As an artist, sharing the hard work you’ve put into your songs is just as important as the songs themselves. You have so many options when it comes to sharing with your community -- digitally on streaming services, visually through music videos, and publically through gigs. While you often get paid through a pre-negotiated deal with the venue, did you know you also earn performance royalties from the songs that you perform publicly? This happens through your setlist -- the document, whether handwritten or printed, that lists the songs in the order you plan to perform -- which, once submitted, gets sent to your PRO (performance rights organization) to distribute your earned royalties.

I spent Valentine’s Day digging through fourteen million digital streaming assets trying to match them to those from our clients in our system. Three weeks later and I’m still not done. I don’t say this for you to feel sorry for me (although if you’d like to buy me flowers, dinner, etc. who am I to stop you!), I say this because I’m one of the few people in music publishing equipped to tackle problems like these using data. I write a structured query to run identifiers through our database and matches return, while my counterparts at other publishers are hand matching on an excel sheet. Why is this relevant? There are so few data savvy practitioners in this part of the music ecosystem and I want to give it a voice.

As a songwriter, you spend a majority of your time refining and iterating your work until it’s perfect. Once you’re done, sharing it with the world is equally important, but there’s more to it than just uploading it to Spotify or Youtube. You deserve to get paid for all the hard work and countless hours you spent creating a work of art. This means collecting royalties - payments made from one party to another for the right to use a composition on an ongoing basis - in every capacity, all across the world.

International Women’s Day gives us a chance to celebrate women’s achievements and reflect on what more we can do in our lives and in our companies to promote gender parity. Discussion and focus around diversity issues in the music industry has never been stronger, and 2018 is in position to be a new era for women in the music community.

Administration vs. Co-Publishing Deals

Which is Right for You?

You’ve heard the story before - about the budding songwriter who dreams of making it big by getting an offer for a publishing deal from a big, reputable company that then makes them famous. It’s what any artist aims for, but with the rising numbers of independent artists coming into their own, a traditional publishing deal isn’t the only option anymore. Now songwriters have to ask themselves a variety of questions including - How much ownership are you willing to give up for the benefits that a traditional publishing deal will give you today?

You've written a song, you've worked tirelessly on making it perfect, and finally it's done. You're ready to share it and you realize you have to register it if you want to make any money off it - but where do you start?

Songtrust is proud to welcome Molly Neuman, former record label owner, A2IM VP, and Kickstarter's first-ever Head of Music, to our expanding team as Global Head of Business Development.

Songtrust, the world’s most popular royalty collection platform for songwriters and music publishers, has announced a breakthrough agreement with pan-European licensing hub, ICE Services Ltd. Under the terms of the new agreement, signed with Songtrust’s parent company, Downtown, ICE will provide a range of digital licensing and back-office royalty processing services for the Songtrust platform and its client base of more than 100,000 songwriters and 11,000 music publishers.

Songtrust is growing at a rapid pace, so it only makes sense that we’re adding some serious new talent to keep up with demand. We’re proud to announce that Amsterdam-based industry veteran Mandy Aubry has joined our team as Director of Global Business Development.