Several legitimate, non-error reasons commonly explain a royalty amount that looks lower than an artist expected — most aren't a Madverse mistake.
5.11.1 Common reasons, in order of likelihood
- **Reporting lag** — the streams you're thinking of haven't been paid by the DSP yet; see 5.1 and 5.2 for the about 4 month reporting lag
- **DSP rate variance** — different DSPs and different subscription tiers (free vs paid listeners) pay genuinely different per-stream rates, since payment is calculated from net revenue divided by streamshare (1.4.4), not a fixed rate
- **FX conversion** — currency movements between when a stream occurred and when the payment was converted to INR can shift the final amount
- **Subscription status** — if your subscription lapsed during the earning period, your royalty share may have been reduced (Professional: 50%, see 1.4) for that period
- **Pre-save conversion delays** — pre-saved streams sometimes process slightly behind organic streams in a DSP's own reporting
5.11.2 What's worth escalating to support
If, after accounting for the above, a specific payment still appears to not match your expected calculation for a specific, identifiable reporting period — that's worth a support ticket with the specific track and date range. General "feels low" concerns without a specific period to investigate are harder to action.
Source: MadDesk article 5.11 (5-11)