Anna Bond: There are enumerable misconceptions to have about the world of publishing. I think the biggest one is that it's too hard to understand. There is something about music publishing and the fact that it feels like it's got so many parts and it's got so much complexity and there's so many people involved that people just want to push it away and not deal with it, which doesn't work because then you're not collecting your royalties.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and slowly getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker: All right. So I'm super excited to be here with Anna Bond, who is the Senior Director of Global Business Development at Songtrust. No relations to James Bond, or at least she says so. I feel like she would have to lie about it if she was because he's a secret agent and whatnot, but Songtrust is a huge, huge company. It's been featured in Billboard, Rolling Stone, Forbes, and they're using current technology to be able to help songwriters and artists to collect the publishing royalties that they're owed across the internet.

Michael Walker: And so, today, I thought it would be really helpful to dive into that world of publishing royalties and figuring out how to utilize the current tools, like Songtrust, to be able to collect on the revenue that you deserve, as a songwriter. So Anna, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Anna Bond: Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Walker: All right. So I'd love to start out just by digging a little bit into your story and hearing a little bit about how you got started at Songtrust.

Anna Bond: Sure. So I've been at Songtrust for about two years now. Prior to that, I was on the label side. In the publishing and label world, there's the master side and the composition side and they always have an uneasy relationship. So I came from the master side at record labels and then I went to the composition side at Songtrust. And both aspects of that world have their challenges, but they also have a lot of opportunities.

Anna Bond: So I was at record labels for about 15 years and joined Songtrust a couple of years ago because I really believe in the mission of empowering independent musicians and songwriters and making sure that there is an option for music publishing royalty administration that doesn't require that you give away too many rights, that doesn't require that you're paying for services, like creative services, that you might not need. And yeah, I've found that I really aligned with Songtrust's mission.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. If I'm hearing you right, it sounds like you said that you kind of ... there's two major sides and you almost joined the dark side or you [inaudible 00:03:02].

Anna Bond: The dark side depends on who you ask.

Michael Walker: Oh, that's awesome. So having worked with a lot of artists, I know Songtrust has a huge catalog of artists, what have you noticed have been some of the biggest challenges, some of the struggles that musicians, when they first get started at Songtrust, what's the ... If you had to put it and summarize it into a main solution that Songtrust is providing, how would you describe that problem that they're solving?

Anna Bond: Well, I think there are a couple of problems. And one of them is that the music publishing world has been very opaque for a very long time. And there are a number of reasons for that. And one of them is that, ultimately, any royalties that aren't collected go to the majors and their biggest artists. So we can see the money talks in terms of who's being motivated to educate songwriters as to what their rights are and what they can be collecting. It's not the folks that benefit if they don't get their money. So there's the issue of opacity, there's an issue of access. For a very long time, the only real way to get fully publishing administered, to get fully administered to get all your rights collected, was to sign with a traditional publisher. There weren't really a lot of other options out there.

Anna Bond: And traditional publishers are great. They do incredible work for their artists, but they're not right for everyone. And coming from the label side, I worked at independent labels and I saw a lot of indie artists earlier in their career, they're starting to get a little bit of buzz, they sign a pub deal with an excellent, reputable company earlier than they should've, they didn't have a lot of leverage, it wasn't a very advantageous deal. I always like to say they got five grand, they bought a van, and then they never thought about it again. That's a big problem. Not thinking about it again is a big problem.

Anna Bond: So Songtrust really makes this global publishing network accessible. Anyone can sign up to Songtrust. You can go to Songtrust.com and sign up right now if you have any songs that you need administered and we'll do it for you. And having that option means that artists at any stage of their career can get this really easy, accessible option, get their rights sorted, they know they're collecting everything they're owed and they don't have to do any additional contracts. They don't have to sign up with any additional companies that might be saying, "We want your sync money. We want to take some copyright ownership," all these other things that traditional publishers are going to ask for.

Anna Bond: And again, they do a lot of great work, so it makes sense that they're going to ask for, say, higher fees or they're going to ask for more creative control, but if you don't want that, there's now an option where there didn't used to be an option.

Anna Bond: And I would say education, kind of going along with that, because of the traditionally opaque nature of this industry, education is a huge part of what Songtrust does. We have tons of educational materials available on our site. We have a downloadable free Modern Guide to Music Publishing that really starts at the very basic level and goes to a pretty complex, global picture and is built for anyone just starting out or anyone who's in the industry or who's got a career who wants a refresher on, "These are my rights. This is how I handle them."

Anna Bond: So Songtrust is really there to be the resource for ... you register your songs with us, we're administering them globally, you know that you're getting all the money, period, the end. And that's really what we're built for, to empower people to know that they are benefiting from their rights as a songwriter as much as possible.

