APPENDIX

A Glimpse into the Music Business

BECAUSE I know that some of you have dreams of using your vocal skills to make your way into the music business, I asked a couple of industry professionals—a music publisher and a manager—to talk a bit about what they do and to offer some basic advice about navigating through their corners of the music world. Whether you’re a singer-songwriter, a parent with a talented band of kids in the garage, or a hip-hop artist with a hot tape, I think you’ll find that their comments are a great starting point for thinking about how to take your work to a wider audience.

The Publisher

If you create a song, every time it’s used by someone, you’re entitled to payment. Music publishers, in exchange for a percentage of what your song earns, license your work to others and ensure that your money is collected properly around the world. But as Ben Maddahi, president of Unrestricted—a music consulting, publishing, and management company—explains, there’s a lot more to the music publishing business than that basic relationship.

Q: Music publishing is unfamiliar to a lot of people. In your role as a music publisher, what do you do?

A: Someone described it in a very helpful way recently. I’m like a Match.com for writers, producers, and artists. As a publishing A&R [artists and repertoire person], I represent songwriters (both lyric and melody writers and musicians/composers), and it’s my job to put the best writers, producers, and artists in the best possible combinations to yield songs that will be hits, or to create the most appropriate music for the projects I’m working on.

Q: How has the role of a publisher changed in recent years, with so many changes in the music business in general?

A: At the outset of my professional career (early 2006), I mainly saw the major publishers outbidding each other for songwriters who had hits climbing the charts, and trying to re-sign successful songwriters who had come to the end of their publishing deals. The most creative thing I had seen a major publisher do in those days was to make a call to get a great up-and-coming songwriter in the room with an artist or send out CDs of their favorite beats. Now, I see more and more A&Rs (both major and indie) taking a creative, hands-on, calculated approach to publishing. That’s something we spearheaded at my boutique A&R group, APG.

Q: There seem to be publishers and managers who work with songwriters, and A&R people at publishing companies. How does that all fit together? What would be the perfect team a young writer or writer/artist would want to assemble, publishing-wise?

A: That’s a tricky question because it really depends on the needs of each particular writer, and no two writers are alike. On the surface, a manager will be more responsible for handling a writer’s schedule, and negotiating certain parts of a songwriter’s business that the publisher doesn’t handle (for instance, negotiating whether they get standard or full rate, or, if the writer is a producer, negotiating their production advance). It’s more common for producer/writers to have both managers and publishers, since managing a producer yields more immediate income and is overall more lucrative for the manager. But certain songwriters have both managers and publishers because they may have different specialties/emphases that allow for every great opportunity to be capitalized upon. Some songwriters may not need managers, and some great ones crave them because they can help fill the gaps that the publisher leaves behind, or just add more value to the total equation.

Q: Have the relationships between publishers and record companies changed in recent years?

A: I see employees with dual A&R roles (working for both a label and a publisher) popping up more and more regularly. It’s smart because parent companies like Warner/Chappell or Sony/ATV can split the cost of an employee, double down on acts by signing them to both records and publishing, and up the accountability of the person who signs the act, because they will be responsible for ensuring the act’s success (from an A&R standpoint). I’ve seen great results with my colleagues Ryan Press at Warner/Chappell and Katie Welle at Sony/ATV.

Q: How do you find the people you sign?

A: It’s a combination of blind submissions to my email, my A&R scouts bringing me their best material, meetings with creative partners I trust, and scouring online data.

Q: How elaborate should a demo be?

A: It depends on who you’re sending it to. If it’s a producer, the instrumental should be very polished and sonically and musically an 8.5 out of 10 or above if I’m looking to sign them. There is a world of a difference between an 8 and an 8.5, believe it or not. For a top-line writer, I’m satisfied with a piano or guitar and a vocal, as long as the lyrics and melodies are incredible. We can get the rest there; that’s a big part of my job.

