How to Maximize Your Publishing Revenues with Your Music Promotion: A Masterclass for Music Nerds
Welcome to Your Music Promotion, the leading Spotify Advertisement Marketing Agency. In today’s competitive music industry, ensuring your music reaches the widest audience possible is essential. But did you know you can also maximize your publishing revenues like the major players—Sony Music Publishing, UMPG, and Warner Chappell? This masterclass will reveal the secret techniques to help you set up your own publishing company and boost your earnings by cutting out multiple middlemen and gaining direct control over your catalog registrations.
Understanding the Key Terms
Before diving into the process, it’s crucial to understand some important definitions:
-PRO (Performance Rights Organization): Pays you for streams on TV, radio, and streaming services.
-MRO (Mechanical Rights Organization): Pays you for sales and streaming.
-Societies: Both PROs and MROs.
The Problems with Traditional Publishing
Registration Issues
When you register your songs with your home PRO or MRO, they often enter into reciprocal agreements with foreign PROs/MROs to collect royalties worldwide. However, there’s no way for songwriters to verify if their songs are properly registered overseas. Many times, songs remain unregistered internationally, even if they’re being played or streamed.
Deductions and Fees
Receiving foreign royalties comes with various deductions. Foreign PROs/MROs take their cut (10-20%), followed by currency exchange fees and transfer fees to your home PRO/MRO. Additionally, if you use publishing administrators, they take 15%, and other entities like technology companies also take their share. By the end, you might only receive 60%-70% of your royalties. Further deductions occur if you have a manager, distributor, or music library involvement, leaving you with minimal earnings.
Ensuring Full Collection
To avoid losing money, you need to register your catalog globally and monitor it regularly to ensure nothing has been changed, removed, or added.
Setting Up Your Own Publishing Company
If you’re earning substantial royalties, setting up your publishing company can be a worthwhile investment. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Create a Corporation or LLC: Set up multiple DBAs (Doing Business As) under this entity with different names for your sub-publishing companies for overseas societies.
2. Compile a List of PROs, MROs, and CMOs: Use Excel or Google Sheets to keep track.
3. Register as a Publisher: Sign up with each PRO/MRO using your new DBAs or created entities for each country. Each PRO/MRO has different rules.
4. Avoid Society Overlap: Ensure there’s no overlap when claiming in the 230+ countries. Follow up with clear emails.
5. List Sub-Publishers: Register your DBAs or entities as sub-publishers under your main publisher account. Obtain your publisher IPI#.
6. Create Sub-Publishing Contracts: Ensure you have the rights by drafting contracts with your main publishing company.
7. Set Up Local Bank Accounts: Use a service like Wise to save on exchange fees.
8. Understand CWR Format: Hire a service to convert your catalog to CWR, or find a coder to build the necessary software.
9. Control Metadata: Maintain full control over your metadata and verify your catalog regularly.
10. Maintain and Register: Continuously register new songs, check up on your catalog, and verify metadata periodically.