Michael Walker: Wow. That's so awesome. I feel grateful for things like what we're doing right now and for the internet and information, being able to share information like this in an open way, which sounds like that's really a big part of the mission of Songtrust, is to be able to empower musicians by creating more transparency. So in a nutshell, it sounds like what you guys do is you really simplify the process of getting your songs published and collecting those royalties where, without that, there was a lot of uncollected royalties that were just kind of sitting in the ether. And because of the lack of a good system for delivering those royalties, they just decided to give them to the people like the major artists. Is that right?

Anna Bond: Yeah. So for a long time, the process was that, after a certain period of time being uncollected, uncollected royalties would go into what was called the black box and then they'd be reallocated. And what reallocated means is that they go to the major players who then deal with them as they need to, but then you're going to look at the contracts of the big writers, of the big stars, and it's going to say, "We get some of the black box." Right? So if you earn $1,000 and you don't collect it, Drake gets your $1,000 or Taylor Swift gets your $1,000. And they might both be great, but they don't need your $1,000. You probably need it more than they do.

Anna Bond: So the idea is really to prevent that reallocation by making sure that people go out and get those royalties. Now, there's an asterisk to this because, just at the beginning of this year, January 1st, 2021, was the launch of a very exciting organization called The Mechanical Licensing Collective or the MLC. And the MLC was built as a solution, a nonprofit funded by the DSPs, like Spotify, Apple Music, digital service providers, funded by the DSPs in order to make that information about song registrations and uncollected royalties public. And because the DSPs are paying for it, there's no fee to use the MLC. It's for the US only and it's for mechanical royalties only.

Anna Bond: So again, if you're looking for a one-stop shop and you're looking for global pub admin, the MLC and BMI together are not your solution. That's a partial solution, but the MLC, I think, one of the great things about it is that they've been doing a lot of education and they're really focused on that transparency and artist empowerment that has always been a Songtrust core value. And I'm excited about the idea that, with them also publicizing this information, there are going to be even more songwriters out there, producers, anyone who has songwriting credit on a song knowing, "These are my rights. I'm going to go get them." And whether they work with Songtrust, which of course we hope they will, we think we're the best solution, or they go out and get a publishing deal, they know that that's an option. And I think that's really exciting.

Michael Walker: Yeah. That's amazing. So one question that I personally ... So this isn't necessarily my lane of expertise. So I'm learning, too, [inaudible 00:09:44]. It's great. So I know the limited amount that I understand about publishing rules, I registered some songs under SESAC for my band a few years ago and it sounds like that's not enough, in and of itself. Right? Or is it? How exactly does it work? So for anyone who's listening to this right now and is like, "Well, I registered my songs with BMI," or, "I registered my songs with SESAC," what are they missing out on if all they do is that?

Anna Bond: So SESAC or BMI are performing rights organizations. They're excellent, longstanding organizations. The other one in the US, obviously, is ASCAP, but they're only collecting performance royalties. So if you're only registered with a PRO, you're collecting public performance royalties for if your song is performed live, either by you or someone else. Hopefully, that all can start happening again soon. If your song is played on the radio, broadcast for internet radio, if your song is played in a café or a retail store, all of these public performances of your songs incur a royalty, but they aren't collecting mechanical royalties. And mechanical royalties are earned when a physical copy of your CD, LP is sold, cassette tape, anything, a digital download is sold or the song is streamed.

Anna Bond: Now, streaming, because it's a completely different type of usage for the music industry, when streaming kind of came on the scene with Spotify in 2011, it incurs both a mechanical and a performance royalty and it's about equal, in terms of it's half mechanical, half performance, in terms of the publishing royalties earned by a stream, but if you're only with a PRO, you're only collecting the performance half. And you want to make sure that you're also collecting that mechanical half, as well as mechanical royalties earned by physical sales, which are usually paid by record labels or distributors.

Michael Walker: Super interesting. So with the mechanical royalties, if you distributed the songs through DistroKid or through TuneCore and something like that, are they collected through there, as well, or is that something separate?

Anna Bond: No. If you're self-releasing through a distributor, like a distribution platform like a CDBaby or DistroKid, you probably don't have to pay yourself mechanicals, unless you have a publisher who asks you to, but the streaming mechanicals are still coming directly from the DSPs, from Spotify, from Apple Music, from Tidal, to the MLC, to Harry Fox Agency, to Music Reports. And those are just in the US. There are mechanical rights organizations all over the world. And those are paid directly by the services. So you don't get them unless you go out and ask for them. And that's what the MLC was kind of built to address, is you still have to go sign up there or you can sign up with Songtrust and we'll do it for you and it's easier, but basically you have to go run after that money.