Q: What makes you pay attention to a song? What are you listening for? Would you only sign a mainstream, radio-friendly writer/artist? What if an artist does music that’s really out of the mainstream?

A: If I’m listening for production, I want unique sounds and an incredible mix with earworm melodies and great drum programming. If I’m listening for a top-liner, I want clever lyrics and big melodies. I prefer to sign mainstream/radio-friendly songwriters and artists because I want the music that I work on to reach the biggest audience possible. That doesn’t mean that I have anything against more left-of-center artists. I actually love that stuff too. It’s my favorite thing to see an artist with a cult following or a left-of-center sound break into the mainstream. It means that they’re moving the needle in popular music and not just trying to cater to what people want to hear. Although I didn’t sign Sia, I did work with her on two big hits, and I was happy to see that happen with her.

Q: How much focus do you put into “sync licenses”—trying to get your writers’ songs into films, TV shows, commercials, etc.? How important is that for a new writer?

A: We’re putting more and more effort into sync nowadays because the power of sync has only increased. That means we’re upping our sync staff and outreach regularly, as well as looking for projects like film and TV soundtracks. We saw some great success with this approach with Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s smash “See You Again” when we were contracted to help create the soundtrack for the movie Furious 7. A sync, if properly placed, can be a day-and-night difference for a song, and ultimately the writers or artists attached to a song. While we always focused on sync, there’s now a bigger effort to place songs in film and TV because the exposure and payoff is just that much bigger.

Q: What’s your one best piece of advice for an artist who wants to build a long-term career in the music industry today?

A: Write, write, write. Keep writing for yourself and for others and keep yourself sharp. It’s all about the music at the end of the day.

(Ben Maddahi began his career in the music industry as an intern at Atlantic Records in 2006, and rose to become president of the music publisher Artist Publishing Group (APG). He has played a key role in constructing hits like “Wild Ones” by Flo Rida featuring Sia, “Titanium” by David Guetta, “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth, and many others that went on to sell a combined total of more than 100 million singles worldwide. In late 2015, Maddahi started Unrestricted, an A&R consulting and publishing company that also specializes in managing producers and songwriters. Unrestricted publishing is a joint venture with Songs Music Publishing (Diplo, Lorde, The Weeknd, DJ Mustard, Chromeo).

The Manager

Managers have traditionally been artists’ career compass, steering them toward opportunities and helping them map strategies that will keep them in the game for the long run. Benjamin Rolnik, a new-generation manager, says the game’s there for you to win—whether or not you’ve yet captured a manager’s attention.

Q: In the new social media age, how has the role of an artist’s manager changed?

A: The world of social media as we know it is largely less than a decade old, yet social media like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine have revolutionized not only how average people communicate, but how brands market to their consumers and how artists develop relationships with their fans.

Today, YouTube reaches more eighteen-to thirty-five-year-olds than any cable network in the world. It has more than one billion unique monthly visitors, with billions of hours of content being watched per month. YouTube is also the number two search engine in the world—and guess what the most popular search category is: music. Across every social platform, the statistics are staggering. The truth is that most managers are not equipped to deal with the changing tides of the media industry. It is just not enough to “break a single” today. If a release is not backed up by a strong social media plan that will grow a fan base, the opportunity is lost.

Managers used to have to fight just to get “earned media” (press, TV) and paid media (advertisements) for their artists. Now they have the opportunity to gain owned media by developing direct social media followers and reach, which corresponds to the longest career longevity and return for an artist.

A manager in the twenty-first century is akin to the CEO of a lean start-up company. Artists today can create their own future as never before, and with that power come tremendous opportunities for innovative business models and new ways of reaching fans.

I spend a lot of my time around influencers, social media, and developing artists, so I see the opportunities and the challenges. There has been more innovation in the last ten years than in the last hundred years, so 99 percent of the industry still has not caught up to the radical shifts that have already occurred. Those who “understand this stuff” today are like the people Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder, describes as able to capitalize on a great secret truth in an industry simply because the majority of people don’t realize it is true yet.

