The Trials and Tribulations of Modern Music Publishing
Image credit: Vishnu R Nair
Although Digital Music Publishing has improved immensely since the beginning of streaming – it is still an uphill battle to get these royalties to the correct party.
Music Publishing is the collection of an artist’s compositional royalties which are generated whenever an artist’s composition is played, recreated or performed.
Unlike sound recording royalties (also known as the ‘master right’) which are usually collected upon distribution of a song and only collected from that single audio file – publishing royalties can attach themselves to multiple audio files, live performances and artists.
To combat this, publishing royalties are split into 3 unique sections which are Performance Royalties, Mechanical Royalties and Synchronisation Royalties. There is also an extra royalty that attaches itself to the sound recording rather than the composition which is called Neighboring Rights (or Digital Performance Royalties in the US).
What are the main issues that surround Music Publishing?
An Unknown Royalty Type: A big issue is that artists don’t know what publishing is or that they’re even owed these royalties in the first place. This means a lot of royalties are left unclaimed.
Data Matching: There are many places in which song data can become lost in the complex global publishing network. For example, if the metadata of a song doesn’t match the metadata entered into publishing collection societies there is no way to know that the composition has been played or streamed.
Lack of PRO Registrations: Songwriters are often not registering with any Performance Royalty Organisations (PROs) or CMOs, and therefore there is no officially documented ‘owner’ for these royalties to be directed to.
Usage Tracking: There is no foolproof technology capable of tracking global song usage and delivering publishing royalties; the majority of tracking is done on a submission basis. Moreover, PROs do not precisely track radio play, and must estimate performances in public venues and the content played in businesses.
Bad Claims: If someone claims they are the composer of a famous song and no-one checks the submission – it is left to the collection societies to work out that the claim is false. Publishers and administrators also work with thousands of rows of data every day so it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks without prior caution.
How are Publishing Societies tackling these issues?
Organisations such as ICE and Mint have formed through a collaboration of PROs to create huge databases to track songs being played on DSPs around the world.
Major rights collecting societies such as PRS for Music, SACEM, as well as ICE have also been clamping down on the dodgy content that is being uploaded to them – and in a severe case, froze payments to a major publishing administrator.
Additionally, in the last month the MLC issued a notice of intent to audit multiple streaming services including Spotify and Apple Music on the accuracy of their royalty payments.
How is RouteNote Publishing addressing these issues?
We are teamed up with the Core Collective – created by major PROs and partnered with ICE who issue direct collective licensing across the globe which allow online royalties to reach us faster and with fewer deductions.
When you sign up for RouteNote Publishing, we double check all releases that join our service just in case anything has been missed through RouteNote distributions moderation system. This keeps our collection societies happy and keeps our publishing disputes low.
We are also always happy to answer any publishing questions you may have, and make it our duty to keep our users as informed on Music Publishing as possible.