Anna Bond: And with Harry Fox and Music Reports, it was tougher because you had to have a publishing entity. There's a lot more complexity, as an individual writer, getting those royalties from the mechanical rights organizations. So there are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle of your publishing royalties. And in order to get them all, there are a number of different parties involved.

Anna Bond: And again, this is only the US. If you want to get your money from outside of the US, say you're an artist and you're really big in the US and you're also really big in the UK, you're going to want to sign up in both places directly because, while you can rely on your US performing rights organization to collect from the UK performing rights organization using reciprocal deals, it's a lot less efficient, it takes longer, there are more people taking cuts out. And because of data quality and differing systems from one organization to another, there's always the potential for lost data and lost royalties. So you're going to want to sign up directly in as many countries as where your music is popular.

Anna Bond: And if you get popular or even if you're just medium popular in a lot of places, that's a lot of registrations and a lot of paperwork. And maybe you should just go for a global registration partner, like Songtrust. Just an idea.

Michael Walker: Oh, man. I love it. It sounds like, really, there's this huge amount of complexity and kind of this middleman work and whole systems that have evolved for a long time to basically just be able to distribute these royalties. And because of the complexity of it, there's things that are lost or it's just inefficient. And really, Songtrust is part of a growing movement of technology platforms that have, in some ways, cut out the middleman or just made things much more efficient because of the way that technology has developed to be able to, essentially, connect the dots and to make it as efficient as possible. So that's so cool. I'm probably going to go, after this interview, sign up for Songtrust.

Michael Walker: Having a lot of experience with meeting with artists and you have artists who are using Songtrust, what are some of the most common mistakes or misconceptions that you see them having about the world of publishing?

Anna Bond: I mean, there are enumerable misconceptions to have about the world of publishing. I think the biggest one is that it's too hard to understand. And I think that, again, that opacity has long been encouraged by the powers that be. I mean, I have a friend who's owned a record label. I think they just had their 20th anniversary or are having it this year. And I told him, "Listen, I know you don't want to do it, but you're going to need to start a publishing company and you should probably have it administered by Songtrust." And he's like, "Ugh, music publishing is so hard." He literally put his hands in front of his face and just put his head down and he's like, "I don't want to think about it."

Anna Bond: And we're at a restaurant and this is a professional human being, but there is something about music publishing and the fact that it feels like it's got so many parts and it's got so much complexity and there's so many people involved that people just want to push it away and not deal with it, which doesn't work because then you're not collecting your royalties.

Anna Bond: And so it ultimately is understandable. And I think one thing Songtrust really wants to do is help artists understand it, but also, if you don't want to memorize the zillions of acronyms for different performing rights organizations and mechanical rights organizations and trade organizations that exist in the world of publishing, you can sign up with us and we'll do that part for you, but you can understand what's the master side, what's the composition side, what's the writer share, what's the publisher share, what is a performing rights organization, what are mechanical royalties? All of these different pieces, they are all understandable. It just takes being methodical and having someone who just puts all that information out there.

Anna Bond: And I think people get scared and something they're going to sign deals that aren't necessarily super advantageous because they just don't want to think about it anymore. They just want a nice person to take over for them and register everything and get everything going for them, but with Songtrust, we really want people to feel empowered and to have as much knowledge as they want to have.

Michael Walker: I love that. I love that such an important part of the mission is really about the education and not just about ... I feel like there's something disempowering about saying, "Oh, this is too confusing for you," or, "You don't need to know this. We'll just do all of it for you." And there's the idyllic balance because, of course, there's just countless things for us to do and learn and whatnot, but ultimately it does seem like it's really empowering to at least understand the basics and to be able to work with a tool like Songtrust that really does consolidate a lot of this information. Just hugely, hugely valuable.

Michael Walker: And also, I want to reiterate the point that you made, too, about how early on, if you're tempted to get a publishing deal early on before you've really built up any clout or any credibility, that you don't really have much leverage at all, because I see the same thing with record labels a lot where, a lot of times early on, artists, before they've even really established any sort of fan base, they feel like they need someone else to come save them or someone else to do that stuff.

Michael Walker: What they don't necessarily realize is that, one, that's going to be an uphill battle because there's a lot of musicians and that they're looking for people who have the fire going already so they can kind of pour gasoline on it and, if by some ... not necessarily miracle, but if you, by some stroke of luck, you do get a record label deal, you're probably going to get a pretty terrible deal because you don't really have leverage. Yeah. So it does seem like, especially for artists who are listening to this right now who are just starting out, that this is an amazing solution for them to be able to plug into.

