Get it Right When You Write
It’s cool, my stuff is registered with XYZ PRO, I’m good!
Ah, my least favorite phrase to hear from a songwriter. Which usually leads to my next source of sadness:
Music just doesn’t make a lot of money.
If you were to ask me what genuinely makes me sad, it’s hearing that a songwriter has to take a day job to pay the bills because the fantastic art that they create just doesn’t support them enough to, well, be enough.
First of all, cheers to the publishing administrative teams that take care of registrations and licensing – you are my kindred spirits and you are seen (I emphasis that because I know all too well that it normally feels otherwise). Your work is a huge contributor to getting our creatives paid so they can keep doing their good work too. I know that’s what has kept me going for over 15 years of working in this end of the industry – give me all the music! I will handle the spreadsheets!
But what about those writers that don’t have an administrator to take care of it for them? If you’ve heard that being a songwriter is akin to being your own CEO, don’t scoff – it’s completely true. You have to do both the front- and back-office work without a village behind you. Now while this is why it’s so amazing to get the publisher deal that will help clear your plate, don’t forget – you are a STRONG, BADASS, AMAZING HUMAN who can do this yourself too! So set aside a few hours and get that spreadsheet open.
Author’s note: we’re going to start with a very simple registrations chat today – don’t come at me about complications like various PROs, producer splits, split catalogs, etc. etc. etc. Today, I’m here to tell you that you too can organize your song data, and I’m here to tell you how in… well, it’s a lot of steps in reality, but we’ve got to start somewhere!
As we just love to say here in Nashville, “It All Starts With A Song.” So you get into the room with a few other great writers and in the course of a few hours you have the next great single.
Stop. You’ve collaborated. Now listen.
Write down those splits. Get on the same page – me, I love a nice even-split amongst all those in the room, but you do what works for your group. So if Erin, Catie, and I are in a room and write a bop, we’d go 33.33% a piece (one of us would get 33.34%, which typically goes to the ‘main artist’ (whoever is going to record it), or may rotate between a group of writers who regularly work together). It’ll also be helpful to know the full names and publishing entities of everyone in the room, and if you’re really good, gather up those IPIs to make matching easier when the societies has to input data because we love when it’s clean.
Okay, sorry, that was a lot at once. A couple of definitions for the assist:
Splits – the portion, out of 100%, that the writer gets to claim on the new composition
Publishing Entities – the company that you, as a writer, operate under to handle your publishing (I’m not launching into a whole discussion on tax entities and whatnot right now, but as I said – you are your own CEO! This is your business.)
IPI – Interested Party Information – the number assigned to songwriters and publishers by their Performing Rights Organization (PRO). One of my former favorite colleagues called this “the songwriter’s social security number” and that description has always stuck with me. In a world where we see a few thousand John Smiths on one database, this little ID can only serve to help, not harm.
I’m an Excel Girl, so here’s what I’d like to end of fantasy writing sessions with:
For added joint understanding, I would have everyone sign and date the list, then send out a copy to everyone involved (it saves heartache later, and if you do have an administrator, you might just become their new favorite roster member).
(If you’re really good, you’ll have a running spreadsheet with this info on it for all of your songs, and keep a little checklist of registrations confirmations as you get them done… come on, you can do it.)
And now, you deliver the song. You register that sucker so you don’t miss a cent of those sweet royalties to come your way. You PRO has almost surely instructed you on how to get this to them. You may even have a rep there who will take it right from your directly and make sure it gets registered. That’s great – performance registrations, check.
Do not forget about your mechanicals!! You may know about an awesome little organization called the MLC. That stands for Mechanical Licensing Collective, and these are the good folks ensuring you see another piece of your income. The mechanical royalty dates back to my beloved OG, the Piano Roll. They literally were mechanical reproductions of music, and the royalty would pay the writer for their portion of the underlying composition. That royalty has carried forward in mediums, all the way into streaming today (not everyone saw that coming), and the MLC (in simplistic terms) matches the recordings on various Digital Service Providers to the compositions that writers and publishers have submitted, then gets them paid out to you, the songwriters.
At a super-high, easy-peasy level, that’ll get you started to see some income on this smash hit once it gets into the world. Register often, register early, and mind the gaps where the time income could fall through. You got this. Start somewhere.