MOLLY NEUMAN is the Global Head of Business Development at Songtrust, the world’s largest global royalty collection service and publishing administrator. At Songtrust she leads the business development, sales, and marketing teams of in their service to over 150,000 songwriters and 20,000 publishers to collect their publishing royalties worldwide for over 1,000,000 copyrights. Prior to joining Songtrust, Molly was Head of Music at Kickstarter, Interim President and Vice President of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and held senior roles in label relations at Rhapsody International and eMusic. Additionally, she has served on the boards of SoundExchange and A2IM. Molly's career in music began as the drummer in the Riot Grrrl band, Bratmobile. 

I take delight anytime I’m at a tech gathering and no one brings up blockchain or bitcoin. It’s a buzz word and very few actually know what it means or what it entails. Blockchain is very fetch in that it’s not going to happen, at least not anytime soon. Mean girls reference aside, many critics are hyping blockchain up to be this magic bullet that can fix the music industry, bring us world peace, and make everyone and their mom happy. But just like using a unicorn to commute to work, it’s a nice thought but not actually feasible, and I’d like to break down why.

It’s easy to assume that your Performing Rights Organization (aka PRO) has you covered whenever a song you’ve written is played anywhere in the world - and that’s mostly right. Whether your song hits the airwaves in Seattle or Hong Kong, you can expect that eventually royalties will be paid to you. But when your song is stored on a server, downloaded, or used as a ringtone somewhere far away, your PRO may not have a deal with the reproduction rights collective in that jurisdiction. That’s where sub-publishers come in.

I am a software developer for Songtrust and have been for just over a year now. Songtrust is the first company I have worked at since I graduated from Florida State University in 2017 and it has been a tremendous, fun, and challenging first year. To bookend my first year, I wanted to share the top five things I admire and gained from working at Songtrust.

Last year, streaming platforms were the music industry's biggest source of revenue, surpassing physical sales and digital downloads. While the music industry is seeing a surge for streaming, it’s still not a direct path to riches for the beginning, and even the experienced, songwriter.

If the term black box royalties sounds a little ominous, it probably should. Black box royalties, or black box income, have become a blanket term for money – an estimated $2.5 billion – that is earned but never paid out to any artist. Finding a way to get it is, in many ways, like trying to locate a black box at the bottom of the sea – frustrating and overwhelming.

ATLANTA BORN, Davis Mallory is a singer-songwriter, DJ, actor and former reality TV-star appearing on MTV’s The Real World: Denver and three seasons of MTV's game show The Challenge. Afterwards, he moved to New York City to pursue music studying at Dubspot School of Electronic Music while working at Capitol Records in A&R/Marketing for Astralwerks Records. In 2013, Davis moved to Nashville, Tennessee to focus on writing and recording original music. He’s collaborated and released several tracks all over the world, including "Beautiful Girls (Diem's Song)" - a tribute to his MTV co-star Diem Brown who lost her battle to cancer - and  Landis’ “Loud (feat Davis Mallory)" which signed to Grammy-nominated Cedric Gervais’ label Delecta, thus earning Davis a Spotlight feature on Gervais's website. Davis currently divides his time between Nashville, NYC, LA and Europe writing music for and with DJs, as well as working on his debut forthcoming album.   

Ask any aspiring songwriter what they want more than a number one worldwide hit and they’re likely to tell you they want a deal with a music publisher. In exchange for a percentage of your royalties, the music publisher will collect royalties and licensing fees, seek out synchronization deals for TV and film placement and sometimes provide cash advances to cover living or touring expenses.