If you distribute through CD Baby and you've noticed your publishing royalties don't quite add up anymore, there's a real reason for it — and it's not something that happened to you specifically. In August 2023, CD Baby discontinued its Pro Publishing Administration service. If you signed up for it before then, that decision is still quietly shaping what shows up (and doesn't) in your royalty accounts today.
What Pro Publishing used to do
Before the shutdown, CD Baby would register your songs with a performing rights organization (PRO) on your behalf and pass through your performance royalties as part of your CD Baby account. You didn't need to deal with BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC directly — CD Baby handled the registration and the collection, then paid you through the same dashboard as your streaming sales.
That convenience came at a cost most artists never thought much about: CD Baby's own publishing entity sat between you and your PRO. On any song registered through that service, the publisher share of your performance royalties was typically assigned to CD Baby's administration arm, not to you directly.
What happens to legacy registrations
CD Baby still administers songs that were registered before the August 2023 cutoff — but new registrations don't get this treatment anymore. If you've released music since then, CD Baby's own help documentation is direct about it: you're expected to register with a PRO yourself, as both a songwriter and, if you want to keep the full publisher share, as your own publisher.
If a song was registered with CD Baby's publishing service before the shutdown, the publisher share might still be assigned to CD Baby's administration entity rather than to you — even if you've since set up your own publishing company for newer releases. The fix usually isn't automatic; it takes a direct request to update the registration.
What to actually do about it
If you're self-releasing music and you haven't registered as your own publisher with a PRO, this is the moment to do it. It's typically a one-time affiliation fee, and it means 100% of your performance royalties — writer and publisher share alike — come to you directly instead of routing through a third party. If you already have a publisher entity set up, it's worth pulling your older catalog and checking whether those pre-2023 songs still show a different publisher on file. That's not something CD Baby is likely to flag for you.