Sub-Publishing in the Digital Age

Didn't get many photo opportunities this time round... this was the best I could find 🇺🇸

Last week I was in Nashville for meetings- the Music Capitol of America, and home of global publishing administration. My first day was a conference for music administrators, and it gently reminded me that the traditional role of sub-publishing has been under quiet but ever increasing scrutiny and evolution through the last few years.

For decades, sub-publishers formed the backbone of the global music publishing network- local partners handling collections, licensing, and promotion in markets where a publisher lacked direct presence. They were the trusted representatives on the ground, fluent in the local language, culture, and society politics and nuance.

But in today’s hyper-connected, digitally-driven industry, consumption has become overwhelmingly global. As one panel contributor commented- no one uploads a song to YouTube and marks it only available in a handful of territories. The resulting question has become increasingly challenging: what is the role of localized sub-publishing in a digital, globally connected environment?

As consumption has globalised, licensing has begun to follow. As administration has consolidated, margins have thinned. And yet, there are still roles that only local expertise can fulfil- if economics can sustain them.

Global Consumption -> Pan-Territorial Licensing

Streaming has broken the old boundaries of music consumption, with the same track able to be streamed simultaneously in 190+ countries, monetised and tracked by a handful of digital platforms whose operations as tech-native operators transcend national borders.

The traditional publishing infrastructure model of rights being licensed, monitored, and collected locally was built for a world of local distribution- a landscape which no longer exists.

Modern music publishing has reacted to these developments with pan-territorial licensing- especially across Europe, where fragmentation once made regional sub-publishing indispensable. DSPs like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube license vast repertoires through central hubs- multi-territory collecting societies like ICE or amra (this is the definition of their MTOL acronym = multi-territory Online Licensing).

The logic is a natural development of the need for DSPs to license effectively on a global scale: fewer intermediaries, faster collections, less duplication. However, the knock-on effect has been profound for local sub-publishers- once responsible for negotiating licenses and managing catalog at local CMOs on behalf of their international partners. These local operations have found themselves squeezed out of the digital value chain.

Consolidation of Administration Partners

The past five years have also seen remarkable consolidation in publishing administration. Companies like Sentric and Downtown have scaled their administrative infrastructures to serve hundreds of independent publishers and rights owners under one umbrella. Their tools, data connections, and global collection networks allow them to reach directly into foreign markets, often bypassing traditional sub-publishing entirely.

For smaller publishers this is providing a fresh commercial opportunity- rather than negotiating dozens of individual sub-publishing agreements across different territories (or relying on leaky PRO reciprocal arrangements), they can plug into a single administrative network capable of efficient global reach. This has made more and more sense as digital has become a bigger piece of the pie- collecting the lion’s share of your revenue more efficiently now outweighs potential losses or inefficiencies for other uses (e.g. offline, broadcast, live).

But as for sub-publishers, and particularly those who rely on licensing foreign repertoire, this has created an existential challenge. As more publishers consolidate their administration through global entities, the need for local sub-publishing has shrunk dramatically. Even where traditional sub-publishing agreements remain their scope has narrowed: digital rights are carved out and handled directly on a pan-territorial basis, leaving local partners with diminishing shares of other income to manage.

Margins, already thin, are being squeezed further. Sub-publishing has always been a nickel and dime business in a nickel and dime business- a typical arrangement taking between 10–15% of gross income collected in the territory. The model was functional in the analogue era when sub-publishers had meaningful control over more material tranches of revenue, such as physical/mechanicals.

But in the digital ecosystem where usage data flows directly from DSPs to central collection hubs, the local intermediary simply cannot offer a competitive model, leaving sub-publishers facing an existential problem: their margins are too low to sustain meaningful operations when the rights they represent are limited or partial (for example, excluding digital), resulting in slow erosion of viability.

Many sub-publishers also represent their own direct catalogs, which effectively compete for the same resources and opportunities. When local teams have to choose between pitching their own roster and an imported one (e.g. for the same sync opportunity) the incentives are clear. Sub-publishers who once relied on the comprehensive administration of large catalogs now find themselves fighting over smaller pieces of the pie- offline performance income, mechanicals from physical, or sync opportunities that require bespoke human intervention and high touch relationships. 

This last point is key, and where sub-publishing can still bring value in a fair economic exchange.

Where Sub-Publishing Still Adds Value

Despite the economic pressures, there remain crucial areas where sub-publishers can offer irreplaceable value.

1. Local Context and PRO Relationships. Even in an increasingly globalised system, offline performance royalties are still collected locally. Understanding how a specific society distributes, how their data flows and matchings are processed, or which repertoire categories are prioritised materially affects income. Sub-publishers often have decades-long relationships with local PROs and know how to navigate their quirks effectively.

2. Sync and Local Licensing. Music supervisors in Germany, Japan, Brazil or other emerging markets often prefer to work with partners who understand their language, culture, and advertising norms. A sub-publisher can pitch more effectively to regional agencies or brands and can translate the creative context of a song in ways that an international admin partner cannot. Sync is incredibly relational- while centralised sync hubs have gained traction, many successful placements still come from personal networks cultivated within local creative industries.

3. Cultural Intelligence. Music is cultural currency. Local sub-publishers understand how repertoire connects with audiences, which writers are active in a market, and where creative collaborations can form. While AI, data analytics, and platform metrics can provide macro-level insight, it is often the sub-publisher who knows which emerging artist in Paris, Seoul, or Buenos Aires is worth introducing to a songwriter on the other side of the world.

4. Local derivatives- e.g. Translations. This is key for some genres, particularly Christian/Gospel and Musical Theatre works, and was the central topic of the conference panel mentioned above. Local, contextual knowledge is required to bring a representative translation to market- with the real skill being to affirm and disseminate one as authoritative.

Global Efficiency vs Local Expertise

The evolution (... I won’t say demise!) of sub-publishing ultimately mirrors a wider industry tension: global efficiency versus local expertise.

Digital technology has made it easier than ever to reach every listener on the planet, and has brought significant gains through the deployment of global pan-territorial deals. Local relationships and contextual understanding that have always driven music’s creative and commercial success ‘on the ground’ still require high touch and deep relationships.

The consolidation of administration partners has brought unprecedented scale and standardisation, yet it has also risked eroding the regional nuances that can make the all difference between a well-managed catalog and a thriving one.

Sub-publishing, as it stands, is caught in the middle. Its margins are fragile, its scope narrowing- but its contextual value remains material, particularly depending on the catalog.

While data can tell us where the revenue came from, it still takes humans- on the ground, in the culture, and in the conversations to understand why.