What's the Deal with Music Publishing?

Music publishing is incredibly similar to the big record labels. Aside from royalties, licensing deals and administrating copyrights, music publishing involves the recording and selling of songs, just like record labels do. So what's the deal with music publishing? Simply, the business of recording music is getting weaker as the music publishing business is becoming stronger. A revenue collecting company for songwriters called SongTrust states that the importance of music publishing has increased during recent years. The Internet has made an abundant amount of music distribution methods. The digital media has caused a much wider audience to be reached, and the payments from these audiences increase the publishing revenues.

The End of the A&R Era?

Possibly. A&R back in the day were considered creative people who had some sense of power over pop culture. They knew the dos and don’ts of commercial success, and they were responsible for scouting talent for their record label. They would go spend their evenings in nightclubs to listen and discover new artists or bands, and help them develop.  Nowadays, however, the talent needs to have some sort of momentum before A&R even consider getting involved. Once an artist achieves this momentum, they go straight to the contract without the need of an A&R.

The Importance of an Internet Marketer

The recording industry and the music business have always depended on marketing for the success of their sales. In these modern times of Facebook and Twitter, it is easy to promote and communicate with consumers. Any musician can communicate with fans by themselves, and they may even feel that there is no need of an expert. However,  Ariel Hyatt, an online marketer and businesswoman, stresses that without implications of traditional marketing strategies, all the effort put in social media websites becomes diluted. She states:

“The act of selling music is not at all like selling goods or services which is where Internet Marketers have a leg up on musicians. You are ostensibly selling a feeling. People connect to music in a very different way than they connect to any old product, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take the same basic principles and apply them.”