Music Publishing & Songwriting

In a business as overcrowded and hyper-competitive as today’s music industry, it’s hard to imagine that there are many opportunities lying around undiscovered. With giant conglomerates like Universal Music covering every corner of the globe, often with several different affiliated companies in one geographical territory, along with indie labels, established independent publishers, and the army of new start-up ventures, the odds of finding a new, undiscovered opportunity can feel as remote as finding a table at the Carlton bar during Midem. No matter where you look, by the time you get there, someone has already placed their stake.

It turns out that the Midem analogy is a good one. The truth is, opportunities are hard to find because we’re all looking in the same place. Two weeks from now, thousands of music industry weasels will descend on Austin, Texas for SXSW, the music industry equivalent of fox-hunting, with trend-sniffing, pen-wielding A&R scouts in mad pursuit of the ever elusive Next Big Thing. Picture a very small forest filled with trigger-happy hunters, all firing at anything that moves. Not surprisingly, everyone emerges bloodied, exhausted and empty-handed. Not to mention severely hung-over.

As an alternative, consider this recent story about Carlin America Inc., a venerable independent publisher, who has recently unlocked a whole new source of revenue. Carlin recently acquired the rights to a whole collection of collegiate fight songs, including the themes for Alabama, Florida, Tenessee, Kentucky, Louisiana State, and about 95 other universities.

Fight songs? You mean for marching bands and cheerleaders? Well, yeah. And cell phone ring tones. Video games. Bottle openers for the tail-gaiting crowd. Key chains. Stuffed animals. You know how when you open up a greeting card, it can play a song? That’s not a miracle. That’s a microprocessor– and it means that virtually any gadget or gizmo can be made to play a song with the touch of a button. And apparently, a lot of people like to hear their gadgets play the school fight song. Who knew?

These are the real opportunities of publishing. They lie not in chasing the latest buzz band or pitching songs to Leona Lewis. Those things have their place. But the smart publishers are the ones who are looking where other publishers are not– at music that has the kind of mass consumer appeal to work for a variety of products, from singing fish to hang on the wall, to a greeting card for Grandma, or an orange-clad Santa Claus doll that plays the Florida fight song. It might not win you a Grammy or get you a seat at the ASCAP Pop Awards. But it makes a nice sound when the pennies drop into your bank account.

One of my favorite songwriters, Steve Diamond, recently called to tell me that a song of his was going to be used in a new Reba McEntire album– an album specially made and packaged for sale nationwide in the Hallmark stores for Valentines Day. These kinds of product, aimed directly at very specific markets through specialized retail outlets, represent the future, when it comes to selling physical recordings of music. Likewise, the greeting card, ring tone, game, and electronic gizmo business is likely the future of exploiting musical copyrights.

As I point out in my book, the job of a music publisher is to turn music into money. What Steve Diamond has done to get his song into the Reba- Hallmark venture, or what Carlin Music has done with the school fight songs is Music Publishing 101. My advice is, while everyone else is at SXSW, spend the week writing down every time you hear music being used, whether it’s in a commercial, an elevator, a health club, a ring tone, or the perennial singing fish. This is where the money is being made. Now try to figure out how your catalogue could be used in one of these opportunities. Or try to figure out which songs are being used, and how you might be able to acquire those songs. “Yea, Alabama” is no “Sweet Home Alabama”– but it’s probably a lot more profitable than most of the songs on the pop albums released this year.

In a business filled with lemmings, it’s not a bad move to change things up, and go left when everyone else is going right. That’s called a reverse, and it usually results in nothing but an open field of opportunity up ahead. Go team!