Mechanical Royalties

I am a member of TuneCore.
It is a platform for independent music artists to put their material on iTunes and similar modern type of music distribution channel.

Recently they emailed me this link. Mechanical Royalties it contains some interesting information about how the payment of royalties in the music industry. Artist Roylties are associated with performing the music and mechanical royalties are associated with writing the music.

From what I can garner, mechanical royalties are the go..!
So keep writing your own stuff!