PUBLISHING
ALSO CALLED: MUSIC PUBLISHING
DEFINITION
Publishing is the business of administering and monetising a musical composition's rights, including licensing it, collecting royalties, and enforcing the songwriter's ownership. A music publisher typically takes a percentage of composition income in exchange for handling this administration.
WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE
A publishing deal splits composition income between the songwriter and the publisher, commonly along a spectrum from co-publishing deals, where the writer keeps a larger share and more control, to full buyouts, where the publisher owns the compositions outright.
Publishers register songs with performing rights organisations, pursue sync placements, chase mechanical royalties across territories, and generally do the unglamorous administrative work that a songwriter without a business background would struggle to do alone.
The structure of collection is different across the Atlantic: US songwriters typically register with one of several competing PROs like ASCAP or BMI, while most EU countries have a single national collecting society per country, such as SACEM or GEMA, which complicates administration for a songwriter with international airplay.
Signing away publishing rights is a bigger decision than it sounds, since it usually persists for the life of copyright unless a reversion clause or statutory termination right eventually applies.
AN EXAMPLE
A new songwriter signs a co-publishing deal giving a publisher 50% of the composition income in exchange for the publisher pitching her songs to film and TV supervisors for sync placements. Five years later, one of those songs lands in a popular series, and the publisher's pitching work, not the songwriter's own hustle, is what generated the placement.
WATCH OUT
New songwriters sometimes sign full publishing buyouts for an upfront advance without understanding they are giving up decades of future royalty income.
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