Table of Contents
What Music Publishers Do
Nowadays, the average person who releases music writes and performs their own material. But about 100 years ago, that person was normally a performer of music other people wrote, and the industry was made up of far fewer performers and far more songwriters, all writing song after song, hoping a famous performer would decide to record their song. Songwriters got into deals with publishing companies who would pitch songs to performers, much like screenwriters pitch scripts to actors.
Today it’s more common for a group of songwriters to be hired to write songs for specific performers – the average pop song today has seven songwriters. On the other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of indie songs are written by the person who performs them. Regardless, anyone who writes or helps write a song that makes money is entitled to some of that money, no matter who performs it, and publishing companies exist to try to retrieve what’s been made, and generate more.
What Performance Rights Organizations Do
As music started making more money and the entertainment industry grew, Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) started emerging to make some real money from publishing. PROs are basically publishing companies on steroids. They help songwriters and publishing companies get their piece of money that was being made on much higher levels of the entertainment business than the average publishing company had access to, like radio and TV. Nowadays, every songwriter and publishing company has an account with a PRO, and publishing companies can create accounts with many PROs to maximize their ability to find money they’re owed in different territories. PROs automatically collect money for millions of writers and publishing companies, and these songwriters and publishing companies sign up with a PRO so they can get that money. Good publishing companies that control music people actually care about still make tons of money, but they basically can’t do it without the PROs’ cooperation.
What Publishing Administrators Do
The publishing industry was already a mess before the streaming era. Agreements were vague, lots of money was unaccounted for and PROs and recording societies were popping up in emerging markets which all needed to be negotiated with individually in order to get paid. The streaming era has introduced a zillion new artists and 50k new songs a day into this mix. Neither the PROs or the publishing companies can begin to hope to keep up with all this. At the same time, artists are less and less interested in giving away so many of their music rights to publishing companies. So publishing administrators are now popping up left and right to try to deal with all this new activity at a more reasonable rate.
Publishing administrators generally take a much smaller percentage of the revenue they recover than publishing companies, and they have no actual rights to the music beyond that, meaning they have no say in how you use the music. Publishing administrators are basically here to accommodate the millions and millions of amateur artists who are probably never gonna make much money off their publishing anyway, which means publishing companies nowadays only deal with artists and catalogs that people actually listen to, because those are the catalogs that require real work to be done in order to find the bag.
How Publishing Money Is Made
Legally speaking, a musical work is broken down into two parts, which each can make you money in a few different ways. But only one of these two parts can make you publishing money.
Composition (The Song)
Composition refers to the unique mix of melodies and (normally) lyrics that you have given a song name to. For example, when Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder wrote “Strangers In The Night”, Frank Sinatra hadn’t recorded his version of it yet – it was just a composition. The composition is the part of a musical work that generates publishing money.
Master Recording (The Recording)
Master (or master recording) refers to one version of a composition. To continue with the same example, “Strangers In The Night” is a composition that many artists have covered, but Frank Sinatra’s version is the master recording of this composition that people know best. Let’s assume you write all your own songs. Even in that scenario, you may have an original and remix version of a given song. That means you have two master recordings of one of your compositions. Master recordings in and of themselves do not generate publishing money, but being that they are reproductions of a composition, they indirectly generate publishing money.
Where Publishing Money Is Made
The composition and master recording each generate publishing money in their own ways.
On DSPs (Mechanical Royalties)
Obviously, streams of your master recording make you money. The DSPs pay your distributor and money shows up in your account. However, since your master recording is based on the underlying composition, a stream of the master recording also generates a mechanical royalty. Your distributor does not pay you mechanical royalties. You will not receive this money unless your publishing is properly registered.
Mechanical royalties are also how you get paid if someone covers your song. If a cover of your song gets a million streams, the cover’s distributor will give the streaming revenue to the record label or artist responsible for the cover. But if your publishing is properly registered, your publishing company will give you mechanical royalties generated from that cover, because the master recording of that cover was based on your underlying composition.
In Public (Public Performance Royalties)
This is money you make when your composition is performed in public, or when a master recording is played in public, whether at a live event or on the radio, at a bar, etc. it could be your master recording of the composition or someone else’s cover – either way, you should be getting paid for it.
