NMPA President & CEO David Israelite will give his forecast for the major battles ahead including the Copyright Royalty Board proceedings which will determine streaming rates for 2028-2032, the fight to end Spotify’s flawed bundling scheme, and the challenge of ensuring songwriters are fairly compensated in the Age of AI. 

Israelite is the President and CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). Since taking the helm of the NMPA in 2005, he has overseen groundbreaking victories on behalf of publishers and songwriters, including the largest Copyright Royalty Board rate increase in history, landmark royalty agreements with streaming platforms, and the passage of the Music Modernization Act, which created the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). Named multiple times to Billboard’s Power 100, Israelite also serves on the boards of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Special Olympics DC, and previously served on the board of the Country Music Association (CMA). In addition, he is President of the NMPA S.O.N.G.S. Foundation, which supports emerging songwriters through scholarships and direct services.

Follow the life of a song from creation to full registration in this practical, step-by-step session. We’ll walk through the real-world process of registering songs for publishing, performance, and mechanical royalties, covering both manual and electronic methods (including CWR). Topics include split sheets, metadata collection, title matching, and the role of key organizations involved in the registration process.

Learn how to avoid common errors (misspellings, missing writers, duplicate registrations), and gain insights into metadata management, song exploitation, and royalty tracking. Whether you are a publisher, administrator, or songwriter, this is your practical guide to getting registrations right and getting paid.