COVER STORY
DYBALL VISION
Over 30 years, Jane Dyball has helped transform the music publishing licensing landscape – and put millions of extra pounds in rights-holders’ pockets. As she prepares to move on from her current role as CEO of the MPA Group, this year’s Women In Music Outstanding Contribution winner looks back on her remarkable career…
H 16 | Music Week 12.11.18
------------ BY MARK SUTHERLAND ------------ PHOTOS: PAUL HARRIES
igh above London, Jane Dyball is contemplating precisely why she has been chosen to scale the even giddier heights of Music Week’s 2018 Women In Music Outstanding Contribution Award.
“It’s unusual to get recognised for just getting on with it,” she
laughs in the café at the top of PRS For Music’s Kings Cross HQ. “I do stuff behind the scenes. It’s good that that gets recognised, but it’s not that sexy kind of role where you can say, ‘I went to a gig and discovered a young Bono’. I’m never the smartest person in the room. But maybe that’s an achievement, surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you are…”
Luckily, even Dyball’s trademark self-deprecation can not hide the truth: her career in and around music publishing has had more impact on artists, songwriters and publishers than any talent-spotter. Although if one punk outfit had had anything to do with it, she’d never even have got started… Dyball grew up a pop obsessive but studied law at Bristol University, an experience which largely convinced her she didn’t want to be a lawyer (“I have done enough jobs in my life to understand how long eight hours can be if you’re not enjoying yourself”). Instead, having worked out that there must be a business lurking behind the credits on the Wham! and Culture Club records she so enjoyed, she borrowed a copy of the Music Week Directory from the library and set about looking for a job.
Soon, she was offered one too: in The Stranglers’ office. The deal was subject to her passing a typing test; a mere formality given that she’d told them she could type. Only one problem: she was lying.
“I failed spectacularly,” she grins. “And then I had that, ‘You’ve wasted my time, wasted your time’ talk, which was
“As an industry, we’re too cautious. Sometimes you just have to say, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’”
JANE DYBALL MPA
very humiliating. I was like, ‘What happened to punk?’” Fortunately, punk’s loss was to become music publishing’s gain. Next, she was offered a job at Virgin Music Publishing, again subject to a typing test, although thankfully her new boss, Maria Forte’s standards were rather less exacting and she was taken on to listen to records and type up the lyrics. “I was paid basically nothing,” she says now, “But I couldn’t believe I was getting paid anything.” Dyball being Dyball, she wasn’t content with that for long, however. Her can-do attitude and talent for organisation quickly saw her become essential to Virgin’s burgeoning publishing business, then home to artists such as the Pet Shop Boys, Culture Club and Sting; executives such as Steve Lewis, Richard Griffiths, Mike McCormack, Emmanuel De Buretel and Blair McDonald; and, of course, owned by Richard Branson.
“You really bought into the fact that you were working for Richard,” she remembers. “You’d play rounders at his house in the country, you’d go sailing, you’d go horse riding. I remember having to play tennis with him as my partner, which was terrifying because I could see how competitive he was and I was very aware of my own skill set in that department! So, even though he was spending a lot of time doing planes and stuff, you felt that you were working in a very personal, family business.”
So, when Branson sold Virgin to EMI in 1992, it came as a body blow.
“The shock of realising that you were basically a commodity was really hard to take,” she says. “I read his autobiography where he goes running down the road in tears, and that’s pretty much what happened, but you just think, ‘Well, you’re alright.’”
At Virgin Records, the staff had been unceremoniously escorted from the building, but Lewis insisted the publishing staff could be trusted and didn’t need security. “So consequently, we all went in and raided the cupboards, handed out all the Ivor Novello Awards and that’s when I got my PIL Metal Box, limited edition collection of vinyl,” she laughs.
Dyball being Dyball, however, she also went back to work the next day to try and finish a Bryan Ferry sync deal that the artist himself had been pushing for, only to be kicked out. “I realised I had to start again completely,” she says. After a short stint at sheet music firm IMP, she was persuaded to join Warner/Chappell’s paralegal team by Andrew Gummer, even though she’d long since given up any lawyerly ambitions.
“I had no experience,” she laughs. “On my first day, Andrew said, ‘Can you draft an extension to the Eric Clapton deal?’ And I responded, ‘No, I don’t think I can’. He said, ‘No, I’m not asking if you’re able to, I’m telling you that’s what I want you to do’. It was a lot of fun…”
Dyball learned fast, becoming a famously formidable deal negotiator and rising up through the Warner/Chappell ranks, alongside such stellar female execs as Sas Metcalfe (Women In Music International Woman Of The Year winner last year) and Annette Barrett (Roll Of Honour inductee last year), eventually becoming SVP international, legal & business affairs. She worked with the likes of Stuart Price and Xenomania and became pals with Morrissey (“He’d write me a lot of letters and say, ‘You’re the only person I trust’”) but her biggest thrill came from working with Radiohead on the “pay what you want” In Rainbows project that would have such an impact on the music business. Dyball had long been an advocate of digital licensing at a time when many in publishing saw downloads, let alone streaming, as a threat rather than an opportunity. “We’d already made a mess of the ringtone market, which was just publishing before they started doing mastertones,”
musicweek.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