Anna Bond: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, with record labels, there's a little more complexity because, obviously, they're doing a lot more marketing and making physical product and PR, if they're doing it right. Right? If you get a label who's really passionate about you as a baby band, they can launch your career, but again, you've got to find the right people and not just sign to the first person or the second person who asks. Way better to book your own tour, release your own first record, and build up some sort of organic momentum by putting in some work. And then, like you're saying, your second record or do an EP or some singles or whatever and, once you start getting some attention and you've got some of that ... even if it's just local or regional audience, you've got something to fall back on and a lot more proof of concept, which will give you more leverage for a record deal, for sure.

Anna Bond: And also, how many artists sign a deal and make one record and then break up? I'll answer that. A lot. So maybe you can also decide if you really ... Go on a tour first, before you sign a record deal, more than anyone. Right? See if you can be in a touring van because it's very hard.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Certainly, it's not as glamorous as you might think about it on the outside. I remember, yeah, living in our van, sleeping [inaudible 00:20:18] parking lots, eating peanut butter tortillas, and sleeping in motels and hotels that really were, retrospectively looking at it, it was like, we should not have been sleeping there. There's crime happening.

Anna Bond: [crosstalk 00:20:31] might have been murdered.

Michael Walker: We literally could have been murdered. There was cockroaches at one point. All right. So we had a little bit of a conversation when we were talking about topics to talk about today. And one thing that I'd like to really dig into is understanding publishing rights and kind of the difference between the writer share and the publisher share. Could you talk a little bit about that, exactly how that works, in terms of the writer share and publisher share, and just understanding the way that publishing rights work?

Anna Bond: Yeah, absolutely. So just as a song, if you have this concept of a song and it's a circle, there is the master side and the composition side. Right? And they're kind of the frenemies that I mentioned, representing the individual recording of a song and then the underlying song. There could be 100 cover versions of a song and it's one song, but it's 100 recordings. Right? So you've got those broken down and then your composition, again, is a circle. And it breaks down into the publisher share and the writer share, which is actually pretty easy. It's half and half. And your writer share is paid directly to the writer by your performing rights organization. And if you have a publisher or an administrator, the publisher share is paid directly to your publisher.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Okay. So there's 50%, 50%, and then there's 50%, 50% of one of the 50%s.

Anna Bond: Well, there's another 50% in between because, again, remember, the performing rights organization is collecting public performance, which is basically half of your publishing royalties. So the writer share and the publisher share are part of public performance. So your performance royalties, your broadcast radio, for example, or when you submit your set list, your live venue performances, those are all split up into writer share and publisher share. Now, mechanical royalties are entirely publisher share. So basically, if you get paid $100, if it starts at $100, it's going to be $25 writer share, $25 publisher share for performance royalties, and then it's going to be $50 for publisher share for mechanicals.

Anna Bond: We have a lot of diagrams on our website that aren't just like someone waving their arms in the air. So obviously, this is a podcast, but yeah, so public performance is broken down into writer share and publisher share. Mechanical royalties are paid entirely to the publisher.

Michael Walker: Thank god that there's also diagrams on the website, if we go to Songtrust, that we can actually just a visual representation of how the breakdown happens with the percentages. What I'm hearing from is that there's a few different paths that it's broken up into. You have the overall composition and then you also have a bunch of splits that happen. And if you're both the publisher and the songwriter, then you're going to get both sides of the split.

Anna Bond: Yeah.

Michael Walker: And so, with Songtrust, is it essentially like you take care of all of that or is it a certain portion of it?

Anna Bond: So writer share always goes directly to the writer from the PRO, but what Songtrust does ... We're a publishing administrator, so we are collecting publisher share around the world from all sources. And that's either directly from DSPs, from folks like YouTube, whether it's from mechanical rights organization, from PROs. There's also a type called CMOs, which just basically do performance and mechanicals all in one organization. Those tend to be found in smaller regions, smaller countries. We have some other licensing partners who work directly with the DSPs. We basically are built to collect from as many places as possible as directly as possible in the most efficient manner, but yeah, it is complex, but once you see it visually laid out, once someone explains it to you, it's understandable. It's not so opaque that you should just throw your publishing royalties at someone who asks.

Anna Bond: I will say, Songtrust client I will not name, you will all have heard of this person, signed up with Songtrust. I've known the manager for a long time. And this artist signed up with Songtrust and onboarded, registered their first album with us. And high-streaming numbers, really great. And then, in March of 2020, there was a bit of a national lockdown because of a tragic pandemic. And this artist, who had previously not been interested in a publishing deal, signed a multimillion-dollar publishing deal to support, obviously, the business of this artist during the time when there was no live revenue.

