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Sony/ATV to speed up songwriter payments with royalty system overhaul

By | Published on Thursday 1 August 2019

Sony/ATV

Music publisher Sony/ATV has announced a series of changes in the way it reports and pays royalties to its songwriters, in particular speeding up payments that come in through its subsidiaries around the world which are then passed to whichever division the writer is actually signed to.

The Sony publisher says the upcoming changes to its royalty systems are “significant new initiatives” that will “speed up how quickly songwriter earnings are processed and allow songwriters to get paid faster than ever before”.

Of course, in the super-connected ever-more-globalised digital age in which we live, you might think songwriters getting paid domestic and foreign royalties at the same time would be the norm by now. But such are the whims of conventional music publishing, Sony/ATV gets to call such a thing “ground-breaking”.

The other big innovation is the introduction of a new ‘cash out’ service, which allows writers to access monies they are owed on-demand, rather than waiting for the next scheduled payment date. This replicates an innovation announced in May by sister company Sony Music on the recordings side.

Confirming all this, Sony/ATV CEO Jon Platt said: “I am proud to announce these ambitious new initiatives that will help to deliver our strategy to be the best service company in the world for songwriters. Powered by our industry-leading administration operations and best-in-class technology, we can now give our songwriters even greater control over their royalties and ensure that they get paid quicker than ever before”.

The new functionality will be rolled out to Sony/ATV writers over the next year via the publisher’s royalty portal SCORE.



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