How does publishing work? By Adrienne D. Hill

 

Publishing is often an area that many artists tend to avoid, not because of lack of interest, but because of lack of understanding. This article will hopefully clear up many questions you all may have:


Q: What is music publishing?
A: Music Publishing is the act of a Music Publisher securing songwriters in effort to solicit music to other artists. It is not uncommon for the songwriter to be the artist as well. Music publishers play a vital role in the development of new music and in taking care of the business side, allowing composers and songwriters to concentrate on their creative work.

Q: When should I (the artist) look for a publishing deal?
A: This is the big one! I tell artists all the time, once you develop some value for your songwriting craft, you should then go and get a publishing deal. When I say develop some value for your songwriting craft, I mean that you should have a quality discography, with songs placed on national recording artists that are distributed from a major record label. Therefore, a songwriter will have money “in the pipeline” that the publishing company can go and collect. Outside of a songwriter’s potential, the money “in the pipeline” helps a publisher determine how much money should be advanced to the songwriter and what the publishing deal should be worth.

For example, a producer who has outstanding beats but does not have any placements represents nothing but potential, and the advance typically would not be as high as a producer who had really good beats, but has songs placed and released on artists on major record companies. The producer with the “good beats” already has money “in the pipeline,” and can justify a publisher giving him more money than the producer with “outstanding beats” simply because he has potential. The producer’s potential would be realized after the deal is done by the exploitation work of the publisher and producer together.

Q: I'm signed up with ASCAP, SESEC or BMI, that's a publishing deal, right?
A: Wrong. Companies like ASCAP, SESEC are PROs, or Performance Rights Organizations. A PRO's function is collecting performing rights royalties on behalf of its members, composers and music publishers. The PRO then distributes these royalties to its members, minus the PRO's administration costs.

PROs license public performances of their members' music which includes network television, cable TV, cable movie channels (HBO, Showtime, etc.), use in nightclubs, stores, restaurants and other public performances.

Q: How do I get paid from a publishing deal?
A: LET’S EXPLORE THROUGH AN EXAMPLE:

In a very imaginary situation, where NO ADVANCE MONEY has been issued to the songwriters-

Let’s say we have two different songwriters; Mr. Adam and Ms. Eve, who write a song called “He Tricked You, Then I Got Tricked!”.

Mr. Adam has his own publishing company called Bad-rib Music, which has made a co-publishing deal with 3n1 Music Publishing.

Now, let’s say that Ms. Eve has a “standard songwriting publishing deal” with Live D Music Publishing.

If NO advance money has been paid to each of these writers, the 1 song disbursement from Mechanical royalties (in 2007) for 11,000 records sold, which would be about $1,000, would breakdown to looking something like this below: (see photo section for publishing breakdown)