To the best of my knowledge - and I pay royalties to British songwriters as well as U.S. songwriters - if a Brit publishing company has licensed a work to the Harry Fox Agency, you must pay the HFA the statutory U.S. rate. And if that means the author doesn't get his full whack, so be it. I got in trouble once for paying royalties directly to an author because I wanted him to get the full amount. His British publisher had licensed the song to HFA for U.S. publication. HFA found out that I had recorded the song and came after me for royalties. Fortunately, I had kept all the cancelled checks and explained that I was unaware that they had publishing rights on this side of the Atlantic. They were reasonable about it and didn't try to punish me for the transgression, but told me that I had to send all royalty payments to them in future. Which I did. I have recorded one song where HFA gets 50%, and another publishing company gets the other 50%. Your best bet is to check with HFA and find out if a song is licensed by them or not. MCPS and IMRO (Irish) register with them as a matter of course. The songwriter is only getting a portion of the royalties but that's the price he pays for licensing his work with several companies. Essentially, when a publishing company takes your song, you are no longer in control of it.

All the best.

Seamus