Do you know what music publishing is? As a song writer or musician, you should. Why? To put it simply, because your portion of the profits stemming from your songs depends heavily upon music publishing and your knowledge of the copyright laws which affect it.
The law defines music publishing as a contractual relationship between the songwriter or music composer and a music publisher, on which the writer assigns various music copyrights to the publisher in exchange for the publisher’s commercial exploitation of the music. Basically, this definition is a lot of big words that mean you, as the creator of a lyric or music of a song, can sell your song and make money from the sale using a music publisher.
In most cases, music publishers will make an agreement with song writers to purchase the various copyrights to their songs in exchange for promoting the song to the recording industry, as well as video and television entertainment venues. They may offer a small up front advance on royalty earnings to the writer. Most generally, the music publisher will enter this arrangement with the contracted terms that they will be entitled to a 50/50 share of any future royalties earned from the song they are promoting. The music publisher is then responsible for promoting the song, keeping track of where the song is used and collecting the royalty payments for its use. Once any advance money paid to the writer has been recouped, the publishing company is also responsible for disbursing the writers portion of the royalty payments to them.
