Trust is the New Currency

Photo by Frankie Cordoba

In music publishing, advances have long been only the headline number. Over time, terms and models have received scrutiny and subsequently shifted.

Gone are the days of 50/50 deals for life of copyright, now supplanted by profit-shares and “at source” accounting. Beyond the terms laid out on paper, creators presently have far more contextual variables to assess. Likelihood of sync placements is one by example- a factor so heavily based on historic performance that is has no guarantees. What makes creators and their teams lean towards certain publishers, and certain deals?

In the modern era where data is so prevalent, there’s a new currency that’s become critical to creators- trust.

Songwriters are routinely asked to have faith in a system they can’t see, and struggle to comprehend. They’re told “don’t worry, it's all working well” when enquiring about where their royalties come from (or more likely- don’t). For decades, opacity was not only standard practice, but used by bad actors to obfuscate away the breadcrumbs of how (and how much) revenue was earned.

The world has changed. Today, creators can see their stream counts in real time. They can access TikTok analytics, YouTube dashboards, and Spotify for Artists if an artist themselves. And yet, despite this increasingly visible usage data, royalty statements still remain a black box. It’s not only the statements themselves, but how the figures inside them were actually derived.

It’s deeper than a UX issue- and isn’t solvable with yet another portal for them to access. The game is now defined by trust.

Information asymmetry in an age of access

There’s a growing gap between what songwriters can see and what gatekeepers suggest they can understand.

When royalty flows are delayed, fragmented, or unexplained, when there’s no easy way to connect performance data to pay-outs, songwriters understandably feel like they’re being taken advantage of. Not because they don’t understand how complicated publishing can get, but because their revenue partners aren’t showing their workings.

Publishers that are open in pitching to writers can also end up penalised for it. A publisher that clearly explains how it collects international royalties- acknowledging sub-publishing chains and time delays- can appear less competent than those that hide the reality behind a slick interface and so called "best in class" collections.

The truth is every publisher is working with a complex, global web of royalty pipelines, intermediaries, and reporting lags. The difference is whether they choose to make that complexity legible or leave it to the creator to guess.

I can recount many an occasion when a writer would call to dig deeper- “My song got played in a Gap store in Hong Kong- how much will I be paid?” or “Our track was played at Old Trafford last week! So cool! When will we see that money?”**. It was hard to answer- I was meant to be the one in the know and the steward of their creativity (and revenue).

These simple questions can be all too easy to bat away by hiding behind the complexities of international publishing revenue collection. Writers have little hope to understand how income flows, and who it flows through, if this is the modus operandi. They’re entrusting their livelihood to partners they expect to not only proactively go-to-bat on their behalf, but also to track and chase every penny that their music is earning.

Should writers be expected to be as knowledgeable about revenue flows as publishers are required to be? And how data impacts those revenue flows?

Empowering without overwhelming

It’s a gulf that needs to be bridged.

Transparency doesn’t mean asking every songwriter to become a data analyst. It’s not expecting them to self-process every line item in gigantic multipage PDFs, or making them eyeball raw AKG files. It’s about designing systems that build confidence and enlighten, not create confusion. It’s about abstracting just enough complexity away- where they feel they can trust the system because they see it working and are empowered with their data rather than feeling forced to grapple with industry nuance and nitty gritty.

Take international banking. You use your card abroad- your banking app tells you exactly what you spent and appears to instantly debit your account. You don’t need to know anything about SWIFT protocols or interbank FX routing. It just works- and it's clear. And because it just works there’s no need to delve under the hood- to know your ‘identifiers’, or that of the other transacting party. You only wanted a Flat White- not to have to register both yours and the café's 16-digit IDs at several nationally siloed databases in the vague hope that within 18 months the money would be accurately taken from your account and go via 3 intermediaries on the way, in 3 different tax jurisdictions.

This is the opportunity for music publishing: to make the invisible infrastructure work well enough for creators to trust it, without forcing them to live inside it. At the moment it’s clear that it is inefficient, and the creators are the ones suffering in trying to understand why.

What does real transparency look like?

The opportunity is to move beyond royalty portals that offer downloadable PDFs and cryptic line items. Real transparency means shifting the entire underlying framework- or at least doing enough on behalf of creatives that they subsequently don’t need to grapple with comprehending it:

• Line of sight: Interactive dashboards that link usage data to payments, showing the journey from stream to statement, and the time lag that takes (props to Kobalt Music for leading the way here).

  
  

• Context: Explanations for revenue rises, delays, deductions, or missing income- especially in cases involving sub-publishers and collections from international sources.

  
  

• Collaboration: An integrated role in cleaning and maintaining metadata, flagging mismatches, and incentivising participation in revenue recovery processes. Writers shouldn’t always have to deal with metadata directly- but they’re also the ones in the know, so empowering them to fix errors literally pays dividends all round.

  
  

• Trust through design: Why was there a peak in revenue in Q3? Why is there always a trough in Q1? Portals and tools that answer these questions naturally- that are intuitive, mobile-friendly, and built for users who aren’t spreadsheet natives. 

A new competitive edge

It might seem counterintuitive, but the publishers who lean into transparency won’t lose trust in the long run- they’ll gain it. And when you gain trust, it moves the needle on being attractive as a partner, often more so than any headline financial terms.

Trust goes beyond transparency. It’s a philosophy that truly starts with serving creators- not treating them as a business cost, or a partner that can be blown-off and forced into accepting misunderstandings because of information asymmetry.

Yes, it takes investment. Yes, it means acknowledging there is complexity instead of hiding behind it. But in a world where songwriters have more data at their fingertips than ever before, it’s no longer viable to say “don’t worry, we’ve got you covered” and leave it at that. It’s about handling the complexity, and letting songwriters know about it.

It even goes beyond education. Educating songwriters has only been required because they’re so consistently losing out. I don’t need education about the international banking framework because my card, app, and the payments infrastructure just work. Yes, there’s intermediaries and deductions along the way, but the seamless and consistent experience means I don’t need to dig deeper. Education solves a symptom, not the root cause.

The future of publishing will belong to those who not only show their homework, but make creators feel that the system as a whole actually works for them. It’ll belong to those that invite creators into the process, not just the output.

Like any relationship, trust isn’t built on reputation. It’s earned- via consistency, authenticity, transparency, empowerment, empathy and collaboration.

That’s what songwriters deserve.

**Both genuine questions I received as a publisher. And yes- I tracked down the revenue for both.