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15.08.14 Music Week 11


waned, certain publishers have been able to create opportunities that are completely separate and aside from the record company – some TV licensing opportunities, composing original music for ad campaigns, there’s revenue being generated from merchandise and lyric websites now, covers on YouTube are generating significant revenue for songwriters... These are things that fall outside the scope of their historical label relationships.


Do you think that a publisher can now do things on an A&R level that it once couldn’t and perhaps even things that a label can’t? I can’t speak for the entire publishing community but for Downtown we take the development of songwriter artists very seriously, as well as the development of writers and producers. From our perspective, we are happy to take a chance and spend the time, energy and financial resources to develop someone early on in their career. [UK A&R manager] Tom Graham is doing that now with several artists that he has found in London. Across the company, we think there are ways that we can monetise that investment outside of the traditional scope of the recorded music business. There are a lot of acts that we’ve worked with that we signed at a very early stage and were able to recoup our investment through sync licensing well in advance of a record deal. We had a lot of success with Santigold and Neon Trees in that way. We’ve just renewed our deal with Neon Trees after they released their third album. That band was broken heavily on the back of sync licensing. We’re continuing to see that happen. We’re signing songwriters and producers as


well, who are not necessarily having to wait until they get a successful single with a major label to see significant revenue – they are songwriters and artists who have not had that success with a commercial recording artist but have had success with music for film or for television.


We have seen some significant expansion from Downtown Publishing recently. Why now? Up until 2012 we were operating as a sister company of a record business, Downtown Records, and once we became an independent publishing business, we started to execute a number of initiatives that we thought were important to see the publishing company grow as a standalone operation. We think there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in music publishing around the world.


Most recently you opened offices in London and Benelux. What kind of opportunities do you anticipate and what can you offer the music industries in the UK and Europe? We’ve always had a very international view on the business. For a long time we’ve been the US sub- publisher for many European companies – Budde Music in Germany, Crunchy Tunes in Denmark, and a number of UK publishers including Perfect Songs and Kassner Music. We’ve always had a view to represent songs around the world through some of the best independent publishers in the world and provide them with a great service in the United States. We thought it would also be a good idea to have our own focus on the ground to provide local creative for the songwriters that we sign both in the US and abroad, to source new and emerging songwriters - as well as catalogues - who are looking for prospective deals, whether they be North America only or worldwide.


LEFT


Driving licensing: Downtown Music Publishing president Justin Kalifowitz


says there are more licensing opportunities than ever before


and has become one of the top pop studios in New York. Clientele includes everyone from Adele and Ryan Tedder to Maroon 5 and Dr. Luke – we don’t publish those artists or producers but they are clientele of the recording studio.


“When we’re doing deals with developing artists, we’re frequently doing them well in advance of a record deal. We’re seeing artists, lawyers and managers look to publishers for development” JUSTIN KALIFOWITZ, DOWNTOWN


We also think there are a lot of exciting things


happening in the way that music is being used all over the world. From a creative and advertising standpoint, Amsterdam and London produce some of the most interesting [projects] in the world. We’ve seen, over the past few years, a number of songs in our catalogue being licensed for very interesting advertising campaigns out of those two markets. When we think about the importance of diversifying our revenue outside of the United States, that’s a huge area for us.


Do you have any highlights from that sector that have been particularly successful in your eyes? From our perspective it’s early days on the international expansion but, as a general comment, I would say that historically publishers have gone through a one size fits all solution for international – whether that’s a network of sub-publishers or a single company who’s collecting for them outside of their home territory. Our view is that we very much like to be a global independent publisher that creates the correct international structure for the different types of clients that we work with. We have direct relationships with over 30 different societies around the world, but in certain territories we will often augmented with consultants or different sub-publishers. We also work with different sub-publishers in a handful of territories on a catalogue-by-catalogue basis – that really speaks to our vision of looking at each territory and each catalogue as its own opportunity.


You have your own studios. Can a songwriter or artist be signed by Downtown Publishing, record at your studios and then immediately put a track out for sync opportunities? The studio is definitely an integrated part of the publishing business, and we’ve had many of our songwriters create tracks for sync opportunities there. But it’s also a commercial recording studio


It must be important that sync is considered a revenue stream rather than a promo tool, from your perspective. How significant is revenue from sync these days? Does it need to be more? We’re always trying to get as much money as possible for our songwriters while maintaining a long-standing relationship with the licensing community. Music unquestionably adds value to ad campaigns, film, television and so on - particularly in advertising where people tend to walk away from the television or drift on the radio dial. When there’s a great song in the background they tend to stay. Some [companies] do a really fantastic job of recognising that value and compensating songwriters and artists while others, I think, look to pay as little as possible, like many businesses do. In a general sense, we’ve seen licensing fees


slope down over time, but the volume of licensing opportunities is at a level that I’ve never seen before and I don’t see it stopping. We’re getting a lot of regionalisation of ad campaigns whereas there used to be one song licensed worldwide. Now you’re seeing seven or eight songs backing the same piece of creative. The total licensing dollars for those songs could well exceed what they used to pay for one song, but obviously that money is going to be spread across a number of rights-holders and not just one publisher that used to get the worldwide campaign.


DOWN IN LONDON TOWN Tom Graham is A&R manager at Downtown Music Publishing’s UK headquarters, which opened its doors in March this year. Here, he talks about his remit at the company’s British base and the kind of activity we’re likely


to see going forward: “I’m the ambassador for an unbelievable roster


and catalogue from one of the most forward thinking music companies in the world. Thus the remit becomes something of a joy and a privilege - and that is to help create opportunities from our current roster, sign exciting new music and to grow the already outstanding reputation that Downtown has built. “The activity will be very positive and competitive, between looking for new talent and working with our existing roster - you can expect us to be eagerly looking to work with the great labels, publishers, managers and artists from around the world. “Over the past few months we have signed an


agreement to represent Palet House, a publishing company started by Katie Melua, we are developing several new acts including The Cogo and Alani and have also signed a publishing deal with Slaves on Virgin EMI. “Last week we formed a new joint venture with


the label Chess Club, whose releases have varied from Mumford & Sons to Jungle right through to more recent acts such as Mo. Founders Peter McGaughrin and Will Streets’ vision of building the already incredible brand into the publishing world was something we are thrilled to be part of.”


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