What the hell is a music publishing company

what do they do?

Are they record labels??

a company that publishes music

where the money i$

^^^

lock thread

music publishing companies, music publishing companies are a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens.

sheet music mostly. there is a small, steady market for sheet music.

who buy sheet music?
I joined BMI because it was free

now money will start rollin g in!!!

i thought it was tv/ad/film placements mostly.

They collect revenue for composers, source material for acts who don't write, and try to get their roster syncs on TV, film and video games.

yeah, that's my understanding

You mean to tell me that BMI and ASCAP don't peddle the piano score to Man of Lamancha to old ladies smelling faintly of lavender?

ASCAP and BMI are not music publishing companies - they're performance rights organizations, meaning they collect and distribute payment for public performances of music - largely radio airplay (considered a "performance" for no particular logical reason) but also live performance.

I'll try to explain publishers as best I understand them -- they do handle sheet music but that's not really their main purpose anymore.

You have to think of a recorded piece of music as two separate things - a recording and a composition. The record label tends to only own/handle the recording, whereas a publisher will handle the composition itself -- e.g. when someone covers your song, royalties go to the publisher but not the record label since there's no use of the recording.

Publishing also covers "performance rights", which for weird reasons include radio airplay (radio has to pay for performance rights but NOT rights to the sound recording). So anytime a DJ plays your recording, the radio station pays your publisher but not your record label; same, obviously, with live covers. I think "sync rights" for film and TV might go through both the owner of the recording and the owner of the composition, but I'm not sure?

Anyway, ASCAP and BMI are the organizations that monitor and collect from radio stations, performance venues, etc. and then distribute it to whoever holds the performance rights - which is often a publishing company.

funny article about ASCAP from 1996: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html

thanks - that is helpful.

I guess the whole industry has become pretty convoluted over the century what with technological changes.
I heard "mechanical rights" has something to do originally with making rolls for player pianos

I don't think that's right.

Yeah, no. From The Harry Fox Agency (who have likely been doing this stuff SINCE the player piano era:

If you are manufacturing and distributing copies of a song which you did not write, and you have not already reached an agreement with the song's publisher, you need to obtain a mechanical license. This is required under U.S. Copyright Law, regardless of whether or not you are selling the copies that you made.

You do not need a mechanical license if you are recording and distributing a song you wrote yourself, or if the song is in the public domain.

Actually he's right. The term "mechanical license" originates with piano rolls, although it has come to refer to recordings.

Also I don't know if you were disagreeing with what I said, but to be clear, that doesn't contradict what I said. The "mechanical license" there is still a license to record a particular composition, as opposed to a license to a particular recording.

don't worry about it, these people don't do anything for you unless you become surprisingly famous all of a sudden.

Always feel like these guys are a sham. In Ireland and probably Britain, you have to pay them fees if you run a clubnight. You aren't asked to list what djs have played, just supposed to trust them in their all knowing fairness to put some money back into whatever music scene the club is part of...

so sham for club nights, plus for bands.

when someone covers your song, royalties go to the publisher

How big a cut does the publishing company take? Or at least how big a cut do they say they take, as since they're collecting the royalties before distributing them it must be pretty easy to misrepresent how much they take in...

I believe the MCPS send statements out to members (i.e. songwriters)

ASCAP, he emphasized, is "a nonprofit organization owned by its member songwriters and 57 composers" that returns to them 83 cents of every domestic licensing dollar it collects. Last year it collected some S 320 million in licensing fees in the United States, he said, and returned $ 254 million. The remaining $ 66 million went for operating costs, he said, heavily augmented by membership and licensing fees collected overseas.

Ok, this is from that 1996 article. Not a bad deal, honestly.