Publishing Admin.
If you wrote the song you uploaded — not just performed and recorded it — you are owed a second pot of money on top of the streaming royalties element59 already pays you. That money is collected by performing-rights organisations (ASCAP, BMI, PRS, GEMA, SOCAN) and mechanical-rights agencies (MLC, MCPS) in dozens of territories, and you need a publishing administrator to gather it for you. element59 is not one of those administrators. This page exists to point you at the partner who is.
Read this once, then go register. The five-minute version: if you wrote any of your tracks and want the underlying composition royalties, sign up with Songtrust. It's a one-time $100 fee for multi-territory publishing administration. element59 will never collect publishing royalties on your behalf — that's a different regulatory beast and a different business.
What publishing royalties are
▷ In one sentence: Royalties paid to the songwriter and publisher each time a composition is reproduced or performed — distinct from master/recording royalties, which we already pay you, and distinct from neighbouring rights, which the other page covers.
There are two layers of copyright in every recorded song:
1. The master / sound recording. The specific captured performance. element59 distributes this to DSPs (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) through our aggregator partner and pays you the streaming, download, and physical royalties. This part is already handled.
2. The underlying composition. The melody and lyrics, separate from any particular performance. Whenever a recording of your composition is streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed in a venue, or licensed for sync (film/TV/ads), additional royalties are owed to the songwriter and publisher. element59 does not collect these.
Within publishing there are three sub-categories of royalty:
- Mechanical royalties — paid each time the composition is reproduced (streamed, downloaded, sold). In the US the MLC collects from streaming services; in the UK MCPS does similar; other territories have their own. - Performance royalties — paid when the composition is performed publicly (radio, restaurants, streaming on the writer side, live venues). Collected by PROs: ASCAP / BMI / SESAC / GMR (US), PRS for Music (UK), SOCAN (Canada), GEMA (Germany), SACEM (France), JASRAC (Japan), and 50+ others globally. - Sync royalties — one-off licence fees when your composition is used in film, TV, advertising, or video games.
Each territory has its own rules, its own collection society, and its own claim process. To get paid in all of them, an independent songwriter typically needs a publishing administrator — Songtrust is the standard third-party admin in this space, with multi-territory coverage from a single sign-up.
What Songtrust does
▷ In one sentence: Songtrust registers your compositions with PROs and mechanical agencies in 245+ territories, collects on your behalf, and pays you a share — for a one-time fee plus a percentage of collections.
Songtrust is a publishing administrator owned by Downtown Music Holdings. They do four things for the independent songwriter:
1. Register your compositions with PROs and mechanical agencies in every territory they have a relationship with — currently 245+, which covers virtually all the money there is to collect. 2. Collect mechanical and performance royalties as the publisher of record. They negotiate with DSPs, broadcasters, and CMOs directly. 3. Match your works to streams, broadcasts, and sync placements that PROs and CMOs have logged but not yet paid out (the "black box" problem — billions of dollars sit unmatched in PRO accounts). 4. Pay you out quarterly with a single statement covering every territory, in your preferred currency.
What Songtrust does NOT do:
- They are not a music distributor — they don't put your tracks on Spotify. (That's us.) - They are not a label — they don't sign artists or own master recordings. - They are not a sync-licence shop — they collect on syncs that other people place; they don't pitch your music to film/TV. - They are not a record-side neighbouring-rights collector — that's PPL / SoundExchange / GVL etc., covered on our Neighbouring Rights page.
The cost as of writing: a one-time $100 sign-up fee + 15% of collected royalties. They pay you the remaining 85%. There is no exclusivity — you can leave at any time and your registrations transfer or expire on a schedule documented in their member agreement.
Why element59 doesn't collect publishing royalties
▷ In one sentence: Becoming a publishing administrator means becoming a sub-publisher with bilateral agreements in every territory, separate from the music-distribution business we actually run.
Publishing administration is its own business. To do it well — and to do it without losing artist money on the floor — we'd need to:
- Negotiate sub-publishing agreements with PROs in every territory where our artists earn (50+). - Become a member of the MLC in the US and MCPS in the UK, with their associated audit and licensing obligations. - Add a parallel writer-side ledger track to the master-side ledger we already operate, with different royalty calculation rules per territory. - Maintain a black-box matching pipeline against PRO statements (a huge data-engineering project on its own). - Acquire and maintain ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code) registrations for every composition.
Songtrust already does all of that, at scale, with a 15-year track record. The right answer for element59's customers is to point you at them and stay out of the publishing business entirely. We will never charge you a percentage on publishing royalties — because we'll never see them. The money flows from broadcaster or DSP → CMO/PRO → Songtrust → you, with element59 nowhere in the chain.
What we do track
▷ In one sentence: Whether you've told us you're registered with Songtrust (or another publishing admin), your member ID, your writer name + PRO affiliation — used only to skip nudges and (later) to auto-fill writer credits on track upload.
When you tell us during onboarding "I'm registered with Songtrust" and (optionally) provide your member ID + writer name + PRO affiliation, we store a PublishingAdmin row tied to your account. That row is:
- Pure metadata. No money is attached to it. We don't see, hold, or pay any publishing royalties. - Used to skip the nudge. If you've told us you're registered, we won't keep asking. - Used by a future auto-fill flow (gated behind partnership maturity). Once Songtrust grants partner API access, the track upload form will be able to pre-fill writer/composer credits from your roster — saving you typing on every release. Until that lands, the upload form behaves exactly as it does today. - Cascaded with your account. If you delete your account, this row is removed. We do not (and cannot) coordinate that delete with Songtrust — you handle the Songtrust-side closure separately under their member agreement.
You can update or remove a registration at any time from /app/settings/publishing. The member ID is treated as PII-adjacent — never displayed in non-admin operator surfaces, never sent to any third party.
What about manual statement uploads?
▷ In one sentence: Some artists ask their publishing admin for the quarterly CSV statement and want to see those numbers next to their master royalties on the same dashboard — that's coming as a separate ticket and is operator-mediated for now.
A future PR (T-K.2.7+) lets the operator team upload a Songtrust quarterly CSV on a member's behalf so the artist can see publishing earnings in their /app/royalties page next to their master royalties. The numbers stay clearly separated — labelled "Publishing (via Songtrust)" with a tooltip — and no money flows through element59. The artist still receives the actual payment from Songtrust directly.
That capability is not in this PR. If you'd like to opt-in early, reach out to hello@element59.com.
What this page does not say
▷ In one sentence: This is a pointer, not legal advice — talk to a music lawyer or to Songtrust support if anything below is unclear for your situation.
This page is information, not legal counsel. Publishing-rights regimes vary by territory, and the exact entitlements depend on your songwriter status, co-writer splits, work-for-hire arrangements, and existing publisher relationships. If you already have a publisher (a major like Universal Music Publishing, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, or a sub-publisher arrangement) you cannot also sign with Songtrust — the works are exclusively administered.
If you're a co-writer, you only register your share. Songtrust's onboarding asks for splits (e.g. 50/50 between you and another writer) and they only collect on the percentage you control. We don't model writer splits in element59 yet (separate from the existing master Split model — that's recording-side only); when we do, the schema lives in a different place from this page.
If you're a session musician or non-featured performer who didn't write any of the song, publishing administration doesn't apply to you — you're owed neighbouring rights instead, which the other page covers.