The following information is regarding TuneCore's Publishing Administration service
Your decision to be affiliated with a performing rights society is an excellent and very necessary choice, but that doesn’t cover everything. Unless you have a publishing administrator, there is a 100% chance that you are missing out on publishing income.
Collecting royalties for the songs that you write is a different revenue stream for the royalties paid for the recordings you distribute through TuneCore. Ensuring every single cent is collected and ensuring that you don’t leave any publishing royalties on the table can be a complicated process. That is why we are here to help!
A performing rights organization like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC only collect performance royalties. Performance royalties are just one of the revenue streams derived from the composition. This typically covers live performance, television, radio airplay, digital radio and satellite radio, it also covers part of the interactive streaming revenue from services like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Mechanical royalties derived from interactive streaming or digital downloads are not included in the payment that TuneCore receives from the digital stores for distribution. These royalties are also not collected by the PROs such as ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. This can be as much as 50 - 71% of publishing revenue that you may be missing out on.
The short answer is yes, you absolutely need both and if you don’t have both you’re losing money. The common misconception is that ASCAP and BMI are collecting publishing income, which they are, but not all publishing income. As we mentioned, BMI and ASCAP deal exclusively in the business of performance royalties and are not able to collect any other royalty by law. Ultimately, what this means, taking Spotify as an example, you’re missing out on the majority of your publishing income every time a song is streamed on Spotify. Certain revenue sources generate multiple royalties. A pub. admin works in tandem with your PRO to maximize performance royalties globally in addition to collecting important royalty sources such as mechanical royalties.
This information is written focused on the United States market. While international rules and regulations may be different for a society outside of the US, there are no reciprocal agreements in place for mechanical royalties in the US and CANADA.
Check out our blog for more information about why you need Tunecore and a society affiliation.