Songtrust: A Year in Review

We asked a handful of our team members to share their 2018 highlights and hopes for the new year - enjoy.

Clients, teammates, industry colleagues, and friends of Songtrust,

What a year we’ve had. Songtrust now works with more than 150,000 songwriters and manages over one million copyrights. We have added over 50 outstanding people to our world-class team and have built out ever-improving technology that keeps the songs at the center. We had the opportunity to present on over fifteen panels at twenty conferences in ten countries this year! During my travels, I’ve been lucky enough to hear from incredible people working to push the industry forward. I’ve also heard about the challenges still being faced, which energizes me, as there is so much more work to do! While reflecting on this year, I admit that it is these challenges and opportunities that keep me motivated and remind me that we can help make a better world for creators. Throughout all of this, it is the work of my team and the passion of our clients that still inspires me to carry out our daily mission to put money in the pockets of songwriters.

At home in New York, the Songtrust team has been pushing to make this better world a reality. We’ve placed special attention on our ability to better educate our community on music publishing and Songtrust’s role within it. I’m incredibly proud of our team, who have managed to write over 369 articles about music publishing for our help center! Additionally, we were able to offer a series of insightful webinars, blog posts, and workshops in which our staff members and clients share their expertise and experiences.

These efforts have truly paid off as we’ve had tremendous success this year in doubling our client base.

I’m happy with not only the number of writers we’ve been able to register (and their number of copyrights!), but also the diversity of our writers. We are so happy to work with writers in 64 countries! Many of which we've interacted with through our webinar series including creators in France, Canada, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, England, Slovakia, and more! With this expansion comes bigger and bigger business clients. We now have cuts with 23 of the Billboard Top 50 hip-hop artists as well as cuts with dozens of Grammy recipients and award-winning records, and nominees. We’ve also expanded our collections to more digital services and even more territories and, of course, paid more royalties out than ever.

As our client base expands, so does our team! We’ve substantially grown our New York headquarters, and now have representatives in Nashville, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and across Europe. We’ve amassed great talent to shape Songtrust, and we aren’t done yet. We have four open positions and six internships open for next year already, with even more to come in January. Currently, we are looking for a Senior Product Designer, a Copyright Manager for Audiovisual Rights, a Publishing Operations Coordinator, and a Senior Royalty Coordinator to join our team.

So much is planned for next year as we continue to grow. I’m very excited to share all that we’ve been working on with you in the coming months. In 2019, we aim to be better music publishers and better technologists to better serve our clients. We strive to be honest, up-front, and remember to stand up for the truth. Trust is in our name for a reason! I plan to stay as informed as possible about the challenges songwriters face so that I can also better serve our community. All of our efforts are sustained by our vision: to get songwriters paid. That’s what all of us at Songtrust wake up and come to work everyday to do. It’s the passion that carries me, and I hope that it also carries you. This is what takes us into next year and beyond. See you all in the new year!

Joe Conyers III

Co-founder and General Manager, Songtrust

@joeconyers