You must license a cover song through eMastered because U.S. law requires royalties to be paid to the original songwriter.
eMastered simplifies this process and obtains the license for you with some basic information.
When uploading a track, you'll choose whether it's original or a cover. If it's a cover, selecting “Another artist wrote it (it's a cover song)” on the upload form:
From here you'll need to put the original artist name correctly spelled, along with the original track title:
You'll also need to add the Spotify or apple music link to the original song, which can be found just by googling the name of the song with Spotify in the search query, and copying that URL it sends you to:
In the above example, clicking the link takes me to the URL I need to link to in the release form, which in this case is
https://open.spotify.com/track/1tqT6DhmsrtQgyCKUwotiw
Filling in this information tells eMastered to obtain a cover song license for your cover version. This means it will automatically deduct the statutory 12.7¢ per sale in the U.S. and send it to HFA for royalty distribution to the songwriter. You keep the rest.
Note: This license only applies to releases through eMastered and not for any external use.
Also, cover songs won’t be sold in India, Pakistan, Mexico, or Canada, but can be streamed in those countries.
If you upload the same cover song in multiple releases, you must buy a license each time to ensure proper royalty distribution for each upload.
Finally, there are a few other rules about cover songs:
- You must reproduce the song faithfully—no lyrical or melodic changes are allowed.
- Cover versions with sampled audio, mashups, or remixes of existing recordings are not permitted.