Learn how money earned outside your own country reaches you, and why so much of it never does.

Outcome. Name every place your foreign earnings sit and the arrangement that brings each one home.

A song played in another country generates money in that country. It does not travel on its own. It is collected by a society there, and it reaches you only if something connects that society to you: a reciprocal agreement through your own society, a sub-publisher appointed for that territory, or a direct membership.

Sub-publishing is the usual answer. A publisher in the territory registers the works locally, collects, takes a share and remits the rest. Read what that share is, how often the accounting happens, and how long the deal runs after it ends, because a sub-publisher who keeps collecting for years after the term is the most common quiet leak.

Ask where money is stuck. Funds sometimes sit in a territory for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and nobody will mention it unless you ask. Ask which territories have registered your catalog, which have paid, and what the last statement from each looked like.

What you will produce

A territory sheet: every country your work earns in, who collects there, what they keep, when they account, and the date each arrangement ends.