Songtrust’s Mandy Aubry talks about music publishing in Africa

According to a 2020 International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) report, music topped all income repertoires in terms of royalties collected – yet Africa contributed only 0.8% to the total music collections of €8.96bn around the world. This figure is worrying to say the least when considering the growing impact of African music on the world stage.

Amid the ‘new’ music industry and its ever-changing trends, Songtrust wants to be a flexible, affordable and comprehensive global solution to songwriters and rights holders alike. The platform now administers more than 3 million songs and represents over 350 000 independent creators, as well as publishers, labels, distributors and other rights holders who want a back-office solution for collecting publishing royalties. The company is continuously involved in numerous educational initiatives, striving to level the playing field for all creators. One such initiative includes Instagram live chats with Songtrust’s director of business development for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, Mandy Aubry, and other African industry players who teach African creators about the intricacies of the publishing industry and the value of holding on to one’s copyright.

We spoke with Aubry about the value Songtrust offers rights holders in Africa and what they can expect from the service.

MUSIC IN AFRICA: Songtrust bills itself as ‘the first truly global publishing administration service’. Can you elaborate on this statement?

MANDY AUBRY: It’s not new for a publisher, or a publishing administrator, to declare that they collect royalties globally, but closer scrutiny often reveals that the royalties collected represent a small portion of the international territories where they have been generated. Songtrust collects royalties from 60 mechanical, performance, digital and other rights management organisations, essentially covering 245 countries and regions, which accounts for 98.3% of the global music market. If you rely on one performance or mechanical rights society for global royalties, you have to scrutinise whether that’ll actually happen. If that society has a small workforce and out-of-date systems or technologies, the chances are that they won’t be able to access them as swiftly as Songtrust can. As global distribution has become more democratised, we’re doing the same for music publishing.

What is Songtrust’s core competency and how does the company add value to the African market and its musicians?

We solve the problem of how to obtain global royalties that are due to the songwriters and producers that we represent. Songtrust can assist clients to affiliate them with a PRO [performing rights organisation] free of charge and directly from their Songtrust dashboard. We also offer the African market music publishing education on what publishing royalties are and what they are not, and how they can be generated. We offer this free of charge, and in easy-to-follow articles, videos and presentations. Our resources are numerous and you do not need to be a Songtrust client to have access to any of those.

What does Songtrust’s localised business strategy in Africa entail?

So many creators across Africa don’t have access to global collection. Even if they are affiliated with a local collection society, reciprocal deals are often not reliable. And because of both the unique challenges posed by Africa’s varied infrastructure as well as the skyrocketing popularity of music from Africa around the world, it’s crucial that songwriters based in Africa can collect directly in the countries where their songs are earning royalties. Our strategy in Africa is direct educational outreach to creators who need our services, partnership with artist representatives who know what their clients need for administration, and reaching out to local trade organisations so that we can ensure that we’re able to reach creators who can benefit from our services.

It's great that you have educational initiatives, which can also help artists understand the importance of retaining their rights and monetising them over time. What is Songtrust doing to empower local musicians on that front?

We dedicate a lot of time to working with our partners and contacts across Africa to give them the tools that they need to accomplish just that. A lot of our 2021 partnership activity has been focused on Africa. There has been so much interest in Songtrust from Africa, and people are hungry to learn more. In addition to working with Music In Africa and ACCES, we’ve partnered with Midem Africa, Reeperbahn Festival Pan-Africa, Youngtrepreneurs, African Music Business Forum, Mutumbu and MMF Africa in 2021. These events always include an emphasis on music publishing education.

Women are grossly underrepresented in the industry globally. What is Songtrust doing to create a more equitable or fairer music ecosystem for women in Africa?

While there has been some improvement in the past few years, and women are better represented and more fairly treated and remunerated within the global music industry, that is still a work in progress. One of Songtrust’s missions is to create a more equitable, fairer, music ecosystem by providing best-in-class administration service to all clients and rights holders who need it. By removing barriers to accessing this service, we have eliminated the ‘boys’ club’ mentality that has prevented women creators – at all stages in their careers – from benefiting from the revenue that their hard work earns. We strive for gender equity when it comes to Songtrust clients we feature on our site and social channels, as well as for our brand identity and advertising photography. We also work for diversity and inclusion within our workforce, including our hiring practices, by working with external organisations to train our hiring managers and employees, as well as by working with salary equity organisations to ensure our pay bands are equitable across all groups within Songtrust, including women and gender minorities. We are a long-time sponsor of Keychange, an international initiative by PRS Foundation, working to transform the future of music while encouraging festivals and music organisations to include 50% women and underrepresented genders in programming, staffing and beyond. We also support SheSaidSo, a global community of women and gender minorities in the music industry, among other groups working for equity for women, BIPOC and LBGTQ+ music creators and people working in the music industry.

What’s your view on the state of music publishing in Africa?

The publishing industry in Africa is still heavily concentrated in South Africa, yet the creators themselves who are experiencing global success are located throughout Africa. The major international music publishers are now opening additional offices in other African countries, frustrated by the low performance of the collection societies outside of South Africa. They recognise, as do we, that in order to ensure that the handling of royalties improves, they need to have a closer working relationship with the local African collection societies and not just the South African ones.

Royalty income growth is still limited by big broadcasters who resist copyright payments. What can be done to improve royalties for creators and the mechanisms used to collect them?

Most African collection societies pay royalties based on membership, and not on actual usage. If they could license and collect based on a percentage of revenue of the broadcasters, that would mean that they would be able to pay out more to their members according to usage by the broadcasters. In terms of improving collections systems, the more pressure that’s put on the infrastructure available, the better it will become.

