Music Business/Law Tips - "Label/Publisher Royalty Split"

Historically, royalty splits from record sales between the record label that recorded and released the record and the music publisher that provided the song embodied on the record have greatly favored the label. For downloads and physical record sales - after the distributor deducts its share - the publisher receives about 13% of the revenue (mechanical royalty), while the label is paid the rest. This trend continues with streaming. According to Spotify, it pays 21% to publishers, while the label is paid the rest. Hence, labels on average seem to make between 4-5 times as much as publishers from sales and streaming. Because of this, there is a lot of chatter about trying to make the splits more favorable to publishers/songwriters since records do not sell as much anymore and streaming does not pay as much (yet). It will be interesting to see if any changes occur down the line. Ben McLane Esq benmclane.com