Skipping the Separate Mechanical License Fee: Is It Possible?

If you’ve spent any time researching how to release a cover song, you’ve probably run into the term ‘mechanical license’ and immediately wondered whether there’s a way around paying for it separately. The short answer: you can’t legally skip the license itself, but you absolutely can skip the separate fee that so many services charge on top of your distribution cost. There’s an important difference between those two things, and understanding it will save you money and headaches.

What the Mechanical License Actually Covers

A mechanical license is the legal permission you need any time you reproduce and distribute someone else’s copyrighted composition — meaning the underlying song, not a specific recording of it. When you record your own version of a track someone else wrote, you’re creating a new sound recording of their composition. Streaming that recording on Spotify, Apple Music, or any of the 200+ platforms out there counts as reproduction and distribution, which triggers the licensing requirement under US copyright law.

This isn’t optional paperwork you can quietly avoid. Distributing an unlicensed cover, even one upload to one platform, is technically copyright infringement. Platforms and distributors take this seriously, and unlicensed covers get pulled, sometimes with account-level consequences attached.

Where the ‘Separate Fee’ Problem Comes From

Here’s where things get frustrating for independent artists. Many distributors treat mechanical licensing as an optional add-on rather than something baked into the release price. You pay your base distribution fee, and then you’re routed to a separate licensing partner where you pay again — sometimes per platform, sometimes per track, sometimes both.

This is exactly the model TuneCore uses. Their base plan runs around $24.99/year, but cover songs require an additional per-track licensing fee on top of that, and if you’re releasing to certain social platforms, they also take a 20% commission from those specific royalties. The costs stack in ways that aren’t always obvious until you’re checking out.

DistroKid works differently but still isn’t free of extra friction — at $44.99/year for their standard plan, mechanical licensing for covers often has to be arranged through a third party like Easy Song Licensing or Loudr, adding both cost and a waiting period before you can even upload.

CD Baby charges $9.95 per single upfront and then takes a 9% royalty commission forever, on every stream, indefinitely. That ongoing cut applies whether or not you’ve dealt with the licensing separately.

So Can You Actually Skip the Fee?

Yes — by choosing a distributor that bundles mechanical licensing into the release price instead of charging for it as an add-on. That’s the model Globex Music runs on. When you upload a cover song at $1 per release, the mechanical license is already handled as part of that fee. There’s no separate licensing checkout, no waiting on a third-party licensing partner, and no surprise charge after you’ve already committed to the release.

This matters more than it might seem at first glance, especially if you release covers regularly. A cover artist putting out one new track a month is paying that $1 fee twelve times a year — a total of $12 — with licensing already included every single time.

Running the Numbers Over Time

Let’s compare what a cover artist releasing 12 singles a year actually pays across three years, factoring in the extra licensing costs competitors tack on:

Globex Music: $1 per release × 12 releases × 3 years = $36 total, licensing included throughout, no annual fee.

DistroKid: $44.99/year × 3 years = $134.97, plus separate licensing fees per cover song through a third party, which can easily add $12-$20+ per track depending on the service used.

TuneCore: $24.99/year × 3 years = $74.97 in base fees, plus per-cover licensing fees on every track, plus a 20% commission on qualifying social platform royalties for as long as those tracks are live.

CD Baby: $9.95 × 12 releases × 3 years = $358.20 in upfront fees alone, before factoring in the 9% royalty commission that applies permanently to every stream those tracks generate.

The gap isn’t subtle. Bundled licensing at a flat $1 per release consistently comes out far ahead of models that separate the two costs, especially once you’re releasing more than one or two covers a year.

What to Check Before You Assume It’s Included

If you’re evaluating a distributor and want to know whether mechanical licensing is genuinely bundled or just being upsold later, look for these signals:

Does the upload flow ask you to identify the original songwriter and original artist as a required step, with no separate checkout after?
Is there a second invoice or redirect to a licensing partner site once you submit the cover?
Does the pricing page mention licensing explicitly as included, or is it silent on the topic entirely?
What’s the moderation and review timeframe — bundled licensing should mean a straightforward review process, not a multi-week wait while licensing gets sorted out separately.

With licensing built into the release price, moderation tends to move faster too, since there’s no back-and-forth with an external licensing body slowing down approval. Combined with royalty payouts starting from $10 USD, it’s a workflow built for artists who want to release consistently without tracking multiple invoices for a single song.

The Bottom Line

You can’t skip the mechanical license itself — that’s a legal requirement, not a fee some distributors invented. But you can absolutely skip paying for it as a separate line item. The distributors that charge extra for licensing aren’t doing something more legitimate than the ones that bundle it in; they’re just structuring their pricing in a way that adds friction and cost at checkout. For cover artists releasing regularly, a flat per-release price with licensing already included is the version of this process that actually makes financial sense over time.