The Society of Authors and Composers (SACM), Mexico’s performance rights organization, has entered into an agreement with indie distributor and music publisher CD Baby in a move to provide indie acts more control of their revenue streams, Billboard has learned exclusively.

A CD Baby spokesperson said the alliance means the firm is SACM's primary distributor and, as part of the deal, registered SACM members will now receive free submissions. About 10,000 people in Mexico currently distribute music through CD Baby, which helped pave the way for the deal, overseen by CD Baby’s Heli Del Moral, vice president, International Development. In Mexico, musician/producer Mario Sánchez represented CD Baby for more than a year as talks took place.

This marks the first time that SACM has entered into an agreement with a distributor and publisher outside of Mexico, according to the CD Baby spokesperson. In a time span of two decades, CD Baby has become a leading distributor of indie music and, according to the company’s site, the largest publishing rights administrator in the world. As digital platforms continue to grow substantially, partner members have access to resources such as copyright collective societies.

Based in Portland, Ore., CD Baby in January announced that its member artists earned more than $100 million dollars in 2018. According to the company's official statistics, CD Baby distributes 750,000 artists and more than 9 million tracks and publishes 170,000 songwriters and over 1 million individual songs. The company represents artists in more than 200 territories worldwide. Digital distribution includes platforms such as Apple Music, Google Play and Spotify, among others.