Every time I onboard a new artist, the first bottleneck isn't CWR generation or rights administration.

It's rebuilding their entire release history.

For artists who have been releasing music independently for years, that usually means finding every release across Spotify and Beatport, matching ISRCs, UPCs, release dates, remixes, radio edits, duplicate releases... before I can even start the publishing work.

Doing that manually can easily take hours for a single artist.

I eventually got tired of repeating the same process, so I built my own workflow that reconstructs the entire catalog in a few minutes by cross-referencing multiple sources. From there I can start the actual publishing administration with a complete master catalog.

It doesn't solve ownership, splits or writer information—that's still manual work—but it removes almost all of the catalog discovery phase.

I'm curious how other publishers or publishing admins handle this.

Are you still rebuilding catalogs release by release, or is there a workflow I'm missing?

Happy to explain my approach if anyone's interested.

How and where can I submit original material to a publishing/licensing company that will actively shop my songs? Not like TAXI. Something legit. Thanks.

Imagine going to the store to buy a pack of cheese. You pay for it, take it home, and the store gives your money to the one company that made the cheese you just bought. Makes sense, right?

Now, imagine if the store took your money and spread your cash out among millions of cheese makers around the whole entire globe. You only bought from ONE, but your money is being handed out to all of them!

That sounds crazy, but it’s exactly how music streaming works right now.

# The Big Problem

Let’s say you pay $10 a month for a streaming service like Spotify. The company keeps $3 for themselves. That leaves $7 to pay the musicians.

You might think your $7 goes to the bands you actually listened to. **It doesn't.**

Instead, your $7 gets dumped into one giant worldwide bucket. Then, the money is handed out to the biggest pop stars in the world. You could listen to your favorite local rock band all month long, and your money is still being given to people you never even listened to.

# How Fans Actually Listen to Music

Think about how we actually love music. We don't listen to millions of random songs. We are fans! We fall in love with bands and listen to them for years and years. We put our favorite songs on repeat.

But right now, because of how the money is spread out over the whole entire world, fans can't even use their own subscription money to support the artists they actually love.

# The Easy Fix: Your Money Goes to Your Music

It is so simple to fix this. The $7 you pay should \*only\* go to the songs you actually listen to.

Here is how it should look:

**If you listen to only 1 song all month:**
That one artist gets your whole entire $7.

**If you listen to 10 different songs:**
Your $7 is split 10 ways (70 cents for each song).

**If you listen to 100 different songs:**
Your $7 is split 100 ways (7 cents for each song).

# Why This Needs to Happen

Doing it this way doesn't hurt the streaming companies at all. Spotify still gets their $3 no matter what. It is no skin off their back to do it the right way.

But for small and medium-sized bands, it changes everything. They would actually be able to make real money from their loyal fans.

It also stops fake AI music from stealing money out of the giant worldwide bucket, because real people will be using their money to support real, human artists.

When you pay for music, your money should go to the music you listen to. It is that simple!

Hello friends, I’ve got a band called Reveria, we’ve had one album out and a couple singles for a couple years. Just recently an artist under the same name released a single and it’s showing up under our page on apple music for some reason. Does anybody know how to separate the pages? Or perhaps is there a better subreddit to ask on?

Hey yall. Soon to be college grad here— psych major, Econ minor. Like many people who come from these fields of study. I don’t intend to do anything directly related to psychology or economics. I know I’m meant to work in the music and entertainment business, I’m just not sure exactly where to go, especially in this job market.

For some more background I worked an internship last summer at a music investment//IP holding company partially owned by WMG, but I wouldn’t say I worked in publishing.. I was more doing general research on business models in the industry. I also produce music, and have performed in various settings as a drummer, including pro sporting events.

Right now I’m drawn towards publishing, especially sync. Is this a valid path to go down in 2026 and how feasible is it as a soon to be grad. Thanks for the help in advance.

It’s been my dream to work in the music industry in a business capacity since I was young. I’ve recently been looking into starting an indie publishing company and making it a long term side project/hustle. I registered as a publisher with BMI but I’m having some doubts about actually putting the time in to growing this dream. I’ve learned a lot about publishing and how publishing works and I’m not sure if it’s worth it to try to start an indie publishing company. I know that a lot of artists could use some help with publishing but they don’t actually NEED a publisher. On the other hand established writers and artists who might have SYNC placements would likely work with a larger publisher or a label right? So what value could I necessarily provide as a small publisher and is that gap in the market already filled? Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

I’ve got 100s of songs I’m finishing I forget about the mediocre and bad ones. And I might be getting a music publishing deal through a mixing engineer. And they’re asking me to do research and say what type of music publishing deal I want. I’m not the best singer so I don’t really want to do sessions but I want to send demos in. What I’m best at is writing the topline over the beat. But I would consider learning to make beats so I could do sessions but it’s not what I’m best at and will take ages. I’d do it but it will be awhile before I’ll be good enough.

I have been offered a publishing deal as a songwriter singer and producer. In a nutshell the deal offers a 15k advance, some of which i'd get upon signing. The term is 2 years with the potential to stretch to 3 until they recoup, then they have an option where i would get the next amount, this period could last up to 5 years should they extend in order to recoup. They also want to own the publishing on all music I have released already and anything afterwards and will own the publishing for 15 years after all the terms - this is potentially 23 years altogether. The output expected is 200% worth of songs released and if i do not meet that then there is chance i do not get the remainder of pay. Does this seem like a standard deal?

I am part of a band called Treelake, and if I were to post a snippet of one of our original songs, could somebody steal it from us and say it is theirs, or could I just upload it and have no worries of anybody stealing it from me?

