Music publisher

“ If you are invited to purchase music for a new song, it is the part of wisdom to refuse—because only in very rare instances has a successful song been the result of such a method. The reason is perfectly plain, when you consider that the composer who offers you a melody for a cash price is interested only in the small lump sum he receives. You are his market. He does not care anything about the market the music must make for itself, first with a publisher and then with the public. ”

“ These companies are similar to publisher clearinghouses in that they are authorized by member copyright owners to clear samples for use on albums according to an agreed upon fee structure. In addition, record companies and most music publishers have instituted certain licensing policies as more and more artists routinely seek clearance for their samples with the hope of avoiding litigation.” A. Dean Johnson, Music Copyrights: The Need for an Appropriate Fair Use Analysis in Digital Sampling Infringement Suits, 21 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 135, 163 (1993) (footnote omitted) . ”

“ But there was the problem of paying artists. The Constitution sets out the purpose of American copyright: to promote the useful arts and sciences. The composers had a credible story that they'd do less composing if they weren't paid for it, so Congress needed a fix. Here's what they came up with: anyone who paid a music publisher two cents would have the right to make one piano roll of any song that publisher published. The publisher couldn't say no, and no one had to hire a lawyer at $200 an hour to argue about whether the payment should be two cents or a nickel. ”

“ I am attorney for many authors and composers, and I know that when they need money they take their composition to a publisher and he will pay them a small amount—$25 to $100—for a musical composition, and no matter what the income may be, whether it is $25,000 or $100,000, these music publishers are not philanthropists enough to hand any additional sum to such author or composer. ”

“ Some day that unheard-of thing an intelligent music publisher may be born into the world, and he may give Englishmen a trustworthy edition, at a fair price, of the works of England's greatest musician. Meantime, the reader must do as the writer did for some years—he must grub and laboriously copy in the British Museum, buying, when he can, the seventeenth-century edition of Dioclesian and the eighteenth-century editions of such works as The Tempest and The Indian Queen, and also the Orpheus Britannicus. ”

“ The Continental type of publisher, who is a scholar and a musician, and a gentleman who is conscious of a duty to music as well as to the stockholders, is almost unknown here. To our publishers music is a commodity, to be bought cheap and sold dear, and most of them will publish anything that looks profitable, regardless of its quality. Their typographical standards are higher than those anywhere in the world, except Germany.
So the American composer in America works more or less in a vacuum. He is out of things, and he knows it. ”

“ The poet has a thousand means by which he can place his works before the world. Publications are appearing daily wherein their works would be gladly received; the musician has but one—the music publisher. ”

“ But now no publisher will buy an entire work; for a popular song or two out of it, or perhaps a duet, he will offer a sum, not enough, however, to remunerate the composer for the labour of a single week, and the theatres pay him nothing, be his success what it may. The managers find that they are conferring a favour by accepting the music of an opera, and plenty of composers, or pseudo-composers, press forward to be obliged. ”

“ Modest merit is unknown among us now. Thus songs and ballads without number, which would otherwise remain in well-merited obscurity on the shelves of the publisher, are forced into notice and repute. The trade, no doubt, benefits by this system, the commercial end of these speculations may indeed be answered, but the public taste is lowered by each and every of these transactions.
We may here notice the extravagant price of music of every description in England. For a piece of four or five pages, the sum of 2s. is commonly demanded. ”

“ But it is something that the publisher may well fuss over, because copyright holders are extremely aggressive in asking for payments for the slightest little segment. Copyright holders in music and song lyrics are among the most aggressive of the lot. Year after year academics, critics, and historians pay fairly substantial fees (by our standards) to license tiny fragments of songs even though their incorporation is almost certainly fair use. Many of them do not know the law. Others do, but want to avoid the hassle, the threats, the nasty letters. It is simpler just to pay. ”

“ And of that million of dollars they will keep at least $900,000, and about $90,000 of the rest will go to the music publishers, and not one cent over $10,000 of the whole million will go into the pockets of any music composers during their natural lives. ”

“ Royalty payments for import or manufacture of digital audio recording media set at 3 percent of the transfer price. Royalties to be divided into two separate funds as follows: Music Works Fund ( 1/3 of the royalties) : 50 percent to songwriters, 50 percent to music publishers; Sound Recording Fund ( 2/3 of the royalties) : 2 5/8 percent to the American Federation of Musicians for the benefit of nonfeatured musicians, 1 3/8 percent to the American Federation of Television and Recording Artists for the benefit of nonfeatured vocalists. ”

“ They have a few hundred books, and many times they loan them out to other societies for similar entertainments, to societies that are not so poor but what they could afford to buy them. That is one of the great evils that is interfering with the business of the music publishers. ”

“ Bacon for the Music Publishers' Association in the form of an amendment which now appears in all of its substantial terms as subdivision (g) page 2, of the bill. Now, the independent music publishers in turn control the great majority of composers, so that there is thus formed a complete monopolistic octopus, in which the Æolian Company forms the head and brains, the Music Publishers' Association the body, the independent publishers the writhing arms, and the composers the suckers and baiters. ”

“ Bubble that he does not have to perform before an audience of Editors.
Having written the lyric the next thing to do is to get a composer to compose music for it and then you get it published. This is most difficult, as composers are people who don't ever keep appointments, and music publishers like locking up lyrics in drawers till the mice have got at the chorus and the whole thing is out of date. ”

