The Journey of a Song with Songtrust

A common misconception in our industry is that collection societies such as ASCAP or BMI in the US cover all of a music creator’s publishing needs. While essential, they represent just one part of a much larger system—and only account for one slice of a creator’s revenue pie.

As a music publishing administrator, Songtrust makes it easy for songwriters around the world to access the full scope of their publishing income, which includes elusive mechanical royalties that performing rights organizations (PROs) are unable to collect. Through advanced monitoring and data-driven infrastructure, we ensure that no royalty goes untracked, and no opportunity is missed. Let’s walk through how it works—and what you can expect.

It Starts With Monitoring

It’s no industry secret that it takes time for your songs to generate royalties and because of that, until they see significant royalty activity, song registrations are not yet ready to send out to societies. With Songtrust, we actively monitor your song for global royalty activity and alert you when your song’s registration is ready to be sent to your home PRO or CMO as well as other societies where your song is earning globally.

After creating an account, you’ll be given access to an online dashboard which functions as a hub for your publishing activity. Every songwriter is required to do four steps in order to activate their accounts and start their publishing journey. These steps are:

1. Adding valid tax and payment information. Without these details, you will not be able proceed with account activation.

2. Adding any songwriters that we will collect for. Writers that we won’t collect for are (sometimes referred to as “outside writers”) are co-writers that we do not administer or collect for in your account.

3. Adding songs, including any co-writers and splits (a.k.a. songwriter shares, the percentages of a composition each co-writer gets paid royalties for).

4. Adding each song’s ISRC(s), codes attached to each unique sound recording - and for a song with multiple recordings, adding every relevant ISRC.

Without this metadata (the song details), we are limited in where we can register and collect on your behalf. Once works are added, we store each song’s metadata and make it available to view within the client’s dashboard.

Leveling Up With Registration

Once your songs have royalty activity, they’re ready to level up and start the song registration process. At this stage, our internal teams begin to validate and prepare your song registrations to be sent to the societies where they have royalties to be collected from.

The Songtrust Copyright Team adds song registrations to a Common Works Registration file, or CWR. CWR files are an industry-standard format used by publishers and collection organizations worldwide.

The files are then populated with song-specific data, including titles, split percentages, and IPIs that enable collection societies to make proper payment to rights owners. Songtrust sends CWRs on a weekly basis to the collection societies that we have direct relationships with around the globe. Works submitted by Songtrust will not appear in the public repertoires of PROs or Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) until the CWR is ingested by that society and populated to their individual sites. (Note: some PROs and CMOs have minimum earning or usage thresholds before a work will display in their online public repertoire.)

At The Heart of Music Publishing

Once a CWR is received, societies will typically return an acknowledgment of receipt, along with any errors that they may have encountered in the file. Our team reviews any errors and notifies the client directly, especially when a counterclaim is involved.

A counterclaim occurs when our registration conflicts with an existing registration for the work - for example, if a Songtrust client registers a song with a 50/50 songwriting split, but their co-writer has already registered it and claimed 100% of the composition. Until this dispute is resolved, the registration won't be completed, and the song could show conflicting information, duplicate registrations, or outdated information in the public repertoire. Just the same, all royalty disbursements for that song will freeze until resolved. All other works will begin to appear over a period of weeks to several months depending on the individual society’s registration protocol.

It’s important to note that publishing is a long game and global registration can take some time to complete. This is due to the number of societies your works should be registered at, each society’s individual process and timeline, and the additional work around songs with multiple co-writers, multiple publishers, etc.

Taking Control Of Your Royalties

When you join Songtrust, you’re positioning yourself to overcome the financial challenges today’s music industry presents. As soon as works are ready for registration, we make it possible for every music creator like you to fill in the gaps in your global royalty collection that a collection society membership doesn’t entirely address. Our footprint covers a majority of the world’s music publishing market, which you automatically benefit from when works are submitted through your online dashboard and are ready for royalty collection.

Additionally, you retain 100% of your rights over a short-term commitment, with only a one-time registration fee and a low 15% commission rate on performance royalties and 20% on non-performance (global mechanical) royalties. Don’t leave money on the table -- Register your works today.

Have additional questions about Songtrust or music publishing? Check out our help center for FAQs or reach out to us through our Contact Form.