Songtrust’s goal is to be the technical partner to the publishing industry, whether that’s individual creators, management companies, law firms representing musicians, boutique publishers, record labels who handle publishing for their roster, or anyone else working for the careers of songwriters.
When we use the term “technical partner,” we mean that we’re taking care of the back-office administration of your compositions - the nuts and bolts, nitty-gritty of international registration, collections, and auditing - using our best-in-class technology and our team’s extensive expertise.
The other partner that songwriters and their songs often need is a creative partner. This is the person or team who pitches your songs for sync licensing opportunities, finds collaborators and co-writers for you to work with, pitches your songs for covering by other artists, and otherwise works within the creative ecosystem surrounding your music and gets it out to people who will appreciate it.
Looking at this in terms of an old-fashioned model of the brain, you’d say that your technical partner, Songtrust, is the “left brain” in the partnership - analytical, operational, procedural - and your creative partner is the “right brain,” looking at things from a less precise, more artistic perspective.
As a songwriter, you intuitively understand the difference here. Sure, maybe your lawyer plays in a band on the weekends, but your lawyer is not there to troubleshoot the hook on your new song - she’s there to dig into contracts and other agreements to make sure the hard facts work in your favor. And when you’re looking for a guitarist to take on tour, their math PhD doesn’t factor into your decision on whether or not they’re joining the band.
Both of these partners are crucial to the development of any songwriter’s career, though they pretty clearly require totally different areas of expertise. For most of music publishing history, the limitations of technology and scale required publishing companies to handle both the technical and creative sides in order for their businesses to be economically feasible. And historically, it was difficult for anyone but the top earners to access truly effective global publishing administration.
Today, that landscape is changing. We were founded with the core idea that your technical and creative partners no longer need to be the same, and that all creators should be able to access their royalties, no matter what stage of your career you find yourself in. With our technology - both our internal operational systems and our client-facing dashboard - we’re able to supply best-in-class publishing administration for our growing client base (205,000 songwriters and counting), who are then free to find the creative partners that are best for their music and their careers.
Because of our scale, we’ve built advantageous relationships with global collections partners, and we’re actively working with industry groups to “future-proof” music publishing, and ensure that creators of all sizes are able to collect all they’re owed. And since Songtrust works with so many creators across all genres and regions of the world, we’ve handled just about every publishing question and situation that can come up, which means that, as a Songtrust client, you’re covered, no matter what happens.
