system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do musicians know that a certain radio station is playing their music and consequently, collect royalties? Or how do even royalties work?
gpt
A musician or song writer would usually sign up with a royalty collection society, such as PRS in the UK. When they join the society they register their works, so long as they are the songwriters, performer on the recorded work or are a publisher of the work. The collection society will then collect the royalties on their behalf. A radio station will submit what they have played over a certain period of time to the collection society who will work out how many plays the song had. The radio station pays a license fee to the collection society for the use of copyright music on the station and the royalties for the artists will be taken from this license fee and distributed to the musician, performer, publisher or copyright holder depending on plays.