Administration vs. Co-Publishing

We are publishing administrators and we feel it is preferable except in instances where a co-publishing deal comes coupled with a team that is able and desirous of taking the talent to another career level.

OWNERSHIP

The primary advantage is that you are not transferring equity (partial or total ownership) in your songs to a third party. You are retaining all ownership and control for yourself.

CONTROL

You don’t have to worry about your song ending up in a kitty litter commercial or an X-rated video, unless you have approved it.

FLEXIBILITY

If you don’t like your administrator, you can fire them and hire a new one. Your rights are portable. This terminability tends to make administrators more responsive to your concerns.

SPLITS

Because you are not building advances and banking functions into your publishing deal, you will ordinarily get a bigger share of the income than you would receive in a co-publishing deal.

OWNERSHIP

Most likely a major multi-national corporation will co-own and totally control the rights to your song. Do you really want to have a multi-national corporation as your business partner?

LITTLE FLEXIBILITY

You are usually stuck with your co-publisher for the life of your copyrights, or for at least for a very long period of time.

BANKING FUNCTION

Major corporations that give you large publishing advances are “betting” that you will earn more money than they are giving you up front. And in fact, if they didn’t win lots of these “bets”, they’d go out of business. By taking large up-front advances, you are “betting” against yourself. (You think you’ll earn less money than the corporation thinks you will. And they’re professional bettors.)

SPLITS

Here are the main components to what a co-publisher must charge you for their services:

1. The cost and profit on the actual administration work;
2. The interest cost of advancing you the money;
3. The cost of recovering unrecouped advances given to other writers who failed to earn back what they were given.