Q: Now that artists are using the Internet to get their music to the public, how do you think about helping them plan a long-lasting career?

A: There is more content in the world today than ever before. One hundred hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube every minute. It’s getting increasingly difficult for artists to stand out, and even if they do, it’s much easier for them to be quickly drowned out and forgotten. Ultimately, lasting success comes down to the music.

Silentó, an independent rapper in Atlanta, broke through when he released a song that went viral on YouTube in the dance community, and his single “Watch Me” got to the top of the Billboard charts. There’s no formula for this kind of trajectory, though, which is why there were so many one-hit wonders in the past, and so many more today. But if artists can capitalize on any of their current success to build a following, they will maintain a certain level of influence throughout their careers—meaning, before, you could have one hit and fall off the map. Today, you can have one hit and stay on the map forever (even if your brand flatlines).

Ed Sheeran recently sold out multiple nights at Madison Square Garden playing with just an acoustic guitar and a loop station. Cat Stevens had the world in the palm of his hand and then retired from music. The only truth is: Releasing amazing music that people love and connect with is really the only secret to building a lasting career with lasting relevance.

Q: What is the single most important piece of advice you could give a new artist who wants to succeed in the music business today?

A: Fight to be seen. Don’t wait to be discovered. Record labels today function more like institutional investors who place safe bets on products (artists) who have already proven their worth in the market. This means: Forget the old days of artist development, writing a song and thinking that it’s precious. There are only about forty number one songs per year (think: fifty-two weeks/year, and many songs stay number one for a few weeks). There are only about four hundred proven hit songwriters and producers in the world. And there are probably tens of thousands of wanna-be artists, producers, and songwriters who are competing with you trying to break into the game.

My biggest piece of advice is: Stop waiting. Put your song out. See what happens. If it’s that good and that much of a hit, then you should see the market reacting to it. Is anyone sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram? Are any blogs picking it up? No? Then write another song—and release it.

Keep trying. Keep building. We work our entire lives to become overnight successes. The biggest mistake I see new artists making is having a catalog of unreleased music. That’s like trying to swim in a hurricane with your hands tied behind your back. Hozier released “Take Me to Church” independently with a very low-budget music video. It took them months to be signed by Sony. Then it took Sony almost a year to break the song. Imagine if they had thought: This is a great song, we better not release it!

Or take OMI. He released “Cheerleader” in 2012. Nothing happened. Fast-forward to 2015: Felix Jaehn finds the song, remixes it, and it goes on to be the number one hit of the summer. It’s not possible to have a sleeper hit or even to be noticed if you’re not out there with a foot in the game. With services like TuneCore, you can start distributing music almost instantly to every meaningful place music is listened to or purchased in the twenty-first century.

Then you can independently promote your own material with social media. Your destiny is in your own hands. Stop acting like it isn’t.

If people aren’t reacting to your music, make a decision: Are you making music for yourself, or are you making music that millions of people will want to listen to? If you choose the former, keep doing what you’re doing. If the latter, you have the freedom and flexibility to get instant and honest feedback about whether you’re “in the pocket” or not. A musician today (especially without a good manager) has to think like a first-time entrepreneur: Focus and build on what’s working until your product is a hit. And if you’re afraid about releasing something and how people are going to judge you, just think: The best-case scenario here is that other people even hear your music.

Getting even three hundred views on a video for a new artist is a hurdle. If you start getting a thousand views, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a million, you know you’re really onto something. And if all else fails, remember the good old Oscar Wilde adage: The only thing worse than people talking negatively about you is not being talked about at all.

(Benjamin Rolnik grew up on tour, traveling the world with superstars like the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and Aerosmith. As an entrepreneur partnered at a major talent management firm, he specializes in management, touring, high-tech innovation/development, marketing, social media, and media production in both the new media and traditional media industries.)