DSPs do not monetize 100% of the streams/videos that use your music. This can happen for a number of different reasons:
- Streaming during a trial period. Some DSPs like Deezer don’t pay royalties when the track is streamed by a user who is still in their free trial period.
- Tracks streamed without any ads. Some subscription DSPs also offer a free tier which they monetize through advertising. But if no advertising was shown on a particular stream/video, then no royalties will be generated (for ex: not every YouTube video view has an associated ad).
- Royalties are only paid for content creation and not for views. Some DSPs like TikTok do not pay based on the basis of the number of views of videos with your music; they instead pay based on the number of videos created with your music.
