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Leeds Levy: But my question
is, where are they training the executives for tomorrow?
If our industry ends up being run by -- I mean, I've
got nothing against MBAs or accountants as long as they're
music publishers first, but if you've got someone coming
directly from Diet Coke to EMI Music, I think that's
going to be a problem for our industry. Where is the
mentoring going to come from?
 BV:
There's not much of a training ground.
BJP: I would probably agree, but I'd also say that
a lot of kids coming in now think they're at level ten
already. It's like you're a basketball coach with players
who are so talented, but they're just uncoachable --
you understand what I'm saying? You have to show yourself
worthy of being trained, or usually they'll sort of
let you just be there -- "Oh, he's okay, he's finding
some cool stuff."
LL: He's a great player but he'll never be a great
coach.
BV: It's interesting -- especially at record companies,
youth is being hired over experience. If you don't have
the experience to guide the youth, you have nothing.
LL: But experienced executives don't guide the youth,
they don't want to guide the youth. They're protecting
their gigs, keeping everything close to the vest.
 Big
John Platt: No one wants to reach out and say, "This
is how you should do this." They'll just watch
you fall rather than try to catch you. If that's going
to change, I think it has to start with every individual
looking in the mirror and saying, "I'm not going
to be that way." Most people don't learn from the
mistakes of others -- although successful people do.
My writers and I will be in my office till all hours
of the night just talking, because I want them to understand
what this business is really about. You've gotta be
able to talk their language, because sometimes if you
tell someone to do something, they're not gonna do it.
You've got to tell them in their way, and creatively
push them. But there is definitely a gap between the
older executives and the up-and-coming ones.
LL: They do have mentoring in Nashville, and from my
experience, Nashville's community of executives is the
best-trained, across the board. They have a thing called
Leadership Music Nashville where they give you one-on-one
contact with more experienced executives: imagine sitting
with Clive Davis all day talking about different situations
-- it's almost like the Castle sessions, except with
executives. Nashville has always tried to reinvest in
their executive talent as well as their musical talent.
JA: How do you think the business will be affected
by the Universal/Polygram merger [which will consolidate
MCA and Polygram Publishing]?
 Barbara
Vander Linde: I think that kind of situation makes things
better for smaller companies, because a lot of writers
won't want to be folded into a huge roster. When you're
number 70 on a writer list of 150, how much attention
will you get? I think that's why so many writers don't
want a co-pub deal, because they feel like they're doing
it all themselves.
AB: John, how does it work at EMI? You must have a
ton of writers, does EMI really sign the amount of acts
that we perceive they do?
BJP: It seems that regardless of what we have, everyone
seems to get taken care of. It never seems like too
much. Some people have five writers, I have 15 or 20,
but it doesn't seem like a lot. It's probably a little
different for the alternative bands, because you're
talking about bands where you might not have to deal
with them day-to-day.
LL: I'm more concerned about pay-for-play at radio,
quite frankly. It's starting now in country, but it's
going to happen in pop and R&B. It's already expensive
to promote in radio anyway, and I've got to assume that
record companies are going to come to publishers and
say, "If your song is played on the radio, you
earn money, so we think you should contribute to this
promotional campaign." You guys are worried about
songwriters cutting in -- I'm worried about record companies!
BG: Hasn't that happened already?
Leeds
Levy: Yes, for independent promotion money, and in the
scheme of things, that was a relatively manageable amount
of money. But one radio network is talking about a campaign
for $20,000 or $40,000 for just their network of country
stations -- and from there you go to how long they'll
play it, and how many spins you're guaranteed. Then
you get other radio station chains saying they'll cross
it over to pop radio, guaranteeing you this much play,
and at the end of the day you're talking about something
like $150,000 that you didn't have to spend before.
Maybe it will make the record companies shift their
priorities and figure that, since they can't get anything
played on MTV anyway, they might as well spend $150,000
on pay-for-play instead of a video.
What really concerns me is the long-term effect distorts
the marketplace -- what you hear on the radio is not
what people want to hear, and they won't even get to
hear what they might want to hear. They're being fed
songs because a broadcaster made a deal with the record
company that paid the most. It's just a matter of time
until the record companies, particularly the indies,
come to us with their hands out.
Anyway, I hope that the internet will open up a new
channel that will not be as constrained as either MTV
or radio as we know it. The internet doesn't care how
old you are, what color you are, what car you drive,
where you live or anything -- and if people can be reached
with some entertainment that they like, they may click
and buy.
I hope it will make for a much broader consumer base
for music. Record companies have narrowcast their research
down to who the consumers of certain records are going
to be -- and yet they still get blindsided by several
records a year where they have no clue who buys them.
The best example of that is Titanic: Sony couldn't give
that record away internally -- every label turned it
down, and finally Sony Classical said, "Okay, we'll
pay the $700,000 -- and maybe we'll sell 300,000 copies."
