Question 1

What does Maude check on a royalty statement?

Accepted Answer

On distributor statements: per-stream rate sanity, deduction line items, missing periods, territories, and platforms, mechanical vs master conflation, reserve balances, and prior-period adjustments. On PRO statements (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC): performance income by quarter, international collection gaps, and whether your works are registered everywhere they need to be. On MLC statements: US mechanical royalty rates against current statutory rates and any unmatched work flags. Every finding is ordered by dollar impact, biggest first.

Question 2

Does Maude check publishing royalties, not just streaming?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is where most money goes uncollected. Your distributor statement covers the master (recording) side. Your PRO statement (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) covers performance royalties. Your MLC account covers US mechanical royalties on streams. Maude reads all three sides, cross-references them, and flags wherever one side is collecting and the other is not.

Question 3

Can Maude read a screenshot of my statement?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Drop it into the assessment above. PNG, JPEG, WEBP, or PDF, she reads numbers directly. Better data in means a more specific letter back.

Question 4

What is a phantom deduction?

Accepted Answer

A fee that appears on your statement but was not in your distribution or label agreement. Common culprits: distribution fees applied after the fact, marketing recoupment from campaigns you did not approve, mechanical fees double-counted against publishing income. Maude flags these by name.

Question 5

How is Maude different from my distributor's analytics dashboard?

Accepted Answer

Your distributor's dashboard shows their version of your numbers. Maude is independent. She compares what they paid against industry benchmarks and against what your contract says, and she tells you when the two do not match.

Question 6

Should I send Maude's letter to my distributor?

Accepted Answer

Use it as homework, not as the dispute itself. Maude's letter tells you which lines to ask about, what the numbers should look like, and what evidence to request. The actual conversation with the distributor stays human.

Read the statement
your distributor wrote.

Is anything wrong with this royalty statement?

Things people ask before they trust her on this.

Maude handles five more jobs.

Read the statementyour distributor wrote.

Is anything wrong with this royalty statement?

Things people ask before they trust her on this.

What does Maude check on a royalty statement?+

Does Maude check publishing royalties, not just streaming?+

Can Maude read a screenshot of my statement?+

What is a phantom deduction?+

How is Maude different from my distributor's analytics dashboard?+

Should I send Maude's letter to my distributor?+

Maude handles five more jobs.

Read the statement
your distributor wrote.