Anna Bond: But what this artist did was, for the first couple years they were with Songtrust, before they needed a creative partner, before they were able to leverage a multimillion-dollar advance, they said, "Okay, I'm going to make sure I get all my rights." They had good streaming numbers. It was good, healthy revenue, but they were able to wait and they were able to say, "Well, this is my admin on this record. Think about what it's going to look like on this record, plus sync, plus the other creative that a traditional publisher is doing," and they could leverage this much stronger deal.

Anna Bond: And so, as much as Songtrust wants to keep our clients forever, we're happy to help an artist collect while they're developing and get to the point where they're like, "Okay, I'm actually a big star now and I can leverage a mega deal and, hopefully, buy everyone I know a house." I don't know what you do when you ...

Michael Walker: Cool. So it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the biggest benefits, as well, is that, with Songtrust, if you're a developing artist just getting started and you don't necessarily have the clout yet to get a big publishing deal, you can get started and you can collect your royalties in the meantime. And then, when the time comes that you build a lot of success and a big audience and you have these opportunities come to you with publishing deals, you have the ability to be able to take those deals at that point.

Anna Bond: Absolutely.

Michael Walker: Awesome.

Anna Bond: Or you get to a point where you're working with a label that you really get along with and they're able to represent your sync on the master side, then maybe you don't need a traditional publisher at all and maybe you've got all your admin sorted, you've got someone repping you creatively and maybe that's another alternative or you're a completely self-released artist and you have an individual sync agent. You have other people, you have members of your team doing the creative work that a traditional publisher might do, but the admin is so specialized and the ... It's like the doing taxes of the music industry or math homework. It's the least fun, the least glamorous, but so important that people will really bend over backwards to make sure their admin gets done. And we're really there to be like, "Well, you can just get your rights sorted and figure the rest out and we'll be there. Just enter your songs in your dashboard and we're sorted."

Michael Walker: Fantastic. I was the weird kid in high school that liked math. So actually, I'd totally geek out on that kind of stuff, but I have-

Anna Bond: [crosstalk 00:27:22].

Michael Walker: But what I have noticed is that most people aren't geeks like me. And it's just hugely helpful to have tools that can do these calculations for us and that we can utilize.

Anna Bond: Yeah, it's really funny because one of the bands I worked with who signed a publishing deal too early in their career, in my opinion, the drummer was actually a math PhD. He just wanted to focus on writing songs.

Michael Walker: That's cool. Originally, one of the career paths that I was going to take, before I delighted my parents and told them I wanted to be a full-time touring musician, was an actuary, which is-

Anna Bond: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Michael Walker: ... all about math and whatnot.

Anna Bond: So similar to being a touring musician. So much overlap. I get it.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I know. That's the thing about it is, yeah, on one hand, they're basically the same thing. Just one of them, you're traveling nonstop in a van with six other dudes and sharing utensils. I don't want to derail things too much, but there was one time ... In retrospect, this is pretty gross, actually, but I remember a time, at one of our shows, my dad came out and there was a piece of cake or something. And we were eating the cake and all six of us in the band were using the same fork. And we ate this cake and my dad's like, "No." He's germophobic.

Michael Walker: Anyways, one thing that I think sometimes people get a little bit confused about or might be a question that people have, if they're a songwriter and they're co-writing songs with other artists and producers and whatnot, how exactly does that world work in terms of co-writing songs and splitting the royalties? And what would you recommend for people going into a co-writing session or working with a producer who's working based for some percentages?

Anna Bond: So my number one recommendation that I think I've said in every podcast, every presentation I've ever done is get the split sheet signed before you leave the studio, before you leave the writing room. And the reason is, once your song starts earning money, you're going to fight about the splits. So get the splits sorted once you leave the room, when you remember what everybody did right?

Anna Bond: And there are software tools that kind of help with that, but that is such a crucial piece because, in order to register your compositions with the PRO, with the publisher, you need the split information and you need those splits to be confirmed because, if we write a song together, 50/50 split, and I leave the session without a signed split sheet and I go register the song 100% as written by me, which I would not do, but if I did, you will then have to go and contest it. Right? And I could be earning money for six months or a year before you notice that this registration has even been made if the song has been released.

Anna Bond: But if you get everything sorted, if you get all your split sheets done, if you get everything registered as soon as possible, then you're in a much better place. But if you don't have a signed split sheet, it's a lot harder to make the argument that you were a co-writer on a specific song. And then you're talking to lawyers, you're using text messages as evidence. Things get very complex very quickly, but if you have the signed agreement, signed split sheet, it's easy. You just send it over to your PRO, you send it over to your publisher, and they're very easily able to resolve the claim.

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up, guys? So quick intermission from the podcast so I could tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public, that's normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that we work with, personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode Your Fan Base and Make a Profit With Your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel. It's going to allow you to grow your fan base online. And the system's designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music.

