16 Music Week 01.02.13
BUSINESSANALYSISSONGWRITERS IN 2012 EDITORIAL
Dr Luke and Co provide right medicine for Kobalt
BMG Chrysalis went on quite a shopping trip just before Christmas, snapping up a trolley-load of catalogues and songwriters the EC forced Sony/ATV to ditch after its EMI Publishing-led takeover. However, when it comes to housing contemporary hit songwriters rival Kobalt remains some distance ahead. Although the German company is hardly lacking in big names with
the likes of What Makes You Beautiful co-writer Carl Falk,
will.i.am and Bruno Mars on its books, Music Week’s Top 100 songwriters chart for 2012 clearly shows where the balance of power lies in terms of modern hitmakers with Kobalt controlling 18.5% of the chart to BMG Chrysalis’s 2.8%. Kobalt’s rise with a model built on the writers retaining their
copyrights and what it bills as “unparalleled transparency” has not been without controversy among rival publishers. Some puzzle over the kinds of deals it offers and how these can
add up financially, but there is no denying that from a talent point of view its roster is first class and includes some of the world’s leading songwriters, including Dr Luke, Max Martin and Shellback and from the UK the likes of Futurecut, Jake Bugg and Iain Archer - who co- wrote a big chunk of Bugg’s debut album.
deals it offers clients, but from a talent point of view, Kobalt’s roster is first class”
“Some puzzle over the kind of competitive
Even with all this, Kobalt’s collection of tunesmiths is no match for the combined weight of Sony/ATV and EMI, which provides nearly one-third of 2012’s top hit songwriters, including Calvin Harris and Sia Furler in first and second positions. EMI Publishing pre-takeover always had a particular strength in hit songwriting with Harris and Furler joined by the likes of Adele and Florence collaborator Paul Epworth, Stargate and Greg Kurstin, while these names now sit alongside Sony/ATV stars such as RedOne, Ed Sheeran and songwriting/production trio TMS whose 2012 hits included Little Mix’s Wings and Emeli Sande’s Read All About It Pt 3. Having the likes of Sande and Lana Del Rey on its books hardly suggests the new combined company is lacking in album artists either. All this must provide plenty of thought for Universal Music Publishing, the world’s top music publisher before Marty Bandier fulfilled his dream of being reunited with EMI, albeit without the Virgin catalogues and some top songwriting individuals. With its strength more with album artists, Universal was always behind EMI when it came to creating hit songs; now the gap is even wider. Sony/ATV/EMI fills more than twice as many positions as
Universal does on our songwriters chart and those it occupies are mostly with recording artists creating material for themselves, such as Coldplay, Florence Welch and Nicki Minaj, rather than being for- hire songwriters penning for others. It is the latter category in which most of the biggest hits are
produced these days with 90% of the Top 100 downloads in the UK last year involving at least some additional songwriting to the recording act, while 5% were cover versions. That left just 5% of the top sellers penned by the artists alone. Paul Williams, Head Of Business Analysis
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paul.williams@intentmedia.co.uk EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Calvin Harris was the UK’s leading hit songwriter for second successive year in 2012 after a series of solo sellers and successes for Cheryl and Rihanna Sia Furler took second spot thanks to likes of David Guetta’s Titanium, Flo Rida’s Wild Ones and Rihanna’s Diamonds The year’s Top 10 songwriters included Brits, Americans, Swedes, an Australian, Aussie-Belgian and South Korean Nearly one-third of 2012’s 100 top hit writers were signed to Sony/ATV/EMI with Kobalt the publisher’s main competitor Emeli Sande was 2012’s top albums songwriter with Ed Sheeran runner-up
SONGWRITING BY PAUL WILLIAMS
C
alvin Harris staked another claim as the world’s leading hitmaker by finishing as top songwriter in the UK during 2012 for a second successive year.
Having led Music Week’s exclusive chart in 2011
ranking songwriters by shares of the year’s 100 biggest- selling singles he did it all again in 2012 with a sizable gap between him and the opposition. Harris’s place at the top of the UK listings follows him taking the No 1 position on Billboard’s chart of the top songwriters of the year according to their performance on the Hot 100. In the US he penned six hits on the chart during the year, including the chart-topping We Found Love by Rihanna and a series of his own hits, such as Feel So Close and Let’s Go. His songwriting triumphs in the UK last year were
along similar lines with We Found Love and fellow Rihanna Hit Where Have You Been, which he co- authored, among the year’s 100 top downloads, according to Official Charts Company data. Let’s Go, his hit with
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CALVIN HARRIS FINDS LOVE ONCE AGAIN
Ne-Yo, and We’ll Be Coming Back recorded and written with Example also made the grade, but on top of all that were two chart-topping singles – Call My Name for Cheryl and Sweet Nothing, recorded by him with Florence Welch who was also on the writing credits alongside Kid Harpoon. Harris’s main rivals for the songwriting crown in 2011
were Bruno Mars and his Smeezingtons partners and Adele, but 12 months later the main challenge came from Down Under courtesy of EMI Music Publishing colleague Sia Furler. The Australian’s first album OnlySee came out back in
1997, but at the beginning of 2012 she was still little known in the UK. That quickly changed with two big hits she co-penned and featuring her on vocals – David Guetta’s Titanium and Flo Rida’s Wild Ones – which finished as 2012’s fourth and 10th biggest sellers. By the end of the year her star had risen to the heights
of being on Rihanna’s new album Unapologetic and specifically its lead-off single Diamonds, co-written by Furler and the year’s 11th top seller. Just for good measure she added two further songs to the year-end Top 100: another Guetta collaboration She Wolf (Falling To Pieces)
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