3 questions with…Justin from Songtrust

Neither Songtrust or Tunecore (to the extent that I’m aware) take a percentage of royalties earned.  Songtrust takes a flat, monthly service fee to serve as a songwriter’s publishing administrator. The music publishing industry has long been closed off to most songwriters and artists who haven’t already achieve a certain level of traditional success.  As part of our broader effort to level the playing field, we viewed a monthly fee as the most efficient way to introduce our service.

We assist songwriters in affiliating with collection societies, register their songs, track where their music is being utilized and collect and distribute royalties through one, easy to use dashboard. Recently, Kenna, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer and artist in his own right, decided to utilize Songtrust for publishing administration and Tunecore for distribution.  I think a lot of artists see the value in this type of pricing model across a range of online services.

You can read more about the Kenna story here:http://bit.ly/gvmevt

We operate Songtrust and Downtown Music Publishing as very separate businesses and it’s not necessarily a part of our business plan to utilize Songtrust as a recruitment tool.  However, by virtue of Songtrust’s model, we already have a great deal of visibility on a wide-range of songwriters and artists using the service.  To the extent that we think Downtown would make a good fit, of course, we would pursue them just as we would any other songwriter or artist that Downtown were interested in collaborating with.

3.  Do you have any goals set up for the end of year?

One of the challenges that the music industry faces is a tremendous amount of mis-information in the basic rules of the game.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in music publishing, perhaps the least understood sector of the industry.  With this in mind, it is our primary goal to position Songtrust as the go-to educational resource for news, interviews, and in-depth information on music publishing and rights management.  As the saying goes, an educated songwriter is our best customer.

If you’re a musician or songwriter, feel free to upload your music for as little as $10 to test it out or, at the very least, check out their site to get more educated on the confusing world of music publishing.

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