Payout Setup
When your work is bought on FreeMix, FreeMix makes the sale and pays you your earnings. See How Earning Works. To put your music up for sale on FreeMix you need to complete one setup step before you can make your music available for sale: connecting a payout account through Stripe, our payments processor. It only takes a few minutes, and you only have do it once. After that you’re tracks, stems, and samples are available for sale on FreeMix. Note: you can set a price and royalty rate during upload but your music is not available for sale until you complete onboarding.
Why this step exists
Section titled “Why this step exists”When someone buys your music, FreeMix needs a secure way to pay you your earnings. To handle that legally and safely, we use Stripe Connect, the same payout infrastructure used by many platforms that pay creators.
Stripe handles the parts you want handled by professionals: verifying identity, moving money, staying compliant with financial regulations in your country. FreeMix never sees or stores your bank details — that all lives with Stripe. Payments are always safe and secure.
Until you’ve completed onboarding, FreeMix — and by extension Stripe — doesn’t know who to pay out. Until you finish setup, your work shows as Not yet available.
What onboarding involves
Section titled “What onboarding involves”When you’re ready to start earning, you’ll head to the Payouts link in your account and then click ‘Set up payouts’ to start the Stripe setup. You’ll be handed off to Stripe’s own secure onboarding flow, where you’ll:
- Confirm your identity (this is standard “know your customer” verification — required for anyone receiving payouts)
- Add the bank account or debit card where you want your earnings to land
- Provide the basic tax and business details Stripe needs in your region. You don’t need to have a company or a website — individuals can earn too; when Stripe asks you to describe your business, “Digital music licenses” is totally fine.
Once you’ve completed the Stripe onboarding flow, Stripe sends you back to FreeMix and your account flips to verified. That’s it — you’re set up to earn!
Can I assign a price to my music before I’ve onboarded?
Section titled “Can I assign a price to my music before I’ve onboarded?”Yes. You can set a price on a track before you’ve onboarded — but no one can actually buy it until you’re verified. Music for sale by creators who haven’t completed onboarding will be listed as “not yet available” on FreeMix.
Why block it rather than just hold the money? Because a charge with nowhere to land is worse than no charge at all — we never want a purchase to go through when we can’t pay you for it. Thus, we don’t put your work on sale until we know we can pay you.
The takeaway: if you plan to put work up for sale, set up payouts first. You’ll see a dismissable nag message on your account page until you’ve set up payouts. It’s easy and only takes a few minutes and then you’re ready to earn.
Getting paid, and the self-healing status
Section titled “Getting paid, and the self-healing status”Once you’re verified, your earnings pay out to your connected account automatically — no thresholds to hit, no manual withdrawals.
And if you ever finish onboarding but FreeMix seems to still think you’re mid-setup, don’t worry about it. The status check reconciles itself with Stripe every time it runs — so the moment Stripe confirms you’re verified, FreeMix catches up on its own. No stuck states, no support ticket required.
One nice thing about the cascade
Section titled “One nice thing about the cascade”Here’s a detail worth knowing: you don’t have to be onboarded for the royalties to start adding up.
Say your track gets remixed and that remix sells, but you haven’t set up payouts yet. The purchase still goes through (the creator of the purchased track has set up payouts — that’s what made it possible), and your share of it is calculated and held, waiting for you. The moment you finish onboarding, everything that accrued while you were away pays out automatically.
So royalties never slip through the cracks because you were slow to set up. They wait for you. But — you do have to onboard eventually to actually receive them, so if money’s been piling up, that’s your nudge.
Still, to ensure you get paid we recommend you set up payouts as soon as possible.
Questions
Section titled “Questions”Payout setup runs entirely through Stripe, so if you hit a snag during their verification flow, Stripe’s support can help directly. For anything on the FreeMix side, reach out any time to help@freemix.fm