Publishing Administration
Curated publishing admin for independent songwriters.
We handle registration, licensing, and sync administration so you can focus on writing, and your songs stay yours. Publishing is available on its own: you don’t need to distribute with us. Publishing administration is handled through our affiliated company, Rick Smith Publishing.
Your Songs and Your Recordings, Covered
Distribution pays you for the recording. Publishing pays you for the song. Each side has to be registered and collected on its own. If you distribute with us too, we can register the songwriting side so it can collect alongside your recordings.
Metadata Is Money
Music is easier to get to than ever. Getting paid for it is the hard part.
Metadata is the information attached to a song: artist, title, genre, album, and release date. Streaming services use it to track what gets played and to pay the right copyright holders. If it’s wrong or missing, the money goes somewhere else or nowhere at all.
PRO (Performance Rights Organization) registration protects your rights and helps collect the performance royalties you’re owed. Getting all of that right, and keeping your registrations lined up, is what we do.
What We Handle
- Copyright registration
- Licensing
- Sync pitching and administration
- Metadata management
- Digital performance registration
- Worldwide royalty registration
Royalties We Administer
- Mechanical royalties
- Performance royalties — publisher side
- Sync royalties
- Print royalties, where that right applies under your agreement
- Digital royalties
For performance royalties, we administer and collect the publisher’s side. The writer’s share is paid directly to the writer by their PRO.
Worldwide Administration
We administer works worldwide, and we may use sub-publishers or collectors where needed to register works and collect income.
What Writers Need
Writers must be PRO-affiliated with BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC, and keep that affiliation current.
How Publishing Admin Works
1. Tell Us About Your Songs. Send an inquiry, choose Publishing in the form, and tell us about your catalog.
2. Sign the Admin Agreement. Publishing administration starts with a signed admin agreement.
3. Deliver Your Works. You deliver compositions, splits, and metadata, and co-writers confirm their shares in writing.
4. We Register and Claim. Copyright registration, song and catalog registration, and metadata cleanup, so each song is set up to collect. We register and update works with your PRO, claim them with The MLC, and load work metadata for tracking.
5. We License and Collect. Licensing administration and sync pitching and administration, plus digital performance and worldwide royalty registration. We collect the publishing income and account to you in statements.
6. You Keep Control of Your Songs. Administration is not ownership. Your songs stay yours; our job is making sure the writing side gets paid alongside the recording side.
Sync Pitching and Licensing Administration
Sync is the use of a song in film, television, advertising, games and other visual media. It can be valuable, and it is never guaranteed. Placement depends on creative fit, timing and the needs of a project, and it can take a long time.
What we do is the work underneath it: licensing administration and sync pitching and administration, with your songs registered and their metadata lined up so a use can be licensed and paid properly when interest comes in.
Good metadata and clear rights make music easier to license.
Send Us Your Songs
Many of the artists, labels and writers we work with came to us through someone we already know: a manager, a producer, another artist. If someone sent you our way, tell us who.
New names are welcome too. Send us what you’re working on. We review what comes in, and if it’s a fit, you’ll hear from us.
Publishing only? Just choose Publishing in the inquiry form.