In Ads & Movies (Synchronization Licensing)
Sync money is money you make when your composition or master recording goes in an ad, or in a movie. This is never done without getting permission from all owners of publishing.
How To Get Your Publishing Money
Getting your publishing money boils down to this:
- deciding which songs in your catalog are eligible for publishing
- making sure you have a writer account with a PRO
- deciding which publishing company or administrator you want to work with
- deciding how much of the publishing rights you will share with your musical collaborators
- getting your PRO and publishing company the right information on you, your catalog and your splits so that everyone gets paid correctly.
Create A Catalog Spreadsheet
Step one is putting all your songs and their related information into one place, so that when it’s time to register your songs for publishing, you have all the info you need handy. Create a Google Spreadsheet of all your music, and add all new songs you release to it so you always have one place to easily view information on your whole catalog. Creating a spreadsheet that retains all the info about the tracks in your catalog is just good standard practice for a professional musician, so take this opportunity to start a good habit.
Basic Info
Your spreadsheet should include basic info on each track.
- song name
- stage names of featured artists, producers, etc
- ISRC code
- ISWC code
- UPC code
- link to WAV file
- link to song on major DSPs
Ineligible Tracks
Include a column to mark tracks that are ineligible for publishing. Always remember: tracks that contain elements of other songs, such as songs that feature very flagrant and uncleared samples, stolen and leased beats, and the like are ineligible for publishing.
Collaborator Publishing Info
You should also create columns for the following information and try your best to fill them so that eventually your catalog spreadsheet will also include the information on what percentage of the publisher share each of your collaborators has agreed to, and the identifying information necessary to get them paid. You probably will not know all this info at the time that you create your catalog spreadsheet. It will be a process of asking each of your collaborators for information and negotiating with them to reach a reasonable split agreement. At this stage, you just want to make sure you have a spreadsheet where you can enter the information in the right place when you finally do get your hands on it.
- collaborator’s government name
- collaborator’s PRO
- collaborator’s Writer IPI (Interested Party Information) ID
- collaborator’s publishing company name
- collaborator’s agreed writer percentage split for this track
- collaborator’s Publisher IPI (Interested Party Information) ID
- collaborator’s agreed publisher percentage split for this track
Choose a PRO & Create Writer Account So You Get Your Writer Share
Half of any musical work’s publishing rights are reserved for writers. A writer is anyone who contributed words or any kind of melody, instrumentation or production to the musical work. So everyone involved in the creation of a musical work needs, at bare minimum, a writer account with a Performance Rights Organization (PRO). Registering for publishing is impossible without this.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you don’t already have a writer account you forgot about. Duplicate writer accounts cause all kinds of problems.
Top PROs
ASCAP
The most popular American PRO. Anyone can join. https://www.ascap.com
BMI
The next most popular American PRO after BMI. Anyone can join. https://www.bmi.com
SESAC
A relatively newer American PRO. Invite-only. https://www.sesac.com
PRS
PRS is a British PRO, but many artists in emerging markets use them, primarily because they won’t withhold the 30% tax from non-US citizens like the American PROs will. Anyone can join. https://www.prsformusic.com
Create Writer Account
The next step is creating a writer account with the PRO of your choice. You will head to your chosen PRO’s website and follow the steps to sign up.
Important Account Info
During this step, make sure you get the following info:
Writer Account Name
Writer accounts are always filed under an artist’s government name. Make sure you give your government name properly, as changing this info afterwards is difficult.
Writer IPI Number
Your PRO will issue you an Interested Party Information (IPI) number. This is not to be confused with your PRO membership ID. Along with your writer account name, you will give your IPI number to anyone you collaborate with who has promised you a split of the publishing revenue. If you get this wrong, you won’t get paid.
Choose Publishing Company Or Administrator So You Get Your Publisher’s Share
Half of the publishing rights of a musical work are reserved for writers, and the other half for publishers. You don’t want half of your publishing money going up in smoke, so you’ll have to decide what you want to do for publishing. You essentially have three options, which we’ll go over below.