[The album has sold over 10 million units in the US
alone.] I think there is a lack of understanding of
who buys records, who potentially can buy records, and
how to reach the people who may want to buy a record.
BJP: I don't know what you guys think about this,
but I think there might be a scam being run with the
record and publishing companies with a major Los Angeles
radio station. All you've got to do is get a song played
on that station, and you can get a record deal, a publishing
deal -- and six weeks later the station may drop the
record, but you've cashed in, and everyone's gotten
their kickbacks. I know it's happening. I hear this
station mentioned so much: someone says, "I hear
this station' s [playing] it" and all the sudden
everybody goes crazy. I think there's a big scam going
on, and it won't come out until there's another Hit
Men or something. Hell, I was a DJ, I know that if you
play something enough times you'll get requests for
it.
It seems so easy -- let's talk hypothetically: I'm
a manager, I go to the radio station, "I've got
this band" -- who's a decent enough band -- "play
this record for six weeks and I'll give you $100,000."
I can get the $500,000 publishing deal, the $350-400,000
record deal, and after that, $100,000 is nothing!
LL: That's nothing compared to Europe. I remember,
if you had a summer record that you wanted to get played
in the South of France, you made a deal with a radio
station and gave them half the publishing. So we did
that and we thought it would be a big hit, but we wound
up getting no airplay because the publishers of the
B-side gave them 100% of the publishing and received
all of the radio play!
JA: What is the biggest misperception that writers
have about music publishers, and vice-versa.
AB: The first one's easy -- the bank one.
LL: That we're banks, parasites, insurance agents...
BV: That we don't do anything.
 Antony
Bland: They're also wise to the fact that a lot of publishers
and label people tend to be reasonably young kids that
kinda look like them and act like them and have the
same musical opinions as them -- and they're deliberately
planted there to win these bands over. I think the bands
are getting smart to that and they don't trust anyone
anymore. But then again, can we trust them or their
managers?
JA: Do you ever feel like a plant?
AB: No, and I think I'm maybe too honest with the
artists when I say, "This is what I am, this is
what Chrysalis is, this is what we're prepared to do
for you." I try not to slag off other companies
--
LL: He leaves that to me! (laughter)
AB: Because you can't say that EMI and Warner/Chappell
and Rondor and Windswept and Peer and whoever else don't
do anything for their writers, because obviously they
do.
LL: I also appreciate it from the writer's perspective:
It's essentially a private business, they struggle,
there's overwhelming frustration -- I don't think I
could do it, quite honestly. Even if you're an A&R
person who doesn't have the authority to green-light
a project -- at least he's got a paycheck for the moment,
the writer's completely out of a job.
BV: That's like when songs get put on hold. This is
this writer's livelihood: a major label CEO will hold
a song for a year or two years, sometimes, and even
then there's still no guarantee that it's ever going
to come out. And maybe the contemporary feel of that
song has expired -- you have to invest more money to
demo it again, maybe the trend has changed --
BJP: If someone holds a song too long, nobody'll want
it. I went through that recently, where two people wanted
a song, one wanted to keep it on hold, the other wanted
to cut it right away -- and I went with the cut. You
know how people act when they want something -- they'll
reach out. Puffy will call up and say "Yo, this
is my song, isn't it?" I know he's interested --
and I want my songs placed on projects where the passion
is. "Come on! Let's do this!" That's passion.
BJP: But I think some of the misperception is just
lack of education. And not knowing what the numbers
are. A lot of writers think if they sell 500,000 records
they should get $2 million -- they don't know that
they only generated $350,000. It's a penny business
-- and those pennies do add up to dollars, but you've
gotta know what the pennies are.
That's what I like about publishing: if you're smart,
you know the numbers -- hell, you'd better know the
numbers! -- and to me, it's a safer bet working with
songwriters and publishing than records. Because a
songwriter could have a song on, say, the next Celine
Dion album, but if that album catches a brick, that's
okay, because they have songs on nine other projects.
There are more chances with a songwriter than with
an artist -- at a major label, if you put the record
out and it only sells 50,000 copies, the band gets
dropped and you're fired! With publishing, well, that
project didn't do that well, but we've got this song
placed on this movie and we've got this cut in French
-- there are so many opportunities to generate money
if you take advantage.
BV: I think it's the more creative job.
Leeds
Levy: Unfortunately, I think writers have heard more
negative stories about publishers than positive ones,
so there's probably some validity for a writer to have
misconceptions about what a publisher can or can't do.
I'm a businessperson: sometimes I'm an investment banker,
sometimes an A&R person, an agent, a psychiatrist,
it all depends. Not all experiences are the same, and
there's no one more anonymous than a music publisher.
We are at the very low-profile end of a very high-profile
business, and what you hear are the horror stories.
AB: I think one thing that is always discounted is
the actual amount of time we put in -- it's always about
how much money and did you get this or do this, the
actual time you're taking away from other writers or
artists that you're developing, especially new artists.
BV: I could have become a psychiatrist and made a
hell of a lot more money. It's all the same skills!
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