Music Publishing & Songwriting

Here’s an idea whose time has certainly come:

Music companies have decided to sell music. Not just current music. Not just the hits of the moment. Not just the current hits and the classics. They’ve decided to sell it all.

Turns out that after decades of amassing hundreds of thousands of master recordings– some of them legendary, some serviceable, many of them justifiably ignored, and many of them prized by only a small cognoscenti of music freaks and collectors– the major labels have realized they just might have something of value back there in the archiving warehouse. Something they could sell. Perhaps not something they could sell to a mass contemporary audience, but something that could be sold in small numbers to people who know and love the breadth and diversity of popular music. Given that many current, chart-topping pop releases are selling less than 100,000 units a week, this is most certainly, an idea whose time has come.

EMI and SonyBMG have agreed to pry open the vaults and license their currently out-of-print content to Amazon, through a subsidiary called CreateSpace which specializes in providing on-demand delivery of physical content. Rather than printing up thousands of CD’s of old, hard-to-find recordings and sending them out to record stores, CreateSpace allows the companies to deliver copies based on customer orders. You want that old Hank Mancini soundtrack, or Cake’s “Motorcade of Generosity”? No problem. They’ll make one for you and send it out.

If you’ve read “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, then you’re already familiar with the underlying theory. Anderson argues that for too long, the music business has focused on the big hits, while ignoring the money to be made by selling a much wider variety of less-popular, more specialized titles. While I can’t say that I buy into the theory in its entirety (no one’s expecting that the orders for “Motorcade of Generosity” will keep the lights on in the Capitol Records building, or even cover Guy Hands lunch bill), there is certainly some truth in The Long Tail concept. The fundamental truth is this:

The record labels already own the master recordings. They’ve nurtured the artists, paid for the recordings, created the packaging and now they own them. In fact, those recordings are the only things a record company really owns. The office is rented. Employees on their way out will steal the pencils. The primary assets of a record company are (go figure) records. Why not sell them to people that want to buy them?

Once again, record labels seem to be learning something from the music publishing business. Granted, it’s much cheaper and easier for publishers to manage catalogues of thousands of songs than for labels to produce and market thousands of physical albums. But publishers learned long ago that some of those tunes gathering dust in the back of a file cabinet can turn into gold with a little bit of a luck and a timely film or advertising placement. Still, you have to get them out where people can hear them. The beauty of the internet, as well as new methods of manufacturing, is that finding any piece of music, no matter how obscure, need only be a matter of going to amazon.com and checking your mailbox a few days later. If the record companies are willing, the technology is in place.

Of course, music publishers will greet this new label initiative with open arms and open coffers. The numbers may be small initially, but this is an opportunity to suddenly revitalize thousands of old titles languishing in obscurity. New mechanical royalty streams will open up; new people will hear the songs and play them for their friends; new opportunities for film, TV and advertising exposure will invariably arise as forgotten songs and artists are re-discovered.

Of course, a skeptic might call the whole thing nothing more than a record company “fire sale”. Faced with plummeting profits and a major shortage of popular new stars, the labels are now down to selling the family silver. To be sure, record companies need income sources far more significant than those to be had from selling obscure catalogue pieces.

But I say every little bit helps. They say desperate times breed desperate measures. But sometimes those desperate measures are good ones that were long overdue.

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