Firstly, please note that I’m based in the UK and publishing rules vary dramatically throughout different territories, so this might not be relevant if you are reading from elsewhere.

Secondly this article is for guidance purposes only and I accept no responsibility for any action relating to it, you should always seek independent legal advice before signing any agreement, this document covers only the basics of what can be a very complicated legal subject.

Publishing
If there is one subject that seems to cause confusion amongst people who are making music, it’s publishing rights. I must admit myself there are still aspects of it which seem contradictory, where you can ask 3 people the same question, and recieve 3 entirely different answers.

The first thing to separate are the two completely separate ownerships of a piece of music; the ownership of the recording (commonly known as the masters) and the ownership of the musical work i.e the notation and lyrics (known as the publishing)

Mechanicals
As an artist or label, the mechanicals are I guess the first thing to get your head around.

By law, a record company who presses a recording, should first obtain an MCPS AP2 licence. This licence sets out what is being pressed and crucially the number of records you are pressing. Pressing plants should by law again ask for this licence before they press records.

As an artist you can be in 3 main publishing states; published, unpublished or a writer member of the MCPS.

If you are published or a member of the MCPS, the record company should pay the MCPS around 8.5%* of the dealer price of all the records pressed (notice I say pressed and not sold!).

If you are not published, the record company will get an AP2 pending form which basically means that they can press the records, but the MCPS payment is pending upon the artist making a claim in the future. This point is important because it means that publishing is back datable up to a certain point, which is years not months (I will phone the MCPS to check this point)

Importantly, up to 25% of the first pressing (up to 400 copies) of a single can be offset as ‘promotional’. By rights these records should be marked not for resale.

*The actual % is variant upon the type of release i.e. whether it is a single, ep album etc.

MCPS alone probably wont make you a fortune, but it is money that you are owed and can mount up over the years. As an artist you should keep and eye out for sneaky contractual clauses in your recording contract which waiver the labels responsibility to pay MCPS or publishing.

The MCPS is part of your publishing and therefore is split between the writers. So for example if you have a record where you have someone fronting it and another person who wrote it, the MCPS is payable to the writer(s)

Broadcast royalties

PRS is one of those things that can deliver a pleasant surprise in the post twice a year, almost entirely out of the blue. I say ‘out of the blue’ because we generally haven’t got much of an idea of how much our material is being used on the radio and TV, let alone knowing whether the PRS have been able to collect the data on that particular radio station at that particular time.

That major broadcasters actually do have to submit everything that they play, but local radio etc is not so tightly monitored.

PRS royalties are royalties for the performance of your musical work (not for the performance of the recording, the PPL collect this). This extends from Radio and TV, to gigs, right through to the pleasant lady from the PRS asking for my track listing when I’m DJ’ing in the West End.

As an artist I do recommend joining the PRS, even if you have a publisher, the PRS usually (if not always, I’m not sure) pay 50% of publishing to the publisher and the other 50% to the artist directly. So if you are on a 75/25 deal with you publisher, 50% will come to you direct from the PRS and your publisher will give you 50% of what they have received to make up to 75%.

The label doesn’t receive or have to pay PRS. The label instead collect broadcast royalties for the use of the recording via the PPL. The PPL give 50% of royalties to the label, and the other 50% is split between the people performing on the record.

Cover versions
A very common misconception is that to do a cover version of a track (rather than sampling which is a completely different pit of snakes) you don’t not have to obtain permission from the original writers publisher. This rule only applies if you are doing an exact cover, as in, same arrangement, instrumentation etc. therefore in almost all cases you will need to obtain permission from the publisher of the original work. You are not automatically entitled to any of the publishing of the new version and whether you can negotiate any depends upon who you are really.

If you were to sample a record then not only would you have to deal with the publisher, but also have clear the sample with the record company of the original recording, which can be very expensive and they are under no obligation to allow it at all!

© Nathan Boddy 2008 unauthorised copying or duplication prohibited.

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