When copyright became legally protected, music publishers started to play a role in the management of the intellectual property of composers.
Today, music publishers are responsible for licensing compositions collecting royalties, and ensuring that songwriters and composers are compensated for the use of their work.
[2] The copyrights owned and administered by publishing companies are one of the most important forms of intellectual property in the music industry.
(By comparison, a bona fide publisher who charges admission to a workshop for writers, where songs may be auditioned or reviewed, is not wrong to do so.)
Rock-n-roll pioneer Buddy Holly split with longtime manager Petty over publishing matters in late 1958, as did the Buckinghams with producer James William Guercio almost a decade later.
Brian Wilson and Mike Love of The Beach Boys were crushed to learn that Murry Wilson (father to three of the Beach Boys, Love's uncle, and the band's music publisher) had sold their company Sea of Tunes to A&M Records during 1969 for a fraction of what it was worth – or earned in the following years.
Losing control of the company, John Lennon and Paul McCartney elected to sell their share of Northern Songs (and thus their own copyrights), while retaining their writer's royalties.