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14.09.12 Music Week 13
“We built a great company on the record side
and we started in music publishing and I did well with that,” he says. “I think the real benefit I had to that process was learning the business from the ground up so really specifically the music publishing, how songs make money, how they make money around the world, how does a band like Green Day make money from their repertoire. What you have to do to ensure they get paid. How do young producers make money and how do their careers go and those kind of things and on the record side how to make records, how to mix records, how to get the art work done, what it takes to do all those things.” That knowledge is now being deployed by him
at Warner/Chappell which, going by its Q2 market share success, suggests he has made genuine advancements in his first 20 months. But as proud as he and his team are of that statistical victory, which included credits on 40 of the period’s 100 top radio tunes in the States, he stresses market shares is not one of the key metrics to gauge how the company is performing, noting: “It’s a real challenge for major publishers that historically were able to leverage their size into picking up market share. We focus more: I like to use the analogy of the golden geese... rather than chase pieces of the eggs we are looking at raising the geese to lay the eggs. It’s a little bit of a longer-term approach, but ultimately we’ll have more success.” Strang and his colleagues also now face market
competition from a new super player with the Sony/ATV-led consortium winning FTC approval for its $2.2bn (£1.4bn) buyout of EMI Publishing at the end of the same quarter Warner/Chappell led the market rankings. “For us it’s just a reality and something we deal
with,” he says of the new competitor, “but they’ll have their issues I’m sure trying to put those companies together and we will continue to do what we do and we see how it falls in the end. But we’re as competitive as anybody here so we’re up for the challenge.” The EMI-Sony/ATV combination also
potentially throws up opportunities for Warner/ Chappell both as an alternative home for songwriters maybe not wanting to be part of such a big organisation and possible new purchases with what the consortium has to divest to meet EC regulators’ demands. “What I would look at it is what we do here is
we’re absolutely focused on providing the best service to our writers and producers and our artists and our publishing partners,” he says. “That means having the right number of people to do all the
various jobs and to work with them strategically to understand what it is they’re trying to achieve, what it is we can do to have them achieve it and make them as successful as they can be, so that’s what we’re doing. But logically I see the challenge [at Sony/ATV/ EMI] is how do you make your company twice as big with the same amount of overhead and provide the same amount of service?” As for acquisitions, Strang says Warner/ Chappell is definitely in the market if they match the company’s requirements. “We’re always looking for the right repertoire,
the right artist, the right producers, the right songwriters, so if they fit in with what we’re looking for and what we want to do then we will be looking at signing and buying and if they don’t we won’t be,” he says. Among the assets on offer from the EMI
Publishing takeover are four catalogues and deals with a dozen Anglo-American writers, including Eg White and Take That’s Howard Donald and Jason Orange. However, Strang is not publicly
“I like to use the analogy of the golden geese... rather than chase pieces of the eggs we are looking at raising the geese to lay the eggs. It’s a little bit of a longer-term approach, but ultimately we’ll have more success” CAMERON STRANG, WARNER/CHAPPELL
prepared to comment on specific deals, although in general terms “we’re definitely interested”. A deeper challenge facing Warner/Chappell and the other long-established publishers is the rise of companies like Kobalt which, rather than build their businesses on ownership, are solely about administration deals and songwriters keeping their copyrights. For his own company, Strang says it will continue to adopt a mixed approach depending on each individual circumstance. “There are different types of publishing deals and as a major publishing company we need to be doing all of them,” he says. “We need to be buying catalogues when they make sense and they are the right types of repertoire. We need to be administering catalogues on behalf of certain writers
LEFT Wayne Hector: The UK songwriter is a key part of Warner/Chappell’s long-term strategy
ABOVE From left: Fun and Bruno Mars have been delivering hits for Warner/Chappell in the US while Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter Ryan Bingham (pictured, centre, with Strang and Bingham’s wife and manager Anna Axster) recently renewed his deal
and we need to be in traditional types of deals co- publishing writers when that’s the right approach. People’s needs are different and the key is to really understand what they are trying to accomplish, what their needs are and see if that fits with what you are able to do and we approach it that way.” The fall in mechanical royalties is also
something every publisher has had to cope with in recent years as digital revenue has failed to make up the income shortfall caused by declining CD sales. But here Strang sees some optimistic signs. “It appears that the mechanical royalty revenue is not taking the same amount of damage that it was so that seems to be looking up for us,” he observes. “Obviously a lot of the new digital models and
services are incredibly exciting, which ones are going to take off and aren’t is an interesting question, but in general the digital area is a positive and exciting story and the emerging markets in Asia and India and Eastern Euorpe and how the publishing business moves into those areas and how it evolves in those areas is an exciting growth area and one that Warner/Chappell is providing some leadership in and working with the various societies and governments etc.” As the biggest market for repertoire outside the
US, the UK naturally also remains an important focus for Strang and Warner/Chappell and he praises the job being done by managing director Richard Manners and his London team. The UK company has been part of an A&R triangle created since the chairman/CEO’s arrival, linking it directly with the US and Sweden to try to exploit potential creative opportunities. “We see a real connection there in pop music and the current way records are made and between Stockholm and London and the US markets,” he says. “We’ve really connected those three places and you can see a number of the successes we’re having tends to come from collaborations in those three areas. We’ve got some dynamic young A&R people from each territory and we’ve connected them and they travel back and forth in a seamless way and as a business we really focus on how do we work with the writers and the repertoire and make the connections through these areas.” Among the main writers in this setup is the
UK’s Wayne Hector who played a starring role in Warner/Chappell’s Q2 market share success having co-penned both The Wanted’s US breakthrough Glad You Came and Nicki Minaj’s Starships. It will be writers like Hector who Strang and his colleagues will continue to look to as they try to continue the impetus of the chairman/CEO’s first 20 months in charge.
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