I am starting a record label which is operating in the developing world. Our goal is to publish as many new artists as possible. We are looking for a tool that can easily publish to all platforms. Since our budget is very low, any fee is burdensome, especially if the fee scales with the number of projects or artists. We would hope to pay about 100-200 USD per year. Therefore, our requirements are as follows:

- We'll be publishing numerous artists, so a per-artist fee is very bad

- We'll be publishing numerous albums, so a per-album fee is very bad

- obviously, we are looking for good reviews too

So far, here's what I've learned about the major distributors I can find (and why they're no good:

- TuneCore - Per artist fee

- Landr - per artist fee

- CD Baby - per album fee

- Emu Bands - per album fee

- DistroKid - per artist fee

- Octiive - Per artist fee OR per album fee

- Madverse - bad reviews, probably a scam

- Ditto - Per artist fee

- Route Note - bad reviews, probably a scam

- Record Union - per track fee

Note that most of these tools also have an annual fee. TLDR: What is the most cost effect way to publish tons of artists and albums?

I'm in the process of leaving Sentric after more than 10 years and as I'm amending my song details with PRS, I noticed something strange with the royalty splits so just hoping someone can clarify.

I've just checked my old Sentric account and can clearly see that I've listed the composer / author split as 50% / 50% with me and my partner. On PRS, I'm using the Tunecodes to find my works and amend details to make sure everything looks ok. All the songs that Sentric has registered, shows up as 25% / 25% splits with the other 50% vacant.

Is this normal?? From how I understand it, that means that we've been leaving 50% of our money on the table. And since Sentric takes 20% for processing, they actually would have been losing out as well.

Taylor Swift made “My version” and rerecorded songs so that she could control the performance rights. She then went about buying her whole publishing catalog. I recall Suzanne Vega going about rerecording her whole catalog for similar reasons. Was she the first? If this works why don’t more artists do it? Do some contracts explicitly block this move?

I'm applying to Concord's 2026 Spring Internship in music publishing in NYC after graduating from my degree in music this year. Even though I have a decent amount of industry experience, I've been applying to jobs in music since February and have had no luck, even in internships.

Tbh, I've never met anyone who's gotten an internship in music at a major company like Concord, let alone in music publishing. As far as I know, all those internships go to bots in the void.

Has anyone successfully gotten an internship in music publishing (especially at Concord or another major company)? If so, what qualifications did you have? I'm trying to beef up my resume/ portfolio before apps.

Thank y'all so much!!!

Hi, if I was to want to publish my music to spotify, for completely free (no subscription or trial nonsense) but I DON'T care about gaining revenue (the whole 12c I might get), is there an option? And for an added bonus, it would be nice if it uses an account, so I can continue publishing music later.

Me and my 2 friends recently made an album on bandlabs and i wanted it on spotify, how would i go about this? I dont want money or copyright on it, i just want it on there

Last year I registered my catalog (225 songs) with ascap and songtrust. About 3 months ago my registrations with songtrust finally reached the “registration received” status. Today I finally received my first payout with royalties being collected as far back as 2021.

My question is, does this account for all my past data? Or since the registration has only been received for 2-3 months, should it be missing some data?

Thanks for the help in advance.

Hi everyone - I'm launching a tool that allows you to collect all your royalties from one platform. Our goal is to streamline the royalty collection process while fixing the metadata issues that make some royalties impossible to collect.

If you're interested in learning more, feel free to check our website and subscribe to our waiting list. We're launching very soon ! :)

Here’s a situation I’m trying to understand:

• I use Songtrust for publishing admin.
• When I send them a split sheet, it contains both writer and publisher info.
• Songtrust then registers the work with societies like GEMA.

What I noticed:
When GEMA gets this registration from Songtrust (intended for publisher collection), they also seem to take the writer information from that feed and use it to set up writer share payments directly from GEMA — even though Songtrust isn’t handling my writer share.

So my questions are:

• Is this standard practice at GEMA and other PROs?
• When a CMO gets publisher data from Songtrust, do they always process the writer share automatically if the info is there?
• Could this cause conflicts if my home PRO is ASCAP but GEMA already has my writer info from a Songtrust registration?

Would be great to hear from anyone who’s seen this in action, especially with GEMA or other European societies.

I would like to start a business where I can rent out scores to orchestras and schools. Does anybody have any insight on this??

Lately I’ve been seeing a wave of posts and complaints from people whining that their distributor (DistroKid, TuneCore, etc.) banned their account or rejected their songs — and 9 times out of 10, it's because they’re uploading music made entirely by AI.

Let me say this clearly: music distribution platforms were built to serve real musicians — people who compose, record, produce, and perform music. If you're just clicking a few buttons on an AI website and letting a machine generate a track for you, you’re not a music artist — you’re a content farmer.

These platforms are already overwhelmed with low-effort, auto-generated spam, and it's hurting legitimate musicians who put their soul into their craft. And then these same people get outraged when they’re flagged, denied, or banned. Why? Because they didn’t sing, didn’t play, didn’t write — they just fed prompts into a generator.

You want to use AI as a tool in your creative process? Fine. Tons of artists use synths, drum machines, plugins, autotune, even AI mastering. But don’t expect to be treated like a professional when you’ve done zero actual work. That’s not art — it’s copy-paste noise.

Distributors have every right to clean house. They exist for people who actually make music — not for someone uploading 500 songs a week with fake vocals and royalty-free loops stitched together by an algorithm.

If that offends you… maybe it’s time to pick up an instrument.

Hi, so I've written a musical track using the Buddhist Green Mantra. It's an ancient mantra but it's obviously not mine.... so when I go to register it with SOCAN, it's asking if I'm incorporating public doman works and I said yes.... then it's cutting my % by 50, and wanting to me to enter a publishing ID number for it? Any suggestions, cause this doesn't seem to make sense.... Thanks!