What's the Difference Between the Writer's Share and Publisher's Share and Why Does It Matter?

When dealing with public performance royalties, every musical composition has two sets of rights that your PRO pays out: the writer's share and the publisher's share. As the original copyright holder, you inherently own both shares. However, you can choose to transfer all or some of the rights in the publisher's share through a publishing or co-publishing agreement. Public performance royalties by default are split this way, with one half being sent to the songwriters directly (writer’s share) and, in most cases, the other half is required to be collected by a publisher (publisher’s share).

With services like Easy Song’s publishing administration, you now have the ability to collect 100% of both your writer's and publisher's share without having to sacrifice any ownership! By entering into an administration agreement, rather than a publishing or co-publishing deal, you maintain ownership of your rights as a copyright holder and instead solely transfer administration rights in the publisher's share to Easy Song so we can collect your publisher's share on your behalf.

With some collection agencies and societies, Easy Song may also collect your writer’s share on your behalf. However, we do not take any commission from the royalties collected on your writer’s share, and will pay 100% of those royalties to you.  Right now, we are only collecting your writer’s share directly from a few select sources, so writer's share royalties from any other places will be delivered directly by the writer’s Performance Rights Organization (PRO).

If you release music in the United States, 100% of mechanical royalties are collected by the publisher.