“ Nine chances out of ten, you will find that the writers are successful popular song publishers—it is their business to write for their own market. Furthermore—and this is the crux of the matter—they have a carefully maintained sales force and an intricate outlet for all their product, which would take years for a "private publisher" to build up. Really, you cannot expect to make any money by private publication, even at the low cost of song-printing these days—unless you are willing to devote all your energies to pushing your song. ”

“ You have written your lyrics, and you have fashioned your melody, or you have found a composer who is anxious to make his melody fit your lyrics so perfectly that they have been fused into a unity so complete that it seems all you have to do to start everybody whistling it is to find a publisher. ”

“ They say they feel much injured at the production of anything of mine by another publisher. The good people shall be saved such troubles in future. But apart from them I have had letters from six musical publishers in different places asking for things to bring out. ”

“ Alan asked, pouring himself a coffee and adding some UHT cream from a giant, slightly dented box of little creamers.
“Most of the music ever recorded isn’t for sale at any price. Like 80 percent of it. And the labels, they’ve made copyright so strong, no one can figure out who all that music belongs to—not even them! Costs a fortune to clear a song. ”

“ These publishing people—they want the copyright of an obscure composer's work, such as mine is, for almost less than I should have to pay a person for making a fair manuscript copy of the score. The one you speak of I have lent to various friends about here and Melchester, and so it has got to be sung a little. But music is a poor staff to lean on—I am giving it up entirely. You must go into trade if you want to make money nowadays. The wine business is what I am thinking of. ”

“ In reply, the songwriters and publishers maintain that four giant record companies dominate the record industry which is largely controlled by entertainment conglomerates whose consolidated reports and intra-company transactions it is claimed conceal the true profit figures of particular divisions. They cite testimony by a top record industry executive in support of the fact that a record company’s profit on the typical recording sold is far greater than that claimed in industry presentations to the Congress and far greater than that of the composer and publisher combined. ”

“ Sound samples are the library of the composer active in the civilization of illiteracy. Using networking as a matter of practicability, people could display, in places of living or work, images from any collection, or listen to music from any ongoing concert around the globe. They could also change the selection without touching the display. They could redo each artwork as they please, painting over its digital double in the act of appropriating it, probably beyond what any artist of the past would ever accept, or any artist of the present would care for. ”

“ We composers of America take the other view. We are very anxious as to who makes the laws of this land. We are in a very bad way. I think when the old copyright law was made, the various perforated rolls and phonograph records were not known, and there was no provision made to protect us in that direction. Since then, the talking machines have come out, and the claim is made that the record of sound is not a notation.
There are three ways for the composer to make a living by his music: By sight or by sound or by touch. ”

“ But regardless of how well we think the image of individual creativity fits literature, it fits very poorly in music where so much creativity is recognizably more collective and additive, and where much of the raw material used by subsequent creators is potentially covered by copyright. 7
So how does the accretive process of musical creativity fare in the modern law and culture of copyright? How would the great musical traditions of the twentieth century—jazz, soul, blues, rock—have developed under today's copyright regime? ”

“ In London he shared with his old master, Tallis, the post of Organist of the Royal Chapel and he also enjoyed with him a privilege of a more profitable nature, which was no less than a patent, granted by Queen Elizabeth to print and sell music, English or foreign, and to rule, print and sell music paper for twenty-one years, and all other printers were forbidden to infringe this license under penalty of forty shillings. ”

“ The design of the Musical Library is to afford the same advantage to amateurs in music that the lovers of literature are deriving from the cheap publications for the advancement of real knowledge, that are now distributed through every part of the empire, and are within the reach of persons of every condition. It is proposed to publish a Collection of Music, both vocal and for the piano-forte, by the best masters, ancient and modern: the ancient in a state adapted to the improved condition of our musical instruments ”

“ They will supply lyrics to fit your music. They will print your song and push it to success. They will do anything at all—for a fee! And I have heard the most pitiful tales imaginable of high hopes at the beginning and bitter disappointment at the end, from poor people who could ill afford the money lost.
These "publishers" are not fair—they are not honest. They make their living from broken promises, and pocket the change with a grin over their own cleverness. Why these men cannot perform what they promise is perfectly plain in the light of all that has been said about the popular song. ”

“ This would seem to confine the requirements that the author of a musical composition permitting mechanical reproduction should license any manufacturer, to musical compositions which are not dramatic, i.e., to instrumental compositions or to songs and other vocal music not associated with drama. ”

“ Actors called “song pluggers” are engaged. The arrangement with them is that they will sing a particular song exclusively—give no other song a chance. The public pays to hear the actor sing; the manager pays to have him sing; the song publisher pays him to sing a certain song.
From theater to theater, from company to company, from artist to artist, the publishers’ agents wend their way, making what terms they can to single artists, vaudeville teams or comedy companies for boosting a new song by giving it prominent place in the program. ”

“ But do we really think we are more likely to get a twenty-first- century Ray Charles, or a fusion of styles to create a new genre, in the world we have made? Do we really think that the formalist ignorance of Judge Duffy or the market optimism of the Bridgeport court, in which thick markets offer fungible sets of samples to be traded like commodities, are good guides for the future of music? Are we in fact killing musical creativity with the rules that are supposed to defend it? ”