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There are basically two ways you can earn money from your music - by selling the rights in the recording (normally to labels etc) and/or by selling the rights in the Master/Copyright, usually to a publisher. A publisher is responsible for ensuring you get what’s due to you from royalty collection societies in various territories. You may well be due two types of royalty often: “mechanical royalties” for each copy of a CD, record or media format that includes your music and “Performance royalties” for each public play of your tunes. Every tune you release will be registered by the publisher with one or more royalty collection societies (see below).

Yes. It is always recommended that if you have a song released commercially that you register with your local royalty collection society who will ensure you get paid. However, while that is effective in your local territory, it is often a very ineffective way of collecting in other countries (territories). It also involves paperwork and registration of songs etc and many collection societies charge a % not dissimilar to a publisher for performing this task. Two other side effects of this are that these societies will have so many works, they are often not best placed to track down what is owed to each artist plus, it will take a lot longer, often years, for those royalties to reach the composer. It is therefore likely you will only receive a % of what is owed and not for quite some time.

They are not always better placed. Care is needed when selecting a publisher. Many labels and publishers claim to represent you worldwide but in fact only register your tunes locally meaning you go through the loop above, just with another party in the middle (and taking a %). Those that sub-publish through larger publishers will obviously be more effective. A strong publisher will be represented in each territory, either through their own employees in that territory or by “agents” who know how to collect effectively. Each agent will take a cut of income, but it should theoretically mean they are tracking down a much higher amount of earnings on your behalf. To achieve this, your tunes will be registered in each territory by the sub-publisher or agents.

You should never pay up front to be published. In fact, if you are established with decent amounts of money “out there” waiting to be collected, you will probably be able to negotiate an advance. A publisher will take a % of the income they receive in, which will vary considerably, depending on the level of service they offer you (see below). The lower percentages are generally reserved for established artists that make it worthwhile for the publisher. In fact it can be difficult to get a large publisher interested unless you can prove you have good earnings out there.

Some do yes. This is called an “administrative” publishing deal. However, many will also see it in their best interests to work your catalogue and try to make more from it. They may promote tunes to TV, sub-licence them to search agencies or allow them to be used on compilation albums depending on your contract with them. Whatever deal you do, the income split should always be weighted in your favour. It is rare to find a publishing deal that doesn’t offer at least 60% of the publishing income to the artist. More common is 70/30 in the artists favour and for administration deals, 80/20 or better. However, remember that with the majority of publishers, the use of agents and sub-sub-publishing is a necessary evil to recoup in certain territories and this dilutes the pot obviously. You should take great care when signing a publishing contract to investigate who gets what from where.

In order to publish a tune and collect money on it, the registering party has to control the copyright, so yes. More often than not, a publisher will want to publish you as a composer rather than individual tracks (unless they are big hits probably!) which means for the duration of the publishing contract, anything you compose will be owned by the publisher. However, if you have a good publisher, this means you no longer have to worry about the tunes and they will help with the groundwork of selling them for you. Like with the Raw42 publishing contract, you could try to negotiate in a “get out” clause so if the publisher has been unable to collect from the tune over a certain period, you can reclaim the publishing rights for it. However, this is probably only useful if you have another publisher lined up to take that tune on.

Whatever happens, it is in your best interests to make sure your publishing is in the best hands. Publishing is likely to be your biggest earner and unless you are releasing thousands of copies of a single or CD, don’t expect much from the physical sales. A good publisher will usually check out the deal for you and advise o the potential for earnings…they will also usually be prepared to do a publishing split with the label. Likewise, a good label who know what they are doing will want to know about the publisher to evaluate the potential. It basically comes down to all three parties recognising which party offers the best chances of making the track earn money, hence the usual arrangement of splitting the publishing.

The best thing to do here is find out how a label is going to promote the track and in what territories. If they are employing a promo agency for radio and TV etc then things are looking up. If they hope to sell it via a DJ mailing then the potential for revenue is small and publishing revenue becomes a bit hit-or-miss. If the track doesn’t have a lot of potential outside of this opportunity, the publisher may well be prepared to hand over all, or a large part, of the publishing to the label. It is quite normal for a label and a publisher to agree a deal between them and this is a question you should ask of your publisher before signing but don’t expect a change to the contract stipulating the publisher will give up their rights entirely…this is where trust may well come into the equation to a certain extent. Also, bear in mind that if you have two parties earning money from you, they are more likely to keep an eye on each other which work in your best interests!

Of course. Assuming the publishers feel comfortable that they are taking on tracks that earn money for them they should be up for this in many cases. However, if you are releasing a track only in the USA and you want to self-publish it in that territory but be represented overseas, you will probably find it difficult without some sort of proof that income will be generated outside the USA.

Yes and No. By law in many territories, the publisher can collect up to 100% of the mechanical royalties for you but only a maximum of 6/12ths (50%) of the performing royalties. The rest will be paid directly to the composers assuming of course they are registered with their local society. However, if they are not, a collection society will often release the money to the publisher for distribution accordingly after a set period of time, which varies according to territory. What should also be noted is that may royalty collection societies do not have the mechanisms in place to track all public performances of a tune. A lot of this is collected through “random sampling” techniques which is not always truly representative of what is played.

This depends. Normally there is no need to get it published until you know it is due to be used commercially. Even then, you don’t need to register it immediately - you can usually collect up to 2 years (or more in some instances) from a release or performance. However, if you have a publisher that can find opportunities for the tune, you may want to get it published sooner. Another option is to agree with the publisher that they can promote it non-exclusively and if they find an opportunity for it they can publish it at the same point. Finding a deal like this may be tricky though.

It has to be exclusive or the publisher cannot register and collect on the tune - they need the copyright. However it need not be controlled by one publisher in every territory (see above). There is no typical contract length but there are two things to watch for: if you sign a deal as a composer for 10 years, everything you write in that period will be included under that contract and it may well state that unpublished tunes written prior to the contract come under the same agreement. While this means that you are free after 10 years to write tunes for publication elsewhere, the contract will also have stated how long the copyright for the tunes written during the period are held by the publisher. Traditionally, this has been for “the life of the composer plus 70 years” but more and more this is changing due to the trends in musical styles. For example, a trance tune is unlikely to warrant a long shelf life. The thing to consider here is does it really matter if the publisher controls the tune in 70 years time as it is unlikely to have much value. These things can usually be negotiated depending on the publisher.

No. You generally sign up as “a composer” and the publisher is representing your interests only. That said, you need the co-composers to sign off your interests in the tracks you want published. Some publishers will insist that they represent all the composers of a track they take on. Obviously if there are three of you involved in the composition and only one signs up to the publisher, this limits the potential earnings of the publisher and may affect their attitude towards the representation of a track regarding finding new opportunities. For administrative only publishing however, this should not really affect you too much.

Essentially royalty administration and finding new opportunities to place tunes are the main things however some publishers can offer a tracking service for previously unpublished tunes. For example if you had a tune released on a compilation CD 2 years ago and believe you are due mechanical or performance royalties, the publisher will try to track down those royalties for you either themselves or through a sub-publisher/agent. This usually involves similar percentages (20%-30% plus agent splits which vary depending on the territory) but does mean the track needs to be published by that publisher before any royalties can be retrieved.