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In defense of music publishers

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A recent ChoralBlog post by Philip Copeland discussed the changes to the publishing industry brought about by technology and accused music publishers of sticking with a 20th-century model. Many of the commenters to that thread suggested that the best solution would be self-publishing.
 
Without taking a stand on Philip's main point for the moment, I'd like to point out some of the difficulties with the self-publishing model. While I'm sympathetic to composers who want to cut out the middleman and evade the bureaucracy, from a consumer perspective it's kind of impractical: there are a million composer websites, they're all different, lots of them are filled with crap (or with music unsuitable for my group for one reason or another), and it just takes forever to look for music in them. So while the self-publishing and electronic-delivery model has great potential for ordering music, it makes it much more difficult to choose music.
 
When I go to an ACDA convention, I riffle through the racks at music store booths such as Music Mart*. There are many things which speed up this process, but one of the principal ones is publisher identification. I've learned that there are some publishers whose music I never like (or is at the wrong level for my group) and I can quickly skip over those. Those which might be of interest I can quickly glance at the first page of; this allows me to eliminate 90% of the other stuff. Then I buy a single copy of the interesting ones so I can file them at home for future use.
 
Compare this to the process of using the web to look through composer websites.
  • Start with a directory of such websites, such as ChoralNet's, and go to a composer's site.
  • Figure out the navigation of that site so you can get to the listing of titles (which is often surprisingly difficult to find).
  • Click on each title one at a time and see if there's a sample page, usually in PDF format, and see if it looks interesting.
Once you've spent a long time doing this, move to the next composer's site and start over.
 
The problems are manifold: it takes a long time, the navigation is different on every site, only some sites provide sample pages, each site only has a small number of pieces, and most of the stuff is junk.
 
There are online storefronts such as Sibelius, which is kind of a vanity press, or rather a flea market, for self-published music. It provides a consistent interface for listening and viewing samples, along with handy tools such as the ability to transpose. But there's too much junk. It's like trying to get your choir outfits by browsing garage sales. Publishers provide a valuable service: using their editorial discretion to filter for quality. 
 
Sure, these sites could allow users to rate pieces, the way Amazon or Netflix does. But the small number of likely users allows the subjects to game the system; just like on Yelp, the person whose item is being evaluated can get a bunch of his friends to go on and rate everything five stars, thus boosting his overall rating.
 
There are also exclusively-online publishers such as Graphite (which Philip described in his subsequent post) or Handlo. These publishers provide some of the quality control while keeping a consistent user interface. But still, it's only one publisher; it would be like going to Hal Leonard's site, and then to ECS's site, and then to Oxford's site, and then to SBMP's site; still much more work than browsing through Music Mart's stacks. We need to get to the stage where sites like JWPepper aggregate sales of works published by online publishers.
 
In short, I don't think self-publishing is the answer; the drawbacks far outweigh the advantages. There's not going to be any quick and easy answer.
 
One plea: for composers and publishers who provide previews (which should be all of them): please consider creating your previews in GIF format rather than PDF; they download MUCH faster, print much faster, and the slightly lower resolution is sufficient for those of us who want to print them out and plunk through them on the piano, without being good enough to tempt people to try to copy them for choir use.
 
 
 
 
*Thank you, Music Mart, for preparing the reading-session packets for ACDA conventions for so many years.

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Comments

  1. Quality control is indeed one of the most important aspects of being with an established, identifiable brand. I have had much more success with commissions (actually closing the deal, and getting a better rate for them) after getting pieces published with Oxford and Walton. That is not the only place to get that “stamp of approval,” though, and I often rely on the recommendation of people who are not the composer selling their own wares or traditional publishers. Reading sessions have often been one of those sources.
     
    The reading session issue is especially interesting to me, as I am NW ACDA Men’s Chorus R&S chair. In my few years in that position, it seems increasingly that publishers and retailers want to not deal with the R&S procedure, but create their own. This is another area that technology is in flux, and the importance and format of the reading session is changing. I used to find a lot of what I would buy for my community and church choruses at sessions like that, but now, less and less. It costs publishers a fair amount of money to put a lot of paper into peoples’ hands, and a lot of that paper ends up as landfill. I do like the process of reading pieces with others, but as a composer I worry that people will not understand the piece based on one reading of uncertain quality. When I present reading sessions these days, I tend to mix actual reading with listening to recordings or even watching videos.
     
