Nearly every week, a musician issues a decree through the media calling out streaming services such as Spotify for the pitiful payout they receive for thousands of song streams. And while musicians are happy to lament the death of record sales as we once knew them, they rarely talk about the revenue streams that provide for them and keep them in a career as a full-time musician. One of the biggest of those incomes, rarely discussed, is publishing.
For green-gilled musicians, publishing may seem like a dark art, a shadow force that operates in the backroom, wheeling and dealing on the artist’s behalf. The truth about publishing, especially now artists can no longer rely on record sales, is that it’s one of the most important things a band can pursue. But what does it entail exactly?
“A publisher looks after the writers of music and lyrics, not musicians and vocalists,” says Steve Lindsey, an established publisher with Elevate Music. “They may be one and the same within a band, but the process of composing music is a totally different skill to performing it, and writing derives income from its own sources. A publisher encourages the use of the compositions it represents, and is responsible for ensuring that the money the music earns is collected and paid to the writers.”
“Opportunities I pursue will include getting songs covered by other artists, getting music used in films, TV and adverts, helping artists get record deals or distribution, creating collaborations with other writers. Almost anything that will further a writer’s career.”
Lindsey started out as a musician, so he knows both sides of the publishing coin, which he says is a help in talking to artists. “I can empathise with the writers I work with because I’ve been through most of what they are experiencing and I can talk the same language.”
Top Of The Pops to publishing
As a songwriter with the UK bands Deaf School and The Planets in the late-1970s, Lindsey experienced some success with record sales and even a Top Of The Pops appearance for the latter band's song Lines in 1979. He realised that he enjoyed the songwriting aspect of his music more than the performance of it. So he decided to pursue the business side of songwriting, through publishing.
“I hated sitting in a tour bus for weeks on end playing assorted ‘toilets’ up and down the UK,” he says. My first experience with publishing was being signed to Warner Bros Music and seeing first-hand that it is possible for someone to earn a living from songwriting without needing to be a performer too.
“By the mid-1980s, I’d had enough of being a struggling muso and resolved, one morning, to phone all the publishers in London. I said: ‘I hear there’s a vacancy in your A&R department’. All of them except one told me to get lost. I got lucky with Chappell’s. I had an interview and got the job. I didn’t know there was a vacancy in the first place. I learned everything at Chappell (it merged with Warner during my time there). Chappell’s was part of the London music business establishment and, as such, it was like an Oxbridge education in publishing.”
Lindsey went on to work in the publishing department of Go! Discs, where he worked in an A&R capacity with Norman Cook and The La's, and then onto Island Records , where he worked as a creative director with Pulp, U2, The Cranberries and Massive Attack. He later worked as an independent music supervisor on films such as Twin Town and Mission: Impossible.
“I enjoy working on feature films hugely,” says Lindsey. “It’s great to build up a rapport with a director and producer and creatively fulfill what is effectively another dramatic role in a film. Ads are one-offs and the creative people have usually decided on a song before I get involved.”
A gap in the Irish market
When Lindsey moved to Ireland in 2001, he saw a gap in the market which lead to him setting up his own publishing company Elevate Music. "I saw so much musical talent here," Lindsey says. "I simply set about distributing and circulating the fabulous material being created here to my international contacts and immediately got fantastic reactions and financial returns."
Elevate represent the music of Cathy Davey, Aslan, Westlife, Rubberbandits and Henry Girls, among others. Most recently, Elevate extended the deal for the use of Aslan's Crazy World in the campaign for Laya Healthcare and Life assurance.
A typical publishing deal will see the songwriter take 75 per cent of the income, with the rest going to the publisher.The artist generally assigns the copyright of their songs to the publisher for a set period of time so they can administer the songs on behalf of the songwriter, ensuring prompt administration and registration with organisations such as IMRO so that further income can be derived from royalties for the public performance or reproduction of music.
“The most important aspects for a publisher is to have a really extensive network of contacts to get the music heard and used by as many people as possible, and to then have a really effective administration structure to reap the earnings for the writers.”
The publisher then, is in charge of promoting and circulating a songwriter’s music so it can be exploited for use. The term ‘exploitation’ is a phrase used in the licensing of music that can make some artists uncomfortable and lead to them jumping out of a deal in publishing. “If they still have fears and worries, I won’t sign them,” states Lindsey. “I don’t twist anyone’s arm.”
As for the idea of bands “selling out” to corporate brands through allowing their songs to be used in advertising, the decline in record sale revenue means there’s less grumbling about that particular problem. Most artists are glad of the income.
“I think all bands these days work really hard to stay afloat and pay the bills. Most successful bands find a balance between artistic integrity and making money that works for them. I can’t think of one instance when a band has felt they’d sold out after agreeing for one of their songs to be used in a TV ad.”
