Music Publishing & Songwriting

Having just attended the BMI Pop Awards in Los Angeles, an event so unique and thrilling it’s rivaled only by the ASCAP Pop Awards three weeks before it, and the SESAC Awards, sandwiched in between those two, I couldn’t help but look around the room at the award-winning writers assembled and wonder:

What do they know that the masses of struggling songwriters do not? Why can one writer create four or five BMI-award winning songs, awards that recognize the top-earning songs of the year, while most are hoping just to write one song that someday gets played on the radio?

This is the same question that lies behind my upcoming book, “Hits Only, Please”. I’ve spent the past year interviewing writers, publishers, radio programmers, music marketers and others, trying to understand “What makes a hit song?” and even more importantly, “What makes a hit songwriter?”. What is the key that allows certain songwriters to consistently create “hits”, and to show up on that BMI or ASCAP stage, again and again…

Of course, if I had discovered the magic formula, mine would be a very expensive book. But in interviewing a number of top songwriters, I have found several pretty good hints as to what’s needed to make it to the top of the charts. Here’s just one quick observation to start with:

Hit songwriters WANT to write hits.

Doesn’t everyone? No. In my experience, I’ve found that the majority of songwriters might like to have one of their songs become hits, but most do not actually WANT to write hits. Most songwriters want to write what they want to write, in the way that they want to write it. They are not interested in writing what radio wants or the audience wants. Many of them don’t even think about how their song might fit into a radio format, or which group of people might like their music, or what kind of things appeal to that particular audience. Everything is left entirely to chance, and to the desire for creative expression.

As a songwriter, at some point in your career you must decide what motivates your creativity. Is it a desire for personal expression? Or is it a desire to communicate? They are not the same thing. Expression is an easily attainable goal, and utterly impossible to judge or critique. If you feel you’ve expressed what you want to express, who am I to inform you otherwise? Only you can determine the success of your own personal expression.

However, if your goal is to communicate, you’ve taken on a much larger endeavor. You’ve also attempted something that is considerably more objective. You may feel that you’ve communicated an idea or an emotion quite clearly. But in the end, someone else will be the judge. If I, the listener, don’t understand what you’re saying, or relate to it, then the message was not communicated with success. Like beauty, communication is largely in the eye of the beholder, not the creator.

By and large, hit songs are created by those who have an intense desire to communicate. Hit songwriters have a desire not just to express themselves, but to communicate those ideas to an audience– to reach them, to touch them emotionally, and to entertain them. To that end, they are willing to make their music fit into radio formats and marketing plans. They keep up on trends and fashions to stay one step ahead of their audience. They edit relentlessly, to make sure that only their best work is put forward, and that every second of a song engages the listener with something new. They listen to feedback– from the industry, from their peers, and most importantly from their audience. If something isn’t working, they change it. Hit songwriters want to win.

At the ASCAP Awards, the songwriter of the year, Timbaland, was notably absent, but sent a message to be read on his behalf. He apologized for missing the event, but explained that he was in the studio mixing a new record. Then he threw down the gauntlet. After winning a record-setting 9 ASCAP awards over the past year, he said that he was looking forward to the upcoming year, and winning 10.

The next day, I saw my friends Mikkel and Tor from Stargate, the production team that has been dominating the charts for the past year with hits like “Irreplaceable” and “Please Don’t Stop The Music”. They had been at the awards and had heard Timbaland’s message– and at breakfast the next morning, they were already raring to get back to the studio. “Timbaland made the challenge last night” they laughed. “Now next year, we have to beat him.”

Writing hit songs is never easy. But you won’t win until you decide to get in the game. Congratulations to the all the ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC award-winning songwriters in 2008. I look forward to seeing you there next year!

ASCAP
BMI
SESAC

I just can’t stop making you money. First, I tipped you off about Sound Exchange, and the money that is being set aside to pay performance royalties to artists whose work is used in the digital domain. Then I clued you into the importance of registering your songs at Harry Fox and MCPS/PRS in order to avoid other people collecting your lost income. Next, I told you to get in the game, and suggested that there was an important new income source in video games. And now it’s time to go to church.

Okay, I realize this isn’t for everyone. If your catalogue of songs is predominately death metal anthems or songs about getting “low”, church is probably not the place for you. Clearly, Christian music, whether it’s traditional hymns, Christian rock, CCM pop, or gospel, is not for everyone. But it’s for more people than you might think. If you’re not in the industry, it might surprise you how big these markets are. But what might really surprise you is what a big business it can be.

I remember the first trip I made to Nashville—I was working for a large publisher based in New York, and headed off to meet my colleagues in the Country music office (based in Nashville) and in the Christian music office (located in the center of that industry, in the suburb of Franklin). Like most offices in the country music industry, our Nashville office was located in a small family house along Music Row. It was charming and cozy, but by New Yorker skyscraper standards, not overly impressive.

With that in mind, I headed off to the Franklin office of our Christian Music division, expecting an even smaller office somewhere in a suburban office park. After all, country music is a much bigger business than the Christian business, right?

What I found was a six or seven story glass tower devoted entirely to the business of Christian music—a record label, publishing company, printing company and recording studio. “How can the CCM business be generating this kind of income?” It didn’t seem to correspond in any way to the level of CCM record sales. Turns out.. it doesn’t need to .

The Christian music industry is one segment that learned early on that there is more to making money in music than record sales. A huge portion of the income in Christian music is generated by print music, an area that has been largely ignored in the secular business. Print music is key in the CCM market because of the sale of praise and worship music, choral arrangements, youth choir arrangements and other songbooks that are marketed directly to churches and Christian bookstores. For those writers fortunate enough to write a praise and worship favorite, the money can flow in year after year—from the publishing rights, not the record royalties.

So for those of you who are actively involved in the Christian or Gospel business, it’s essential to learn how to collect the money for these worship service uses. This past week, Billboard writer Susan Butler , in her column “The Publisher’s Place”, highlighted a very important organization:

Christian Copyright Licensing International

This company, based in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, licenses and collects royalties from churches for reproductions, reprintings or other copying of songs to be used in their worship services, choir shows, etc. Churches are not required to pay performance royalties (ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC) for their services. But they are required to license, and pay for reproductions like bulletin inserts, songbooks, or visual projections of the songs. What does that really mean to publishers? About $172 million over the past 19 years!

CCLI is not only responsible for collecting the money, and distributing it to the publishers and writers, but also for helping church choir leaders, ministers and others to understand their obligations under the law, and the importance of licensing the music they use. It even has an online service called SongSelect that works with nearly 60,000 subscribers, giving them access to a library of almost 200,000 songs available for download. The organization licenses 145,000 churches, offering a “church copyright license” with scaled annual fees based on the number of church members. From those church licenses, CCLI distributed more than $15 million to publishers last year.

Please be clear. This is not a religious message. But if you’ve watched the election results on Tuesday, and seen the surprising strength of Mike Huckabee, you’ve seen that the power and size of the evangelical movement should not be underestimated. I’m not preaching to anyone here.

I’m talking business—and reminding you that if you are involved in the CCM or Gospel industry, you need to be familiar with CCLI. There is real money there—money that can help you to sustain your business, spread your message, and get your music heard. When people lift every voice and sing, someone’s getting paid. Let it be you.