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Michael Walker: And another thing I want to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is, if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. And so that'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: Awesome. And so I know you mentioned there are a couple of tools for writing split sheets or would you just recommend having a printout that you normally do for split sheets or what would you recommend they should do there?

Anna Bond: Well, we have a download on our website, which is a split sheet. It's a PDF. It's just a pretty simple format. I don't know. There are a couple of interesting software music collaboration tools that I'm sure that you've used and some of your listeners have used. And some of those will actually capture some semblance of song percentage creation from the session, which is really amazing. And obviously, when we're all kind of far apart from each other and creating remotely, that could come even more into play, but the real simple thing is just get that split sheet printed out, bring it with you, everyone signs it, everyone agrees, and you've got it done.

Michael Walker: Cool. Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. That kind of reminded me, when you were talking about the collaboration tools, I haven't fully utilized this yet, but I'm taking a course with Ryan Tedder right now and he's talking about his production process and this website, Splice, that I've worked with several producers who use Splice a lot, but there's a portion of Splice that's all about collaboration. And you can basically upload your DAW projects and collaborate with people remotely.

Michael Walker: Of course, the one that they don't have is pro tools, which is also ... I mean, they have their own thing, but the Splice one looks really cool. And it just makes me kind of geek out about this ability to collaborate remotely and to almost have ... Imagine having a Github-like foundation where band members or even just a wider amount of people can co-create a song together with all their instruments and whatnot, which I think is kind of like what Splice is doing, but I haven't used it yet. This is a little bit of a tangent, but have you heard of that tool and have you seen anyone using that collaboration tool?

Anna Bond: I'm very familiar with Splice, but I, as a non-musician, myself, have not used their tools. I have kind of toured their website and seen what they have to offer, but I'm unfortunately not an expert in that arena. There's a company called The Labz, which has an online collaboration tool that is ... I mean, the Github idea is amazing, the idea that you kind of put something out there and then other people can iterate on it. And so then you've got, suddenly, 100 versions of this song and one has trombone and one has vocals and one has a drum machine or whatever.

Michael Walker: And the artist could approve ... They listen through, like, "Oh, this one's cool. I'm going to approve this."

Anna Bond: That is just a real confusing situation for music publishers right there, but I think it's a [inaudible 00:35:02].

Michael Walker: Right.

Anna Bond: People at my company are listening to this, like, "No. [crosstalk 00:35:08]."

Michael Walker: Yeah. I guess, technically, if someone did that, would they just automatically have a claim to a percentage of the composition or would they have to sign something to give up their rights if they were going to do it, if it was mostly just ... I mean, kind of the same thing with Github. I guess people could technically be like, "Well, I contributed to this thing," but they don't really have ownership of it.

Anna Bond: I think, if it was under a Creative Commons License or something, it'd be easy, but just like doing a remix, you can't just go do a remix of a Kanye song and release it. You have to get an agreement together. And that agreement, generally, in the same way if it's a previously released song and someone is doing a verse on it, they're going to get a percentage of songwriting for that new version, but those are all specifically created agreements with everyone's lawyers, everyone's representatives on board because, at the end of the day, if you're not the songwriter and you're not the master owner, everyone has to get in on that. You don't actually have the legal right to distribute any remixes or any sort of recreations of a song that isn't a cover, which you are able to do, legally, but if you're using the original audio, that's when you need sample clearances, you need remix licenses and all that stuff. So it does get interesting, but covers, totally fine. They have to let you do it.

Michael Walker: Yeah. I'll put a pin in this. I think, at some point in the future, it would be so cool to have a Github-like platform where people can contribute. And it would take probably, I don't know, maybe someone who doesn't have as many issues in terms of rights where it's like there's 100% ownership, somebody's kind of indie thing. And I know that there's a lot of musicians who ... there's remix things that they do where they do allow people to create a bunch of remixes. There's cool stuff with it.

Anna Bond: I mean, you can absolutely do Creative Commons License or something along those lines where you say ... or even think about beat leasing websites. For your payment, you are giving them the right to use this sample, this top line, whatever, in their songs. So I think there's a way forward for our new company that we're starting.

Michael Walker: Right now, by the end of this interview, I want to have launched the Github of music production. One thing that I think would be a great question to answer for people, because this is a question that I get a lot and I'm sure that you have dealt with this question a lot, too, is all about cover songs and cover royalties and what are people able to do and what's the proper legal way to do cover songs? So I'd be curious, both in terms of a few different levels, because I also get a lot of questions about artists who are live streaming, doing live performances and they're playing the cover songs live. And technically, are they able to do that on Facebook Live or is that kind of a mucky area?

Michael Walker: So that, but then also just ... Maybe an easier one would be, if someone wanted to record a cover song and release it, what would be the path forward in order to make sure they're doing that, legally?

