jwilzewske: Composers, Self-Publishing, and Academic AP&T

T wo of my fellow colleagues and I are currently brainstorming ideas for a CD recording project, and within the discussion something that came up is the idea of self-distribution on our own ‘independent’ label or searching out an established label for distribution. Now, obviously, each method has its own series of pros and cons, but an issue came up which I’m hoping some of you may be able to weigh in on. The three of us are all beginning to enter our professional career and two of us are looking specifically at entering into academia. I was hoping some of you may have insight on the subject of independent release vs. established release when it comes to search committees and tenure review. With technology growing and developing so much, the idea of self-releasing a CD (or even self-publishing) has become so easy that composers can have much more control and get 100% of the profit. On the other hand does this cause the loss of prestige? Specifically, if you are considering an applicant for a position at your university does it matter more to you that they have recordings through established record labels (i.e. Innova, Centaur,etc.), or does just the fact that they have recordings out say something, or, what if they have a healthy mix of both [self-published and commercially-published recordings]?”
— Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn, comment on Society of Composers online forum, 04-JUN-2008.

One of the arcane but important details of deciding about self-publishing is the so-called ‘controlled-composition clause’. Composers who control the publishing of their own works avoid ceding the publisher’s share of royalties from those works, but they have to deal with the ‘controlled-composition clause’. ‘Controlled’ compositions are works owned and controlled by the composer and not assigned to another publisher.

A controlled-composition clause in the contract of a composer/performer states that the record company will pay a reduced rate on the titles controlled by the artist. This means that if a work on a published CD is written by an outside party, that outside (non-controlled) work will earn more for the outside party than a work written by the composer/performer will earn the artist as a composer/performer.

The only exception to this rule is when the publisher of an ‘outside’ work—usually in an effort to curry favor with the record label—agrees to go along with the terms of the controlled composition clause. Although the composer/performer may find it difficult to negotiate, it is in her best interest to have any controlled composition clause removed from her contract before signing with a record label.

Some controlled composition clauses allow the record company to pay a reduced ‘mechanical’ rate, on a maximum number of tracks per CD, called the ‘cap’. For example, if the clause says that the label will pay 75 percent of the statutory rate on a cap of 6 tracks you wrote and control, your may have to take a serious cut in compensation if any outside (non-controlled) works are included on the same CD. Say the statutory rate is 8.5 cents (for tracks under 5-min playing time). Then the maximum the record label will pay for each of the tracks is 6.375 cents—76.5 cents for a CD with 12 tracks on it. The outside publishers are commanding 8.5 cents for each of their tracks—say, 6 tracks for a total of 12 on the CD. They get 51.0 cents for their 6 tracks. The difference—76.5 cents minus 51.0 cents equals 25.5 cents—is what’s left over for you. That’s 4.25 cents per track to you, or 50% of the royalty rate that the outsiders get. That’s why you want to negotiate the controlled composition clause out of the deal, or make sure that none of the compositions on the CD involve other outside publishers, or publish the thing yourself.

The Harry Fox Agency, which is operated by the National Music Publishers’ Association is the main mechanical-right society in the U.S. American Mechanical Rights Association is another major one. Many publishers authorize a mechanical-rights licensing and collection organization to license and collect mechanical royalties on their behalf. If you do decide to self-publish, maybe you will decide to go this route as well. If you do, note that these organizations typically charge a fee of 5% of gross. Parker Music Group is one such service company.

Mechanical Rights Licensing Orgs

APRA/AMCOS—Australasian Performing Right Association / Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners’ Society (Australia/N.Z.)
AMRA—American Mechanical Rights Agency (U.S.)
ASCAP—American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (U.S.)
BMI—Broadcast Music Inc (U.S.)
CISAC—International Confederation of Authors and Composers (E.U.)
CMRRA—Canadian Mechanical Rights Reproduction Society (Canada)
HFA (NMPA)—Harry Fox Agency (U.S.)
GEMA—Gesellschaft für musikalische Auffürhrungs und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, etc.)
JASRAC—Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (Japan)
MCPS—Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (U.K, Ireland)
NCB—Nordisk Copyright Bureau (Scandinavia)
SABAM—Societé Belge des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs (Belgium)
SDRM—Societé pour l’administration du Droit de Reproduction Mécanique (France, fracophone Africa)
SESAC—Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (E.U.)
SGAE—Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (Spain)
SODRAC—Societé du droit de reproduction des auteurs, compositeurs et editeurs au Canada (Canada)
SIAE—Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (Italy)
SPA—Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (Portugal)
BUMA-STEMRA— (Netherlands)
SUISA— (Switzerland)
VAAP—All-Union Copyright Agency (Russia, etc.)

