Pay your artists and labels

If you’re a partner, or a direct label with artists or sub-labels who have their own sign-in, you pay them yourself. HILLS Music works out what you owe each one by the shares you’ve set, and sends the payouts through your own Airwallex or PayPal account. The money moves from your account, never from HILLS Music’s.

HILLS paying you is a separate flow: see Splits and payouts.

1. Set what each one gets

• Partners: Royalties → Revenue splits. Set a default share for all your artists and labels, then override it per artist or label, and per release.
• Direct labels: set Their share of what you earn on their music on each artist’s or sub-label’s sign-in. See Label teams and artist sign-ins.

Shares apply to your committed statements, so what you owe grows each month as statements are processed.

2. Connect Airwallex or PayPal

Open Settings → Payouts. Under Payout providers (your own Airwallex or PayPal account, used to pay your artists and labels):

• Airwallex pays bank accounts (SWIFT, USD). Enter your Client ID and API key, from the Airwallex web app under Settings → Developer → API keys.
• PayPal pays PayPal accounts by email. Enter your client ID and Secret. The Payouts API must be enabled on your PayPal business account.

Pick the Environment: live, or test (Airwallex demo, PayPal sandbox). Use Test connection to check the keys. For live, tick I understand that payouts move real money from my account.

Your keys are stored encrypted and never shown again; the page only shows that they’re set. Choose Disconnect any time.

3. Approve your artists’ payout details

Each artist or label adds where they want to be paid in their own Settings → Payouts: a bank account or a PayPal email.

1. Open Payouts → Pay artists → Payout details.
2. Check each one carefully: payouts go exactly there. The name should match the artist or label.
3. Approve it. For a bank account, Add to my Airwallex creates the beneficiary in your Airwallex. Or reject it with a note saying what’s wrong; they’ll see it.

4. Pay

1. Open Payouts → Pay artists → Balances. It shows what you owe each artist and label: their shares earned, minus what you’ve paid and what’s still processing.
2. Pay one, or tick several to pay them at once.
3. Enter the Amount (USD), optionally the month it’s for and a note, and confirm.

In live mode the payout leaves your own balance. Airwallex may hold transfers for your approval in its app if you use its approval workflow.

5. Follow the payouts

Payouts → Pay artists → History lists every payout you’ve sent, with its status: Not sent, Processing, Paid, Failed or Cancelled. Choose Sync statuses to read the latest from Airwallex and PayPal.

Your artists see every payout under Payouts received, and get a notification.

Show artists their balance

Under Settings → Payouts, Show artists and labels their balance with you lets them see what you owe them. Off, they still see their earnings and payouts, without a running balance.

Good practice

• Start in test mode to check the flow before you connect live keys.
• Pay on a regular schedule, for example monthly after statements are processed.
• Add the month to each payout so your artists can match it to their statement.