Anna Bond: So it's very simple. There's no problem, basically. If you want to release it only to streaming services, the streaming services have blanket mechanical licenses in place with the publishers. And the mechanical license is what you need to be able to record your version of a song. So they've already got it. You can record the cover, release it via distributor of your choice, and you're all set. If you want to make a physical product, you're going to have to ask for a mechanical license either from the mechanical organization, and that's going to be Harry Fox, very likely, or you can ask directly to the record label of the original song.

Anna Bond: If you want to make physical product, CDs or LPs, you're going to need a mechanical license to produce those and you can get those either from mechanical rights organizations ... Harry Fox, for example, has a very easy web-based application process if you're only making up to ... I think it's 1,000 or 2,000 copies. And otherwise, you're going to need a mechanical license from the publisher of the artist whose song you're covering. But usually, those are really easy. Publishers grant mechanical licenses all the live long day. So unless you're some sort of problematic public figure or, I don't know, they're going to grant it to you.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Okay, cool. So it sounds like doing cover songs, if you're going to record and release a song, that there's really very little that you need to do in order to release it on Spotify and distribute it on DistroKid or TuneCore of CDBaby. You literally can just do it and not even have to do anything special with it. You just release it?

Anna Bond: Exactly, because mechanical licenses are covered by ... It's the law. It's the law that you have to be granted a mechanical license for a cover song. And the reason the law was created that way was so that ... basically to [inaudible 00:40:15] creativity so that more people would do more versions of songs and make them more of a public resource for people to cover. So they have to let you do a cover. There are just a couple of different ways. If you want to physically produce it, there's one more little hoop to jump through, but it's a very simple process.

Michael Walker: Cool. That's awesome. And when you say physically produce it, are you referring to putting out merchandise with it or are you talking about getting CDs printed with it?

Anna Bond: CDs or LPs. If you're talking about using the lyrics of a song in merch, that's a totally different story. That's a completely different license.

Michael Walker: Okay, gotcha. So we were just talking about physical CDs, but if you're just doing it digitally, then you don't even have to ... but also, it sounds like what you're saying is that, if you wanted to do these physical ones, that it probably wouldn't be as very big of an issue if you're not a political figure that everyone is not wanting to affiliate with or something, then for the most part, you wouldn't have an issue getting a mechanical license. And the way you do that-

Anna Bond: Yeah. They have to give you a license, but I could see a publisher not wanting to do a license for someone who is really terrible. I've never heard of that happening, but it is the law that you have to be granted a mechanical license to record a cover of a song.

Michael Walker: Okay. And so remind me, the physical part of it, you do need to ask for permission, but with that part, do they actually have to give you permission if you ask for it or is that something a little different?

Anna Bond: I believe that they do have to give you the permission. I don't know if there are limits to what they have to grant. If you're going directly with someone like a Harry Fox, it's very straightforward, but my understanding is they just have to say yes. But again, I feel like there are scenarios in which someone could argue that a cover wouldn't be allowed, but that might be too theoretical a bucket of worms to open [inaudible 00:42:06]. I have politics on my mind, but ... yeah.

Anna Bond: At the end of the day, they have to grant it to you and the mechanical license publishing rate that you have to pay is the same for everyone. It's called the statutory rate and that's because it is set by statue that is the Copyright Review Board sets it. So it's not like you could be trying to do a cover of a Metallica song and they're like, "Well, you have to give us $100 for LP that you press." It's not. It's nine cents and it's the same for every song.

Michael Walker: Okay. Gotcha. All right. So on to maybe a slightly more difficult question, which is, with the cover songs, let's say that someone ... My point of view, especially in terms of this question in particular, is that it seems like there's a lot of concern or a lot of questions about this, especially from very small artists who are just starting out, who they want to do a cover song or they want to play a cover song to their audience or their private group on Facebook and they want to play it on the guitar and they're concerned, is that okay? Is it going to be taken off or exactly what are the laws around that?

Michael Walker: And for the most part, my take on that specific situation is you probably don't really have much to worry about. Look, it's not like they're going to come after you with their lawyers and be like, "[inaudible 00:43:40]." Worse case scenario, it gets taken off or something, but I would be curious just to hear your thoughts or just hear how it works in terms of what is the situation [inaudible 00:43:50]? I've heard that Facebook has sort of blanket royalty things in YouTube, but how exactly does that work in terms of being able to record videos of cover songs and to be able to do livestreams while you play cover songs, but you do your own version of them? You don't play it like a DJ on it.

