Having a publishing administrator is different from having a publisher. Similar to services provided by Songtrust or add-on services by CDBaby and Tunecore, a publishing administrator collects publishing income worldwide for songwriters. Publishers may offer pub admin services as part of their offerings, but publishing administration and the act of publishing music is very different. Publishers own some or all of the copyright of the song/composition. If you own your songs, you are your own publisher.

Killphonic Rights collects and negotiates public performance royalties and mechanical royalties for songwriters domestically and internationally. US songwriters are able to collect their own mechanical royalties through organizations like The MLC and public performance royalties through their PRO (such as BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, etc.), but are limited to these domestic sources while pub admin companies (such as Killphonic Rights) are able to directly collect these types of royalties through YouTube (indie songwriters are unable to do so easily by themselves) and other international sources, societies, and organizations.

There are hundreds of sources to collect publishing royalties from around the world. It can be helpful to have a pub admin collect these royalties directly on your behalf (songwriting income from your PRO is still paid directly to you). As long as you have an affiliation with a PRO, you can assign a publishing administrator to do these direct collections for you. Killphonic Rights can make the song registration process much easier and can also help resolve conflicts with song registration data.

Similarly to Songtrust, SoundSync and Killphonic take a combined 15% cut of all royalties it collects on your behalf.

You will still need to register as a songwriter with a PRO, but you will not have to register each of your songs with the PRO as the pub admin will do that for you.

Your public performance royalties are earned in relation to the public performance of your compositions. A "public performance" is any time your composition is broadcast on the radio, broadcast in a retail environment, streamed online, and any time there is a live performance of a composition whether it is performed by the original songwriter or not. Public performance royalties are split 50/50 between publishing royalties and songwriting royalties. If you are a songwriter without a publisher, you are considered your own publisher and you are entitled to both songwriting royalties and publishing royalties.

Mechanical royalties are generated every time a copy of a composition is created (whether it is physically copied through CDs/vinyl/etc or digitally copied through streams or digital broadcast). They are earned only by the publisher (which could be you, if you are your own publisher). In the US, these royalties are collected by the Harry Fox Agency or through the Mechanical Licensing Collective (“The MLC”). However, like public performance royalties, you may be limited in the collection of mechanical royalties without a publishing administrator collecting and negotiating on your behalf.

Whether or not you already have a pub admin, let us know and we can help you through the process of signing up.