Dear Upcoming Artist: Music Distribution vs Music Publishing vs Music Licensing

As I’ve mentioned, the first step to understanding virtually everything in the music business is understanding the two music copyrights viz

• Sound recording/masters

• Composition/songwriting

I’ve seen questions across platforms about the difference between these phenomena and while it might seem basic, it’s important to understand the place of each of these in the career of an artist.

Music distribution

This is a means of making your music visible on relevant platforms. Distributors presumably liaise with services like Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Audiomack, who of course have submission requirements. For their service, distributors either charge an upfront fee or a percentage of the artist's royalties from the master recording. Some - not every distributor offers publishing administration service when setting up. Distributors only receive your master recording royalty, they have nothing to do with your composition royalty. Distribution speaks to the sound recording of a track.

Music Publishing

On the other hand has to do with musical composition. Music publishers primarily ensure that songwriters, producers receive royalties for their composition, while some work towards generating opportunities for the composition to be exploited and monetized. In exchange, the music publisher gets a cut of income generated by the songs.

PS: Publishing royalty rate, in some cases hinges on copyright legislation per region which of course, varies. As we know, in the US the Copyright Board ruled a 16% increase in songwriter’s pay, which caused ruckus between songwriters and Spotify, who appealed the rule. This is for the US alone and doesn't affect the UK, France or other region.

All things being equal, a music publisher’s role is cutting deals with songwriters, producers, promoting the work created and scouting relevant opportunities for placements of these songs in advertisements, movies, campaigns etc. Some publishers, especially on a large-scale like the UMPGs, Warner Chappell etc are hands-on from a songwriter or producer creative process to heavy promotion of materials produced. They have A&Rs whose core is guiding talents’ creative process, providing feedback/direction to songwriters/producers, suggesting directors/studios, matching songwriter-songwriters, songwriter-producers for collaborative efforts to produce interesting results. Such companies are more proactive in soliciting new opportunities especially with the records they were hands-on in creating while being more or less reactive with others. They will attend to opportunity requests but will not always seek them.

Music Licensing

Now, this isn’t the type we’re probably conversant with (re: sync licensing), this is a situation whereby another label or distributor buys rights to a project from an artist. More like, they pay the artist a fee and act as an ad hoc label, shouldering the responsibility of [maybe] producing, distributing and marketing the project in a particular market. Say, you’re signed or based in Nigeria, you’re garnering considerable momentum in the UK and want to drop a project. A label in the UK can license the project from you, meaning they now reserve rights to market/sell that album via their label in the UK. If they make loads of money selling the project in that region, their gain and if they don’t make anything close to what they paid you, their loss. The artist’s licensing fee remains - whether or not the album does well. This happens a lot between major/bigger labels and indie/smaller labels.

This is unlike Distribution where artists only make money on what they sell or whereby them or their label is producing or promoting it. Of course apart from the sizable cash flow, many do this for outside territory as the licensee knows the market better, has relationships with relevant partners consisting of the media, distributors, influencers etc. However, the inherent risk is if the project does so well in that region [within a period], it might make even the licensing fee seem relatively insignificant but it’s a fair gamble.