Publishing Labels

In the music industry, a music publisher, or publishing company, is responsible for ensuring that songwriters and composers receive payment when their compositions are used commercially. An artist's publisher will also be in charge of putting their own songs out there but will take a royalty for doing this which can be as high as 50% and varies for different kinds of royalties. However, as a songwriter, the artists own 100% of their own songs. Examples of things they might do to get their songs heard would be finding artists you could work with and write for and getting their music on TV, adverts and movies etc. If someone covered the artists song without their permission, the artist's rights to that song will be documented with their publishers, who can then charge the artist who covered it a percentage of their earnings from the cover and collect those royalties for you. Below are more details of some of the most common types of publishing deals.

Single Song Agreement

This is an agreement between a writer and a music publisher where the writer grants specific rights for one or more songs to the publisher. The writer will be paid a one-time recoupable advance by the publisher. The publisher will handle the business aspects of the work and pay royalties to the songwriter. With the exception of print music the songwriter usually gets a 50% share of the money collected by the publisher.

Exclusive Song Writer Agreement (ESWA)

The ESWA is a contract normally for staff writers where the song writer normally grants the entire publisher's share of the income to the music publisher. Any compositions written within a time period, which is specified in the contract, belong exclusively to the music publisher.

ESWA deals are normally only offered to writers with previous success, making the publisher feel confident that they will recoup their investment in the writer.

Co-publishing Agreement - Co-pub

The co-publishing deal is the most common form of publishing agreement where the songwriter and the music publisher both co-own the copyrights of the song writer's songs governed by the agreement. A split of the royalties is agreed where the songwriter assigns a percentage to the publisher. This is usually 50%, with the writer assigning the publisher's share to the publisher, and retaining all of writer's share.

Administration Agreement - Admin

This deal is an agreement between a songwriter or publisher and an independent administrator, or between a songwriter or publisher and another music publisher. An admin agreement is used when the songwriter self-publishes their work and licenses songs to the music publisher for a fixed term at an agreed split of royalties in a specified territory.

Admin deals tend to be used for only the most popular of songwriters, and ownership of the copyright is usually not transferred to the administrator. The licensed music publisher gets approximately 10-20% of the gross royalties from the agreed territory during the agreed time period.