I'm Mara Koenig. I've been putting out records in one form or another for about fifteen years. I played in a band that toured the US and Europe on a van budget, ran a small independent label for six years in the late 2010s, and spent a stretch doing release operations for a mid-sized digital distributor. I write songs and produce records now, and I've been writing about the business since 2022 — first as newsletter essays, then as this site.
I started Bad Royalties because I got tired of two things. The first was seeing artists I respected sign deals or pick platforms based on advice that was either outdated, generically optimistic, or quietly sponsored. The second was how difficult it still is in 2026 to get a plain-English answer to a basic question like "how does a mechanical royalty actually move from a stream to my bank account?"
What this site is
Bad Royalties is mostly long-form explainers, reviews, and opinion pieces. The angle is honest, plainspoken, and skeptical of hype. I cover:
- Royalties (mechanical, performance, neighboring rights, sync)
- Distribution platforms and their business models
- Streaming economics and payout math
- Sync licensing, publishing, and rights administration
- Release strategy, playlist ecosystems, and marketing services
- What AI is doing to all of the above
What this site isn't
It's not a news blog. I don't cover album release dates, tour announcements, or viral moments. It's also not "influencer content" — no sponsored placements disguised as reviews, no promotional deals with any distributor, platform, or software company. If I review a product, I've either paid for it, used it at a label, or been given temporary access purely for evaluation (I disclose when that happens).
Contact and corrections
If something I've written is wrong — or I've oversimplified something in a way that misleads — I want to know. The music business is complicated enough that even people inside it get things wrong. Email the tipline, and I'll correct the record with attribution.
Thanks for reading.
— Mara