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.

• Society of Composers, Inc (SCI)
  
• Small Publishers’ Association of North America (SPANnet.org)
  
• WikiRecording.org
  
• Audio Publishers’ Association
  
• digitalCDR.com audio CD replication
  
• ProAction Media audio CD replication
  
• Association of Professional Composers. The Composer's Guide to Music Publishing. APC, 1987.
  
• Bowerman P. The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. Fanove, 2006.
  
• Howard G. Music Publishing 101. Berklee, 2004.
  
• Levine M. The Fine Print of Self-Publishing: The Contracts & Services of 48 Major Self-Publishing Companies. Bridgeway, 2006.
  
• Rich J. Self-Publishing for Dummies. 2e. ForDummies, 2006.
  
• Sander J. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing. Alpha, 2005.
  
• Smith R. Music Publishing 101 Crash Course: Made Simple & Easy. NWPP, 2001.
  
• Sobel R, Weissman D. Music Publishing. Routledge, 2008.
  
• Whitsett T. Music Publishing.5e. ArtistPro, 2000.
  
• Wixen R. The Plain and Simple Guide to Music Publishing. Hal Leonard, 2005.

Writing Home: Reflection Papers and Journaling to Deepen Your Music

N ow I’m supposed to write a paper reflecting on my playing and my learning process, which in turn are reflections of my literacy and adherence [or not] to the assignments. If I have to write this reflection paper of my reflecting on my reflections, I will ... do badness to something or someone. I have no idea what to write.”
  —  Anonymous.

If you’re in school, then chances are your assignments include writing one or more ‘reflection papers’ this semester. The task of writing an essay on your own experiences and applications and first-hand gleanings forces you to collect and distill and categorize: you critically evaluate your experiences and place them into context; the narrative form forces you to write about your own impressions and explain the context into which they fit. Quelle horreur!

Reflection papers aren’t a pedagogical punishment. Throughout your career, you can and should invest in improving your musicianship through regular journaling. This is in addition to whatever other activities you engage in for performance, composing, producing, engineering, arts marketing, artist management, presenting, teaching, listening—whatever you do musically. Writing ‘reflection papers’ is just one way for you to harvest and preserve the experiential learning that you do in those other activities. It’s a way to connect the work with the learning.

Why journal? (Why blog?) Mostly to keep yourself learning and growing, and to force yourself to clarify your thinking and revisit and retest your convictions—especially ones that may never’ve been fully thought-through in the first place. Consider it as a dimension of your training, just like practicing on your instrument(s)—it keeps your mind from getting old or rusty or atrophied. Use it or lose it!

W    hen I don’t practice for one day, my fingers know it; for two days, my friends know it; for three days, and the whole world knows it.”
  —  Ignacy Paderewski.

Journaling is about the shape and meaning we assign to our experiences. Our stories are about who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we think we’re headed and why. What you want to do is get ideas and explore ideas. You want to assemble evidence and counter-evidence, and critique the quality and strength of both.

How to go about it? I think it helps to have at least one or two examples as ‘benchmarks’ to serve as guides and reminders of the writing qualities you admire. For me, the epitome of writing that is at once erudite, elegant, and entertaining is pianist Charles Rosen. His little 1994 book ‘Frontiers of Meaning’ is, for me, iconic. Kyle Gann’s ‘Music Downtown’, emblematic of journalistic bravery. Alex Ross’s ‘The Rest Is Noise’ has a different tenor but serves to remind me of how wide our palette can be. Arnold Steinhardt’s ‘Indivisible by Four’, reminds me of grandfatherly patience and generosity in the life lived and the life written-about. You don’t have to write books as they have done. But our own writing will be better if we look frequently at how our favorite authors write.

The best book I know that specifically covers journaling and reflection papers as a practice for working artists is Buck’s. If you’re looking for practical guidance on how to go about writing a reflection paper (whether for your class assignment, or independently for your own professional growth), I recommend you pick up a copy. Check out the other books below, too.

Ultimately, critical analysis and interpretation aren’t detached acts; not value-neutral reportage. No, as a kind of psychological counterpart to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in physics, the acts of observing and journaling change the things you are observing and their relationships to each other. The personal change is the source of the value in writing reflection papers: the change enables further growth in your playing or composing or listening. Paradoxically, the infinite regress that Anonymous complained about above is actually the whole point of the exercise. Rather than ending in confusion, the process makes you figure things out; makes you figure out how you figured them out; makes you figure out how ‘figuring out’ works. A different dimension of professional practice. A different kind of rehearsal. Quelle horreur!

