What is Publishing?
(very quick guide)
Whereas royalties are the payments generated from using that intellectual property. Artists issue exclusive rights to a publishing company for the use of their recordings in exchange for royalties. The music publisher may then release the recording or issue rights to either a record label or mechanical rights agency.
In regular music there are many people taking part in the creation of track. There are composers & authors of lyrics (Publishing "author" rights) and vocalists or musicians who performed to create the record (Neighbourhood rights).
In electronic music everything is easier as we create it ourselves, but the industry still works by the major rules. If your music was played on radio, tv or on festivals or events - all of them pay money to the publishing collective companies, the stores like Beatport, Apple Music or Spotify also pay around 10% of the revenue to the publishing collectives. If you don't have the publishing contract - you simply loose this money.
Why it is so important - publishing royalties are different from label royalties. Labels pay royalties to the artists (for example to Spartaque), publishing companies pay royalties to songwriters (in our example to Vitalii Babii). Spartaque and Vitalii Babii is the same person, but Vitalii can have dozens of artist profiles (one alias for Techno, another alias for Tech House, one more for Trance etc.) and all publishing royalties will go to his original songwriter registered name - Vitalii Babii.
The Publishing company is able to claim the writer revenue and pay it to artist.