Publishing deals: admin vs co-publishing

Two very different deals

“Getting a publishing deal” can mean two quite different things, and confusing them costs money. One is a service – someone collecting your royalties for a fee. The other is a partnership – someone taking a share of your songs and working them. Know which you’re being offered.

Publishing administration

A publishing admin deal is collection and registration. The admin registers your songs everywhere they need to be – PROs, The MLC, overseas societies – and collects the royalties worldwide, taking a percentage of what it brings in (commonly somewhere around 10–25%). You keep 100% of your copyright, the term is short, and there’s usually no advance or only a small one. What you don’t get is someone actively pushing your songs. For a self-writing artist who mainly needs to stop leaking royalties, an admin is often the right first step. Songtrust and CD Baby Pro are common examples.

Co-publishing

A co-publishing deal is a partnership. The writer keeps their writer’s share but gives the publisher a slice of the publisher’s share – typically ending up with the writer keeping around 75% of total publishing income and the publisher taking the rest. In exchange, the publisher pays an advance (recouped from the writer’s royalties before further payments) and actively works the catalog. A real publisher does more than collect: they pitch songs for sync, chase cuts with other artists, set up co-writes, clear samples, and develop the writer. That active work is what justifies giving up a share of ownership.

Which one fits

Roughly: if your artist mostly needs their existing royalties collected properly, an admin deal does that without giving anything up. If they need a partner with money and relationships to grow the catalog – and the songs are strong enough to be worth working – a co-publishing deal can be worth the share. Either way, don’t sign until you know what the catalog actually earns, because that number sets what any deal is worth.

The black box

One more reason registration matters: the black box. When royalties – especially mechanicals – can’t be matched to an owner because of missing or conflicting registration and splits, they sit unclaimed. The amounts are not small; The MLC alone took in hundreds of millions in historical unmatched streaming royalties. There’s a long-running fight over how leftover unmatched money eventually gets distributed, but you don’t want to be relying on that – the fix is entirely on your side. Register every work, file the splits correctly, keep them consistent, and your share never becomes someone else’s unclaimed money. It’s the throughline of the whole royalties guide: the music earns automatically, but only registration gets it to your artist.