The Writer/Publisher Relationship

Music publishing is always a partnership between the publisher and the songwriter. The publisher acquires the copyrights, grants licenses, and collects the money, and the songwriter creates the songs and is their original owner. A publisher is a middleman, delivering the songs from the writer to the larger media businesses that sell or use music. The financial relationship between writer and publisher can take several forms:

The Full-Publishing Agreement

In general, the income collected by a publisher for a particular song is split equally between writer and publisher. For every dollar received, 50 cents is deemed the “writer’s share,” and 50 cents is the “publisher’s share.” It is very unusual for the publisher to ever keep more than half of the income collected.

Full-publishing agreements remain the most straightforward of the three, but are becoming less common—they are most appropriate for writers who are not well established, or who generate relatively small amounts of income.

The Co-Publishing Agreement

In this instance, the writer continues to receive half of the entire income as the “writer’s share,” but the writer also receives half of the “publisher’s share.” For every dollar the publisher receives, the writer receives 50 cents (writer’s share) and another 25 cents (co-publisher’s share). The publisher keeps the remaining 25 cents, as the other half of the “publisher’s share.”

Co-publishing agreements seem to be the industry standard now—most experienced writers will insist on keeping at least some of the publisher’s share of the money.

The Administration Agreement

In an administration agreement, the writer does not grant the copyrights to the publisher. Instead, the writer continues to own the copyrights, and simply employs the publisher to administer the licenses and collect the money. In exchange, the publisher receives an administration fee, usually around 10 percent of the income collected. So for every dollar of income, the writer gets 90 cents, and the publisher keeps 10 cents.

Administration deals are usually done only with extremely successful writers. Keeping only 10 or 15 percent of the income is not a worthwhile venture for most publishers.