What is a music publisher?

A music publisher is your royalty collector and your copyright administrator. A publisher exploits your copyrights and collects and pays all your royalties (except for performance income). It does this by obtaining ownership and administrative rights to some or all of your copyrights. Thus, a music publisher is basically a company that takes care of your music business, allowing you (the song writer/artist) to concentrate on your creative aspirations and goals. The artist’s strength generally lie in the creative domain, and the publisher’s specializes is administrating your catalouge, collecting royalty monies, plugging your songs, making copyright deals and paying you your royalties from all sources of income.

Are there different types of music publishers?

As with record companies, music publishing companies vary in size and structure. There are "majors", "mini-majors", and "independents." The majors include multinational companies like Warner/Chappel Music, Sony, EMI, MCA Music, etc. The mini-majors are publishers like Famous, etc. The indies are smaller companies that are individually owed and operated. Major music publishing houses have several departments that each help the company acquire and exploit songs, just like the major record labels.

What can I expect from a music publisher?

When you sign a publishing deal, you assign a music publisher some or all of your copyrights and/or give them your administration rights. Per your music publishing agreement, they are granted the right to not only collect your royalties, but to license and negotiate other income-making deals on your behalf. They issue mechanical licenses, synchronization agreements, and are supposed to collect your royalties and/or find users and consumers for your songs by "plugging" them.

How much do music publishers get paid?

In exchange for a typical co-publishing deal, the music publisher is traditionally paid 50% of the "publisher’s share" of all royalty Income, which is income from mechanical and synchronization royalties. For your performance income, since those monies are collected by PRO’s, music publisher usually get only 25%. For print music, publishers usually get 20% on the marked retail price, and 10% to 12½ for folios. With the agreed publisher’s share of your copyright royalties, your income is used to pay their overhead and operating expenses, (e.g., office, staff, equipment, supplies, payroll, taxes, insurance, etc.)

What is a publishing agreement?

A "music publishing agreement" is a copyright contact that a song writer signs with a music publishing company. Per this publishing agreement, a publisher is assigned certain designated copyrights . In accordance with the terms of the publishing deal, a music publisher basically "owns" or "rents" some (or all) of your songs for a certain period time and in a certain territory, administrating and exploiting your musical product as much as possible in order to generate more income for you and them. A music publisher agreement seeks to either assign or license certain songs to a music publisher to either own and/or administrate for a designated time and in a specified territory. Thus, a music publishing agreement is an agreement between a songwriter (who owns the copyright in songs) and the music publisher (which seeks to own or administrate the songs.)

What are music royalties?

US copyright law bestows upon songwriters the exclusive right to a limited duration to exploit copyrights by transferring, lending or even selling one or all of the five (5) bundles of exclusive copyrights, subject to certain exceptions and limitations. In return for these licenses, grants, assignments, and/or sales, the copyright owner receives monetary compensation called "royalties". Thus, "royalties" are monies earned from songs and/or sound recordings from various sources.

Are there different types of music royalties?

There are four (4) different types of royalties, each derived from a separate and distinct copyright. The four potential sources of royalty revenue in the music recording and publishing industry are:

1. Mechanical royalties: paid from record companies for record sold based on the exclusive to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works.

2. Public performance royalties: paid by music users for songs in the operation of their businesses and broadcasts based on the exclusive right to perform publicly copyrighted works.

3. Synchronization fees: paid by music users for synchronizing music with their visual images based on the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works and to prepare derivative works of copyrighted material.

4. Print music income: paid by music printers for sheet music and folios based on the exclusive right to distribute copies of copyrighted material.