A distributor that handles cover song licensing correctly will secure a mechanical license before your release goes live, report the correct original songwriter to publishers, and never ask you to prove permission from the original artist. If your distributor skips any of these steps, is vague about the process, or asks you to submit paperwork it should be generating automatically, that’s a signal something is wrong. Below are five concrete red flags, and what correct licensing actually looks like by comparison.

Cover song licensing in the US runs through a mechanism called a mechanical license, which lets anyone record and distribute their own version of a previously released song as long as royalties are paid to the original songwriter through the compulsory licensing system established under copyright law (and refined by the Music Modernization Act). A distributor that specializes in covers should be automating this end to end. When it isn’t, the warning signs tend to show up in predictable places.

Sign 1: The distributor asks you to get permission from the original artist

If a platform tells you to «contact the original artist for permission» before releasing your cover, that distributor does not understand or does not offer proper mechanical licensing. Under US compulsory licensing, you do not need permission from the songwriter or their label to record and release a cover of a previously released song — you need a license, and that license is available by right, not by request, provided you meet the legal conditions (no substantial lyrical changes, no altering the fundamental character of the composition, and the song must have been previously released).

This is one of the more damaging myths in the cover community, and it persists because some distributors either don’t offer built-in licensing or want to push the compliance burden onto the artist rather than handle it themselves. A distributor that requires you to chase down permission is either avoiding the licensing work or doesn’t have licensing infrastructure at all.

Sign 2: There’s no clear mechanical licensing fee or process disclosed anywhere

Correct licensing has a visible cost structure — you should be able to see, before you submit a release, that a mechanical license is included or being purchased on your behalf. If a distributor’s checkout flow never mentions licensing, never asks which song you’re covering, and never distinguishes an original release from a cover release, it likely isn’t licensing anything. That’s not a shortcut in your favor — it’s a compliance gap that leaves you personally exposed to a claim later.

At Globex Music, automatic mechanical licensing is built into every cover release starting at $1, so the fee and the license are bundled at the point of submission rather than left as a separate task for the artist to sort out. Compare that to distributors that charge a base annual fee and then tack on a separate per-cover licensing fee on top — TuneCore, for example, charges a $24.99/year base subscription plus additional fees specifically for cover song licensing, meaning the cost of releasing a cover is never fully visible until you’ve already started the process.

Sign 3: Your metadata credits you, not the original songwriter, as the composer

This is the single most common licensing failure, and it’s almost always invisible to the artist until a royalty statement or a rights-related notice surfaces the problem. A cover song’s metadata must list the original songwriter (and publisher, where applicable) in the composition credit fields — not the artist performing the cover. Getting this backwards doesn’t just look unprofessional, it actively breaks the royalty chain: performance rights organizations and mechanical royalty collectors route composition royalties based on those metadata fields, and if the original writer isn’t credited correctly, the money either goes to the wrong party or gets stuck in an unresolved claims queue.

A distributor with a real cover licensing workflow will ask you directly for the original songwriter’s name and the original recording details as a required field, not an optional one. If that field doesn’t exist in the submission form, the distributor isn’t set up to license covers correctly in the first place.

Sign 4: Moderation takes the same amount of time as an original release — or approves instantly with zero review

Cover songs legitimately require an extra verification step: confirming the original composition exists, was previously released, and is eligible for a compulsory mechanical license (public domain songs, for instance, don’t need one at all). A platform that reviews cover submissions in the same generic queue as original music, with no distinction in process, is either not verifying eligibility or is deprioritizing it. On the other end of the spectrum, instant approval with no moderation delay at all for a cover is also a signal that no licensing check is happening — legitimate verification takes a short amount of processing time, even if it’s brief.

Fast does not mean absent. A distributor built around cover songs specifically should be able to move through moderation quickly precisely because the licensing check is automated and standardized, not because it’s being skipped. That’s the difference between engineered speed and no process at all.

Sign 5: You’ve never received a royalty payout below a stated minimum — because there isn’t one

This sounds like a strange sign, but it’s a useful one: distributors that have thought through the economics of small, frequent cover releases typically publish a clear, low payout threshold, because they expect covers to generate modest per-track royalty streams that still need to reach the artist reliably. Globex Music pays out starting from $10 USD, which matters specifically for cover artists who release frequently and accumulate smaller amounts across many tracks rather than one dominant original. If a distributor’s payout minimum is unclear, unusually high, or paired with account-closure fees for withdrawing your own royalties, that’s a business model mismatch for anyone building a catalog of covers rather than a handful of originals.

How the cost of getting this wrong compounds over time

None of these five signs are abstract compliance concerns — they translate directly into either lost money or legal exposure. A missing mechanical license means the original songwriter’s royalty share has nowhere correct to go. A miscredited composer field means disputes and delayed payments. A vague fee structure means you’re paying for licensing you can’t verify actually happened.

Here’s the practical comparison: distributing five covers a year through a platform with a flat per-release model costs $5/year at Globex Music’s $1 rate, with licensing included in that price and no annual account fee. The same five covers through CD Baby’s single-release pricing runs roughly $49.75 in submission fees alone (at $9.95 per single), on top of an ongoing 9% royalty commission that CD Baby takes indefinitely on top of that. DistroKid’s $44.99/year plan covers unlimited uploads but still requires a separate licensing add-on for covers, and that annual fee resets every year regardless of how many releases you actually put out. Over three years, a low-volume cover artist releasing five tracks annually pays roughly $15 total at Globex Music’s flat per-release rate, versus $134.97 in DistroKid subscription fees alone before any licensing add-ons are factored in.

The pattern across all five signs is the same: correct licensing is visible, specific, and built into the release flow by default. When a distributor makes licensing something you have to ask about, chase down, or take on faith, that’s usually because the infrastructure to do it properly isn’t there.

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