What's the Difference Between Songtrust and CD Baby Pro Publishing?

They’re the same administration service, with one key difference.

Songtrust is a global publishing administrator whose main focus is registering and collecting your performance, mechanical, and YouTube composition royalties. It also offers a suite of advanced tools for handling your publishing catalog. 

CD Baby is a distribution service, first and foremost, but it also offers publishing services for clients who sign up for CD Baby Pro. Songtrust is CD Baby’s partner in publishing administration, and helps it manage this service. As a result of this partnership, some pay sources or collection societies outside the U.S. may list Songtrust as your publishing administrator instead of CD Baby.  

The main difference between the two companies is that CD Baby requires you to use their distribution services in order to get publishing administration, and Songtrust does not offer distribution services. You can have us administer as much — or as little — of your songwriting catalog as you want, regardless of who distributes it. 

Please note: While Songtrust and CD Baby Pro are partners, they are separate publishing companies. Songwriters may only register songs with Songtrust or CD Baby Pro — never both. Doing so would send those songs into publishing conflict, and freeze your royalty collection.

 

Interested in learning more? Check out our blog post on the 10 Ten Reasons You Need Songtrust.

 

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