Sign With A Publishing Company
You could sign with a publishing company, who will ask for a big chunk of the publisher share and maybe some control over how the music is used. However, as explained earlier in this article, publishing companies nowadays mostly only work with artists who have at least a couple of moderately popular songs in their catalog. Management is a good analogy here. Lots of artists like to ask people in the industry where they can find a manager when the reality is, if an artist ever gets popular enough to warrant management, managers will seek the artist out. Publishing companies are the same. You don’t find good publishing companies – good publishing companies find you. So in a nutshell: if you don’t already have a deal on the table with a publishing company, move to the next step.
Create Your Own Publishing Company
You can easily create your own publishing company on the website of any PRO. This means you will keep all of the publisher share and all of the money generated, but unless you have the time and resources to find all your own publishing money yourself (which is highly doubtful), move to the next option.
Sign With A Publishing Administrator
Finally, you could sign with a publishing administrator, who will take something like 15% of the publisher share, and gives you the rest. As explained earlier in this article, publishing administrators are basically publishing companies for the rest of us. They take a small percentage of the money they find for you, and they have no control over what actually happens to your music – unlike publishing companies. Sure, they have many clients so they’re probably not going to give you too much attention, but at this stage of your career you probably don’t have a ton of publishing money to recover anyway.
Popular Publishing Administrators
Songtrust
Songtrust is the publishing administrator most artists sign with these days. It’s a one-time signup fee of $100, and they take 15% of all the money they find you. Here goes a link to IPI information and more on Songtrust.
Tunecore Publishing
Tunecore also handles publishing administration, so artists who already distribute through Tunecore might find this more convenient. It’s a one-time signup fee of $75, and they take 15% of all they money the find you.
Finalize Writer Splits
You’re almost ready to submit your musical works for publishing registration, but you have one more step and it’s a big one: you’ll need to decide on the writer splits for each track.
For Best Results, Decide Splits Before Recording
Professional musicians normally agree on splits with their collaborators before they even enter the studio. This is far and away the way to go.
Similarly, if you are a singer-songwriter whose songs are just you on guitar and vocals, then you already know the split: you get 100% of your writer’s share. If you are a rapper/producer who raps alone and always on your own beats, you get 100% of your writer’s share.
Deciding Splits After Recording? Accept The Mess
For everyone else, calculating writer splits gets very murky – especially if you’re registering music that has already been out for a while. Unless you take the time to negotiate individually with each collaborator after the fact (which artists rarely want to do) you’re basically just making decisions and crossing your fingers. Many artists decide to just give themselves the entire writer’s share and renegotiate one-on-one with any collaborators who decide to make a fuss. Others give a percentage only to the collaborators they stay in close contact with. In this stage nothing will be perfect. Use your judgment.
Register Your Musical Works
It’s finally time to begin registration. Here is where you upload the music files and enter the song and collaborator info from your catalog sheet into registration. How you register them depends on the choices you made earlier between publishing company or publishing administrator.
Make Sure The Songs Haven’t Already Been Registered
Sometimes artists register songs, then forget they registered them and register them again. Other times, collaborators on songs (most often the song’s producer) will register the song without telling the main artist. Either way, duplicate song registrations are a pain in the ass. Before registering any musical work, search it at songview.com, which is a database of all songs registered to ASCAP and BMI members. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
Registering Songs Via A Publishing Administrator
If you’ve chosen to use a publishing administrator to recover your publishing share, you will likely upload your musical works through their website. In this situation you will not see any reference to a publisher share, because when you sign with a publishing administrator you’re already essentially telling them that you will give them 15% of the publisher share for their work and keep the rest for yourself.
Registering Songs Via A Publishing Company
If you’ve chosen to work with a publishing company or handle your own publishing, you will upload either directly through your PRO’s website or your publishing company will handle it.
Get Your ISWC Codes
Remember to monitor the status of your registered works until each of them is given an International Standard Musical Word Code (ISWC) code. These are important to hold on to if a dispute ever arises over publishing money. ISWCs are automatically obtained by your PRO for all works which meet the PRO’s ISWC criteria. This process typically takes 15-30 business days; criteria includes:
- All writers are identified with their IPIs
- At least one validated publisher is listed on the work.
- The work has not been flagged as a Possible Match (duplicate registration)
For more info on ISWC codes, check this link out.