Collecting your songwriting royalties as well as your recording royalties
When you release a song, two things can generate money: the recording, which is the file people hear, and the work, which is the music and lyrics that make it up. If you write what you record, both are yours. But they are collected through different channels, and the second one doesn't switch on by itself when you upload the track to the platforms.
The recording and the work are two different rights
The recording side (the master) is collected by whoever owns it: the artist or their label. It comes through the distributor, which delivers the track to the platforms and pays you what it earns.
The songwriting side belongs to the people who composed the music and wrote the lyrics. It is collected through a collecting society or a publisher, not through the distributor. A music publisher, in this context, is the company that registers your works and collects their rights on your behalf.
Who collects: SGAE, Unison and the publisher
In Spain, the best-known collecting society is SGAE. There is also Unison, a private songwriting rights administrator based in Barcelona. In July 2023 it had more than 700 clients in more than 30 countries and managed the rights to more than 2.7 million musical works. Those figures are from that date and may have changed.
Unison launched SOLO, a platform for managing digital rights with a dashboard where you can see what compositions and recordings earn. It is a Unison tool, and it doesn't replace the step of registering your works.
The publisher acts as an intermediary. It registers your works with the societies and keeps track of them, so that what is earned in each territory ends up reaching the songwriter.
What to settle between songwriters before you release
So that the work can be registered and paid without disputes, it's worth being clear on this before you submit the release:
- Who composed the music and who wrote the lyrics.
- What percentage of the songwriting right belongs to each person.
- That the split is the same everywhere you declare it.
This songwriting split is different from the recording split between artist, producer and collaborators. They are two separate splits and are declared separately.
Our view: it's the step most often left for later. Uploading a single takes an afternoon and you see the recording money arrive, so it feels like everything is in motion. Nothing warns you that the songwriting side isn't being collected. This is our reading, not a measured figure.
The specific requirements for joining or registering works (fees, documents, deadlines) are set by each society. Check their website before you start.
How we do it
With MusicAdders' Publishing service we register the songwriters and your songs with SGAE and Unison. We monetise your songwriting rights worldwide from the moment you release. On YouTube we protect your works with Content ID, the system that recognises your songs when they appear in videos. When you submit your release, you split the songwriting rights between composers and lyricists in Workstation, and you keep 100% of your rights. If you want to know how it would look in your case, see what our Publishing service includes or tell us about your next release.