Interactive streaming (Spotify, Apple Music) pays recording, mechanical, and performance royalties — not neighboring rights, which come from non-interactive radio via SoundExchange. Karaoke also generates a print (lyric) royalty not shown above. ROXi-style on-demand music-video and karaoke TV is audiovisual, so it leans on sync and master-use licensing rather than the statutory mechanical.

Every recording is two copyrights — the composition and the master. What you have to clear depends entirely on which one you touch. The clean rule: a sample uses the original recording (clear both), an interpolation re-records it yourself (composition only).

A straight cover is a reproduction under the §115 mechanical license — not a derivative work. Samples and remixes are. The only thing that excuses clearing entirely is genuine parody or fair use, and that's a narrow, case-by-case defense.

Every royalty has a collector — the body that gathers it and pays it out. This is the whole map: which side of the song each royalty comes from, who collects it, and who ends up paid.