So, yes, go ahead and incorporate yourself as a limited-liability corporation (LLC, in the U.S.). Hire some musician and studio time to get your new stuff performed promptly; beg and borrow resources to get high-quality digital files of your new works recorded, mixed and edited. Lay down tracks for different voices/instruments in different recording sessions if you have to, instead of a single live performance. Get started publishing your own MP3s and CDs. Or do it ‘mix-and-match’, with some self-published and some commercially-published, depending on how favorable are the terms and conditions you can negotiate with record labels, publishers, and the mechanical-right licensing organizations.

Regarding the effects on appointment, tenure, and promotions decision-making, there are a few salient examples among the links below, for your interest.

An AP&T Committee usually confines its review to new products of creative activity that have appeared in public exhibitions or performances, or in print, film, and digital formats (e.g., CD, MP3, video or DVD recordings and presentations on the World-Wide Web). It is usual to consider commercial recordings in the same sense as refereed journal articles or book chapters or other scholarly work definitively accepted for publication or public presentation as valid for review. If, besides your free MySpace or other free MP3 downloads of performances of your works that you maintain online and log accesses, you additionally have paid-download self-published material on sites like eclassical.com or CDbaby.com, then be sure to include cumulative impression/access/download counts for each of those in your AP&T Docket. (An AP&T Committee does not generally give weight to incomplete work under commission, under advance contract, submitted for review, or in preparation—nor does an AP&T Committee generally accord much weight to counts of unpaid downloads from MySpace or other social networking sites. Same thing for counts of unpaid demo CD distributions you do at your ensemble’s performances.)

But completed work whose performance will be difficult to organize or fund; whose orchestration requires an ensemble that will be difficult or logistically impractical to gather together to rehearse and perform at the same time and place; whose production complexity for public performance is beyond the finances available, but whose performance is feasible in a studio; and other completed recorded performances (such as ones too radical for accessible, available public audiences) can be given weight. Your works’ quality speaks for itself. The AP&T Committee members become the de facto peer-reviewers ascertaining its weight, instead of subrogating the evaluation to external publishers or editors or commissioning agencies. (Works completed, performed or exhibited in previous review periods, such as repeat productions or performances, post-premiere performances, solo or group exhibitions of electroacoustic or multimedia art, video or film, and the like, are regarded as evidence of professional recognition and activity, but are not weighed as new creative activity per se.)

Remember that a complete departmental appointment, promotion and tenure (AP&T) docket must often include a minimum of five letters from outside evaluators. The letter of solicitation, which should come from the Chair of the Department, often must follow a standard template so as not to prejudice the evaluators either postively or negatively. The letter must explicitly request comparative rankings with the candidate’s peers, and it must not in any way imply that a positive or negative response from the evaluator is desired. In general, the outside evaluators would not tender jealous, resentful, or disparaging reviews if the recorded material they are sent is commercially-published. Nor should there be any pejorative aspect to self-published material.

Keep in mind that, insofar as all outside letters of evaluation must be fresh (written and received within 12 months of the AP&T review date), there is a considerable advantage to self-publishing: you have the ability to augment your recordings catalog as much as you wish, with works that may not (yet) have received consideration by normal publishers, or with works that embody genres that (at the moment) have limited commercial potential. The normal commercial recording, post-production, and publication cycle is simply too slow and will omit your most recent work and your most iconoclastic, innovative work, probably. Things that were not commissioned by anybody and are not yet performed in a paid-ticket setting would not be available for distribution to the reviewers unless you make it happen yourself, self-publisher style.

Any Dean and Department Chair and AP&T Committee with heads properly screwed on do grasp these concepts. In fact, if you discover that the Conservatory regime you are addressing does not handle such issues thoughtfully and fairly, you really ought to ask yourself whether there isn’t some more congenial and productive venue for you to spend your time. Life is too short, to spend part of it laboring under unfair, entrenched prejudices about commercial- vs self-publishing.

jwilzewske

Friday, June 6, 2008

Composers, Self-Publishing, and Academic AP&T

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