O  ur doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
  —  William Shakespeare.

• Bouziden D. Journal Wheel Guide Book. Rogers & Nelsen, 2001.
  
• Buck A. The Art of Professional Reflection. Routledge, 1999.
  
• Chapman J. Journaling for Joy. Newcastle, 1991.
  
• Davies R. The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books. Penguin, 1998.
  
• Gann K. Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. Univ California, 2006.
  
• Greenwood S. Encouraging practitioners to write. J Staff Devel 1991; 12: 16-9.
  
• Hauser M. A lesson in music. (Collected Short Fiction of Marianne Hauser. Univ Alabama, 2004.)
  
• Kent T. Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm. Southern Illinois Univ, 1999.
  
• Kenyon G, Randall W. Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection. Praeger, 1997.
  
• Nelson G. Writing and Being. New World, 2004.
  
• Rosen C. The Frontiers of Meaning. Hill & Wang, 1994.
  
• Saban A. Professional growth through self-reflection and writing. Education 2000; 120:512-9.
  
• Schön D. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Ashgate, 1995.
  
• Schön D. The Reflective Practitioner. Basic, 1983.
  
• Senn L. The Many Faces of Journaling. Pen Central, 2001.
  
• Steinhardt A. Indivisible by Four. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.
  
• Yancy K. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Utah State, 1998.

Working in Music: Classical Musicians As Entrepreneurs

S  imilar to Nadel’s 1998 observation that an architect is not a designer of buildings but instead a business person whose work product is architecture, I found that the musician is a business person whose product results in music performance and consumption. . . . My findings concurred with Rogers’s 2002 study, which found that 62% of musicians considered communication skills to be the most important to [sustainability of] their professional practice.”
  — Dawn Bennett, MS Thesis, 2005, Univ Western Australia.

T he future of live classical music? Disappearing! The odds of winning an orchestral job? Not good! The security of an orchestral job? Not great!The job market for clarinetists? Poor! The chances of making a living strictly playing the clarinet? Not going to happen! The stability and likelihood of your symphony orchestra financially surviving the next 25 years? Tenuous, at best. Sure: follow your dreams, follow your heart, set your goals high. But each year, conservatories and universities graduate hundreds whose playing ability borders on the unbelievable. We’ve all heard many of them play. The sad fact is that most will never earn their living by just playing. There are just not enough places for them to play. All too quickly, it will become apparent that playing the ‘audition roulette’ circuit takes its toll, both financially and mentally. When you are young, the notion of being a professional musician sounds noble, intriguing—the ideal vocation. However, after a few years, when your friends have moved on and bought their own homes, have their retirement plans in place, have disposable income, have medical benefits, and treat themselves to the better things in life, the professional musician monicker loses its luster very quickly. The dream dies hard and fast. A struggling musician is not a pretty sight.”
  — bulletin board post by ‘GBK’
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html

DSM: Having your dreams is wonderful, but there are far too few performance opportunities, and too many musicians competing for the small number of opportunities available. Why is this so hard to understand? If there were a glut of plumbers, everybody would understand that and not train to be a plumber. Somehow there’s the sense that since it’s Art, then Reality should be held at bay. Well, you can still play. You just have get a day job, or two day jobs, or three. And that’s what musicians generally do. In the U.S. and other countries that lack government support for the Arts, that’s what they’ve always done. It’s a shame that the conservatories’ curricula tend not to acknowledge this reality and prepare their students for it.

CMT: Would we want our football and basketball coaches to lead the dreamers among their players to believe that they can play in the pros if they just want it badly enough and follow their hearts? No. In just the same manner, young musicians need to make sure that they have a way to make a life for themselves. And, I agree with you, the music curricula and career counseling services should be designed to insure that they do that—produce graduates who are able to do several things well, and who are entrepreneurial and able to achieve some degree of financial stability as well as artistic success. Equip them with dreams plus abilities plus a safety net!

DSM: And counsel them, too, on unions—not just on entrepreneurship. Not everyone is suited to start and run their own business. Making more than ‘scale’? Busking can be interesting in your twenties; but it can’t be interesting in your seventies. I have to tell you—the U.S. Department of Labor 2006-07 statistics for classical musician earnings are pretty discouraging. The trend is not good, comparing that report with previous years’ versions of the same report.