A recent report by Synchtank indicates that publishers are losing billions due to poor data management. How can artists and publishers better apply global best practices on data-matching techniques and income tracking?

One of the main reasons why royalties do not get properly matched to the rights holder is incorrect or incomplete data. In order to ensure that societies and services know who should receive the royalties generated when a song is streamed, performed or downloaded, they need to be able to make the essential link between the composition – in other words the rights holder – and the specific recording that was used. An International Standard Recording Code [ISRC] is a unique 12-digit code that is assigned to a specific sound recording and separates it from the multitude of other sound recordings worldwide. Because of the importance of ISRCs, Songtrust prioritises the adding of ISRCs to our process, and our client dashboard makes it very straightforward to do so.

What advice can you offer an emerging indie publisher right now?

I would advise them to seriously consider using a service like Songtrust to power the administration of their copyrights. We may make it look easy, but on the backend global music publishing administration requires specialist attention. Working with Songtrust is like having a whole publishing department, but as an emerging publisher you only pay us a fee on what we collect on your behalf, rather than having to hire numerous administrators to manage your catalogue. Because we are collecting on the activity that’s already taking place, as a music publisher, if you can invest your time and resources into maximising that activity, be it through working with PR, marketing, social media companies targeting playlist addition or creative opportunities, that’s where you would be adding value directly to your artist and songwriters.

What are some of the potential earning streams for artists that are still untapped?

Frequently, songwriters leave their mechanical royalties uncollected because they are under the impression that they are covered, either by their distributor or if they are affiliated with a PRO. For this reason, I would say that mechanical royalties are one of the main earning streams for songwriters that are already generated but remain unclaimed. Apart from being able to collect royalties from all around the world, administrators such as Songtrust also collect royalties generated from the use of lyrics, for example. Another growing field where songwriters earn royalties for each and every use of their lyrics is on licensed and monetised services. Songtrust also has direct licences with TikTok and YouTube. In many parts of the world, these platforms are far more lucrative for songwriters then the local streaming platform of choice and our direct licences ensure that we are paid royalties frequently by these services.

A song typically needs hundreds of thousands of streams before it can generate decent income for songwriters. Considering the significantly low streaming rates in Africa, how can local songwriters make real earnings from streaming platforms?

One has to take a long-term view. While the royalties generated from African streaming platforms is still low compared with many other countries in the world, in time, they will most likely improve as access to data keeps growing, existing services increase their penetration in the region, and new services evolve. Songtrust clients collect from streams in the well-paid territories at the same rate as their global peers, and Songtrust covers all of the licensable pay sources and pays the writers 85% of collections.

Many emerging songwriters and composers who have just recorded a song are always faced with the question of how they can protect the song. What’s the easiest way to do this in your experience?

I would advise people to look for their local copyright office and to enquire what their local rules are. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of any communication pertaining to the song and how it came about. Save WhatsApp messages, texts and emails. Don’t delete older or in-progress versions of a song that you send out from your computer. All that could be what you need later as proof. If anyone is working with co-writers, be sure to always obtain a signed split sheet by all parties. Agreeing to the share allocation per writer is a must before you leave the recording studio. Songtrust has a split sheet template that can be downloaded from our website, and registering a song with Songtrust is itself supporting evidence of ownership and activity for a song, and can be a good place to start.

What are the common misconceptions that emerging songwriters make?

The first big misconception is that the distributor will also handle the collection of the music publishing royalties. Every song has two parts to it: the recording side and the composition side. The former is what your distributor pays through. Only if you have signed up for a publishing add-on via your distributor can you also collect the corresponding publishing royalties through them. Second, it’s often thought that if you’re signed up with your local PRO you’re covered for your global royalties. PROs only collect performance royalties, and writers also need to have access to their mechanical royalties. Streaming earns both a performance and a mechanical royalty. Local PROs also vary in their efficiency in collecting globally, and it’s pretty well known that even the most sophisticated of the world’s PROs are unable to access the full breadth of global royalties generated for their writers. And thirdly, royalties have a shelf life, and collecting them in real time is always best. Retroactive collections are possible, but their expiry date is two to three years on average for streaming.

What’s the best advice that you can give an emerging songwriter, and would you advise them to go the self-publishing route or seek out a third-party agent to administer their rights?

Join a PRO. Always use split sheets when working with co-writers. Educate yourself on the basic concepts of music publishing. Don’t put off registering your songs with an administrator who can collect all your royalties. Value your network. Get a good team of people to support you and always be nice to the people you meet. And I would say that using a third-party agent to administer one’s rights makes total sense. It would be highly unusual for a song to reach an audience in only one country; accessing one’s global royalties is very difficult for an individual to do via their local society alone, even if they join a mechanical society as well.

What should songwriters look for in a publishing contract and what should they avoid?

When considering signing a traditional publishing or co-publishing contract, personally, I think that it’s essential that you have a reputable lawyer explain what you’re being asked to sign and the implications of signing if you do. For shorter-term, administration-only deals, the risk is lessened. Make sure you know what rights they will control and what the rate, term and post-term collection lengths are. Many labels will offer deals and then just have a paragraph about publishing thrown in almost as an afterthought. The artist will often be so engrossed in their label deal that they will inadvertently also sign away their publishing. I would prefer that a label makes a separate publishing agreement, clearly outlining all their terms and conditions. These are just a few things. In general, just ask yourself, what are they asking from me, what am I giving up and what is the added value of signing this agreement and working with the publisher?