[fmc] Publishers: The New Record Label? Friday October 6th

Paul Anthony CEO, Rumblefish, Inc.

Patrick Curley President, Third Side Music

Michael Hausman, Owner, Michael Hausman Artist Management, Inc.

Stacey Mitsopulos Lawyer, Taylor Mitsopulos Burshtein, Entertainment Lawyers

Terry O’Brien Relationship Manager, SOCAN

Harry Poloner Vice President, Membership Group, ASCAP

I came in late to this panel to catch the majority of panellists expressing their ignorance of Creative Commons licenses. This makes me sad. Granted, until this past year I didn’t know they existed either, but these people are professionals in music publishing. You would think developments in copyrighting would cross their desk. Several audience members took the opportunity to describe how the creative commons functions to bring further relevance and accessibility to artist licensing.

The panel was concerned with emphasizing the lack of government support for creative commons and the subsequent exclusion from federal courts if the rights in these licenses are denied. Panellists who had some knowledge of creative commons found them to be most applicable to private uses such as remixing and non-commerical distribution.

Audience member, Professor at U of Ottawa defends creative commons as a way of making sure that work is attributed to an artist, to match integrity. It is perhaps not best for commericial exploitation, but exists not in competition with this type of distribution, rather in combination with, the two can co-exist.

It was encouraged to hire a lawyer for half an hour or so to look over a band’s contract.
The main focus of this panel was to educate artists (of whom there were many in the audience) of the ways in which their songs get used and tracked. Information about these processes can help artists make better decisions about how to manage their work in order to benefit from sales and not be taken advantage of.

If an artist owns their songs, they are paid for any reproduction thereof, whereas unowned songs (owned by a record label, a songwriter distinct from the band, etc.) can be played on the radio (using reproduced copies of the song) without payment.

Bands can collect royalties for bar shows if a door cover is paid or admission of some kind of charged. Artists need only provide proof to SOCAN of the show with a setlist and information about the venue, photos, etc. for their royalties to be processed.

Film companies hoping to use an artist’s song in a movie project must go through a complicated process to use the work of licensed artists. For this reason, movie producers are more inclined to use independent songs.

Artists can make the most money from their music by controlling (or better yet, owning) 100% of their master tracks.

Mitsopulos gave the example of Falkan Beach, a Canadian TV show that uses up to 15 songs per episode, most of which are Canadian content. As a production, they listen to all music sent to them by bands, so artists in the audience were encouraged to send music as a means of promotion.

Publishing deals generally take place after about 20,000-25,000 record sales.

Self-promotion was stressed, as was rights management, either d.i.y. or getting a trusted person to help.

Anthony referred to the “middle class musician” (a main theme of the summit) as the new label, one who is able to live off of their music sales and seeks out labels to provide services for them, creating a shift away from labels’ role as a “real estate” situation of ownership to that of having the artist license their work out to labels.

Hausman described how publishing sales are increasing while record sales are decreasing. In this way, labels are less necessary as people can do publishing for their selves, instead of needing a publisher to get airplay and generate income.

Where music publishers once sold sheet music, the Beatles marked the beginning of artists writing their own songs, resulting in changes to the role of publishers.

Anthony added that businesses have more money for publishing than the public.

Audience question: How is the tracking of artists’ performance, profits, changing because it was formerly tracked through radioplay?

ASCAP has recently created “midiguide” which recognizes 4-5 seconds of a song when monitoring in realtime, 24/7, to track radio, television and non-commercial radio.

SOCAN uses a cue sheet, the need for performing rights revenue, the creation of the new ringtone tariff, and future internet tariffs, they have a hotel room tariff. With techonology always outpacing tariffing development, tarffis are affected retroactively. There is the new problem of who to charge the tariff to for internet radio.

O’Brien answered an audience question about managing a friend’s band by suggesting the manager sign a simple contract agreement with his friend. He also recommended the book “This Business of Music”. O’Brien discussed the Public Rights Organization (p.r.o.) which doesn’t require a band to have representation in order to sign up.

Hausman said that if you can’t understand a contract or afford a lawyer to read it over for you, don’t sign it.

Curley discussed the demo fund from Factor. He also described the process of finding new acts as being similar to the ways in which we all discover music. The panellists are all fundamentally music fans who check out shows and read the papers.

For more information on changes in music publishing, check out David Byrne’s presentation which used powerpoint to comedic effects.