Anna Bond: Right. So live streaming is still a pretty big question mark, which is surprising after the year we've had. There are performing rights organizations that are doing licenses for livestreams in the same way that they would do for a live show. Right? In that case, there's no issue with the cover song if it's being licensed by the PRO, the same way as if you go to a venue for 1,000 people and you play a cover song live. No one can stop you from doing that. I guess the venue could shut off the lights or the sound, but the PRO, there's no rights issue with you doing that.

Anna Bond: And with live streaming, there's an uneasy feeling that that's the case, but once that livestream is archived or once you're making a video, everything changes. If you're making a YouTube video for a cover song, you need permission from the publisher, you're going to need license from them to be able to create a video, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on broadcast TV, because suddenly that's a synchronization.

Anna Bond: And on YouTube, a lot of the times, 99 times out of 100, this rando's cover of a big song, no one's ever going to see it, but anytime you're doing a cover and you don't have the proper licenses, they could do a takedown. A lot of the times, if you have a monetized channel, the owner of the rights will put a claim against it. So they'll monetize your video on behalf of their publishing ownership, but there could always be a takedown. And so that's something to remember. Don't spend a lot of money making a music video for a cover song without getting the rights.

Michael Walker: Gotcha. Awesome. So it sounds like, if you are going to record a music video and cover a song, that that is a synchronization and, legally, they have a right to take down that video if they don't ... It's 100% up to them. And so if you want to be really safe, then you need to reach out and make sure that you have a license to use that. But at the same time, as an artist who is up and coming, it's a risk to record it, but often what happens is that if they do ... Let's say that you record this video and it gets four million views. Then, often, rather than just taking it down, they'll just monetize the video on their behalf. So [crosstalk 00:46:37].

Anna Bond: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:46:37] YouTube channel, they'll usually just place a claim against it, but sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll issue a takedown, sometimes they won't notice.

Michael Walker: Okay, gotcha.

Anna Bond: And that's only if it's a video. Remember, if you were just releasing a cover to the streaming services, you're fine. It's specifically that element where it becomes a video where everything gets different.

Michael Walker: Gotcha. Okay. Super interesting.

Anna Bond: And that's the thing, because you're also going to need, if you look at traditional sync licenses, it's the master side and the publishing side. Right? You need to license the recording, as well as the song, but if you're just doing a cover of the song, you own that recording because you just made it at your house, but the sync side, the publishing side of the sync still needs to be licensed. You should kind of look at it that way.

Michael Walker: Okay, gotcha. Yeah. It's really interesting, too, when you think about it with the live streaming because it kind of has that element of it's live and it's like a broadcast, but then after it's done being live, then they have the replay and the recording.

Anna Bond: Right. And then maybe you still have the link for 24 hours in case you couldn't be up at whatever timezone. So what is that? Is that still a livestream? There's so many gray areas and the music publishing world, there is not yet consensus on the rights involved in a livestream, but for now, some PROs are monetizing them.

Michael Walker: Okay, gotcha. All right. Well, hey, Anna, this has been really interesting. I feel like I've learned a lot and really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and to share. A lot of the underlying roots of how publishing works and the systems behind it and Songtrust just sounds like an incredible organization with a great mission and purpose that simplifies this process for artists. So if anyone's listening to this right now and they're interested in learning more or signing up with Songtrust, what's the best way for them to do that?

Anna Bond: I just recommend going to Songtrust.com and we have a ton of resources linked directly from our website. You can download our Modern Guide to Music Publishing, which is an awesome resource and is totally free, again, but we have a help center, we have a blog, we have a ton of FAQs that are just ... Most of the questions you can think of to ask about music publishing should be on our website if we're doing our job, which I do think we are. We have something like 500 articles. So we cover a lot of topics, but definitely ... And you can sign up for more information. You can join our email newsletter. That's also where you can sign up to become a member.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. And also, everyone that's listening right now, make sure to keep your eye out for our newest product called Modern Songtrust, which is the new Github of music production, coming out tomorrow.

Anna Bond: Coming very soon, just need a little bit more VC.

Michael Walker: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I feel like we've done 99.9% of the work already, so it's really just-

Anna Bond: [crosstalk 00:49:39].

Michael Walker: If we could just find someone on Fiverr to just do it ...

Anna Bond: [inaudible 00:49:46].

Michael Walker: Can you imagine? Can you imagine we just submitted a job request and it's just that idea? It's just five-

Anna Bond: $35, build an entire [inaudible 00:49:54].

Michael Walker: ... five dollars. Oh, man. Oh, fun. Yep. So Anna, thanks again. Really appreciate your time.

Anna Bond: [crosstalk 00:50:02].

Michael Walker: And I highly, highly recommend everyone going out and checking out Songtrust if you haven't yet.

Anna Bond: Thanks so much.

Michael Walker: Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. It's time to be in Modern Musicians now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.