CMT: Besides teaching and a cultivating your practice of private lessons and clinics, what is there? Do demo work for a large music store. Found an indie recording studio. Compose for film if you can. Become a music festival organizer. Write jingles for broadcast advertising and industrial tradeshow displays. Try to work part-time as a studio musician. Be a traveling rep for an instrument manufacturer. Do ensemble playing for society events or—Horrors!—weddings and funerals. Try to get a decent-paying gig in a church or synagogue? All of those are low-odds opportunities—in general, few and far between.


DSM: I think a major cause of musicians’ unstable employment has had to do with the difficulty in discovering what opportunities are ‘open’. The MusicalChairs webservice does quite a lot to correct this situation. MusicalChairs has timely postings of classical music performance openings, by country and geographic location. ChamberMusicAmerica’s publications are a help, too. But periodic print publications are no match for the Web.

CMT: And don’t forget social networking sites like Josh Gindele’s ClassicalLounge.com—those are another valuable resource for networking and discovering opportunities!

• MusicalChairs.info website
  
• ClassicalLounge.com
  
• National Association for Music Education / MENC
  
• U.S. DoL Bureau of Labor Statistics
  
• U.S. DoL BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition [1MB pdf], see p. 36 on Musicians
  
• American Federation of Musicians
  
• American Guild of Musical Artists AMGA website
  
• AFM Jobs in Music, 2002.
  
• Musicians’ Employability whitepaper. Palatine: Higher Education Academy Centre for Dance, Drama and Music; 2003; Lancaster Univ, U.K.
  
• Abbing H. Why Are Artists Poor?: The Exceptional Economy of the Arts. Amsterdam Univ, 2004.
  
• Baumol W, Bowen W. Performing Arts-The Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance. Ashgate, 1993.
  
• BBC. Tosca Comes to York's Streets.
  
• Caves R. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Harvard, 2002.
  
• Florida R. Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Basic, 2003.
  
• Frascogna X, Hetherington H. This Business of Artist Management. Billboard, 2004.
  
• Frey B. Arts & Economics: Analysis and Cultural Policy. Springer, 2004.
  
• Ginsburg V, Throsby D, eds. Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Vol 1. North Holland, 2006.
  
• Hartley J, ed. Creative Industries. Blackwell, 2005.
  
• HBS. Harvard Business Review on Managing Your Career. HBS, 2003.
  
• Heilbrun J, Gray C. The Economics of Art and Culture. Cambridge Univ, 2001.
  
• Hesmondhalgh D. The Cultural Industries. Sage, 2007.
  
• Hoffmann S. Do as I say. Polyphonic, 19-MAR-2007.
  
• Kahn N. 'Gee, All I ever wanted to do was play my instrument.' Polyphonic, 09-MAY-2006.
  
• Kemp A. The Musical Temperament: Psychology and Personality of Musicians. Oxford Univ, 1996.
  
• Miller K. Teaching musicians to be entrepreneurs. BusinessWeek, 28-MAR-2007.
  
• Mills J. Working in Music Project.
  
• MMF. Music Management Bible. MMF, 2004.
  
• Passman D. All You Need to Know about the Music Business. 6e. Free Press, 2006.
  
• Rogers R. Working in Music Project, 2004.
  
• Shagan R. Booking and Tour Management for the Performing Arts. Allworth, 2001.
  
• Sandow G. Happy All Night. ArtsJournal Sandow blog, 05-JUN-2007.
  
• Sandow G. Provocation. ArtsJournal Sandow blog, 25-JUN-2007.
  
• Seabrook J. Nobrow. Methuen, 2001.
  
• Spellman P. The Self-Promoting Musician. Berklee, 2000.
  
• Stager C. How to grow and audience by understanding how audiences behave. Polyphonic, 18-JUN-2007.
  
• Thall P. What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business: The Myths, Secrets, Lies (& a Few Truths). Watson-Guptill, 2002.
  
• Throsby C. Economics of the Performing Arts. Palgrave, 1980.
  
• Throsby D. Economics and Culture. Cambridge Univ, 2001.
  
• Towse R, ed. Handbook of Cultural Economics. Elgar, 2005.
  
• Vogel H. Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. Cambridge Univ, 2004.

I t is an institution’s unwavering will to present interesting programs – not simply popular ones – that builds audiences over time, and narrows the spread between high-selling and low-selling concerts.”
  —  Christopher Stager.