once tax documentation is on file. Your record of earnings and withdrawals survives account deletion (Section 8 and the Privacy Policy), so the amount owed to you remains provable.

Unclaimed money. Where the law requires balances that have gone unclaimed for a long period to be reported or handed to a state authority, we will follow that law. If that ever applies to your balance we will try to reach you at the email address on your account first.

6. Adjustments and corrections

Store-reported revenue is sometimes corrected, reversed, or restated after the fact (for example, for refunds, chargebacks, or fraudulent streams the Store later removes). We may correct recorded earnings to reflect what we actually receive. We do not reduce earnings below amounts you have already withdrawn.

7. Taxes

You are responsible for any taxes you owe on the royalties you earn.

Tax information before we pay. Because royalties are reportable income, we need tax information on file before your first payout: the account holder's legal name, address, and taxpayer identification number, certified as correct. You provide it once, in your dashboard. Your taxpayer ID is encrypted and we only ever display its last four digits. Where an artist is under 18, this is the parent or legal guardian who holds the account (Terms, Section 8).

We do not withhold taxes from your payouts, except where the law requires us to.

8. Account closure and deleted releases

Your record of earnings and withdrawals is retained even if a release or your account is removed, so that we keep accurate financial records and you keep proof of what you were paid. See the Privacy Policy for more on retention.

9. Changes

We may update these Royalty & Payout Terms from time to time. If we make material changes — for example, to plan percentages, the withdrawal minimum, or available payout methods — we will take reasonable steps to notify you before they take effect. Changes do not reduce royalties you have already earned.

10. Contact

Questions about royalties or payouts: contact@outlouddistro.com
Outloud Distribution LLC
522 W Riverside Ave Ste N
Spokane, WA 99201
(360) 625-9600