    Those reading sessions do provide an important independant “editorial function,” a recommendation and winnowing process that is less governed by the particular publisher’s desires, though we have traditionally started with whatever they send us, so how independant is it, really? They sometimes don’t like that process, especially as it costs them money and they want to have control, even more than they already do. It is a potentially sticky relationship. Mr.McGlyn, I recently wanted to present one of your pieces on a reading session, but as your music is not handled by the retailer that was the sponsor, they would not include it. Ticked me off.
     
    As to self-publishing, I am hesitant to dive in with my own pieces, not conceptually but just because of pure practicality. The time and potentially the expense it would take to set up a site that worked well is daunting. A self-publishing web site is like a vegetable garden, too–if you don’t water it and weed it, you wont get many tomatoes and the bugs will eat the corn. On the other hand, I have purchased things for my choruses on both Michael McGlyn’s site and Paul Carey’s site, and I loved being able to pay, get the download, and go. Nice, tasty tomatoes, better than those red cardboard things designed for shipping and shelf life, not eating, that you find in the supermarket.
     
    Reg Unterseher
    reginaldunterseher.com

  2. Allen,

    Thank you for your response. As someone who works for one of the major choral retailers (Musical Source in DC), I know how hard it is to work with each of these individual publishers. There are a couple issues that you did not mention.
     
    1. When you purchase music from the traditional publishers, you receive the music for the price paid. An octavo that costs $2.00 is in your hand for $2.00. Often, these self-published composers charge you for a PDF copy – $2.00 per pdf licence – and then you take on the cost of the actual copying of the piece – which if you are a community choir, you are then paying .10 per page – adding $1-2 per copy to the cost of the octavo.
     
    2. Most of these individual publishers (there are a few wonderful exceptions) do not sell their music to retailers. This causes extra costs for schools and choirs who do work with established music retailers because they are incurring extra purchasing and shipping charges. Many of the smaller publishers are not familiar with a retail model, and do not provide any discount to retailers who wish to feature their music, making it cost prohibitive for the retailer to keep their titles in stock, or they have to sell the music at a higher price than the publisher does on their own website.
     
    Having worked with some composers over the years, I am very sympathetic as to why we have these self publishers, as it is nearly impossible to get a new composer recognized by an established publisher – but perhaps the self publishers are only aggravating this issue instead of helping new music get exposure. We need to start complaining to the publishers who are doing nothing but publish the same bad or unusable music year after year, and as a community, pressure them to start working with newer composers and get this music out through the traditional channels.
     
    CJ Redden-Liotta

  3. This thread seems to run and run under various guises…and it has opened a degree of debate, although, I note, not that much from actual writers, the producers. Rather it is from the angle of the consumers, and US ones only at that.
     
    I need to point something out – the term Publisher from the composer’s point of view is not exactly what the consumer would take it to mean. I am published by Warner Chappell, but I publish my own sheet music. Same word, but a very different concept and I think that is one of the keys to understanding this issue more clearly.
     
    The job of a Publisher includes
     
    – Promotion of a composer’s work
    – Collection of royalties
    – Protection of copyright
    – Pursuit of copyright infingers by legal means
    – Protection of integrity of copyright
    – Negotiation of mechanical licences and synch licences
     
    among other things. You give your Publisher a whack of your percentage to do this for you. The smaller the whack, the more control you retain over your catalogue. Sheet music may form part of your agreement with your Publisher. If it does, then very, very rarely will your Publisher be the same as your Sheet Music Publisher. That is as it should be, as one can be used to beat the other over the head with. Hopefully all this makes sense.
     
    A Sheet Music Publisher from a US perspective [gleaned from what I can see on this site and various discussions with US based choral people] appears to have the following function :
     
    – to make titles available online or as hard-copy to interested parties. This may involve re-transcription of scores for clarity.
    – to promote those titles to the public including at conventions and at choral gatherings.
    If I’ve missed out anything, please let me know, but I would assume/hope that Sheet Music Publishers will actively through legal means protect copyright infringement.
     
    Let me draw your attention away from this for a moment to the Music Industry. While the odd time something turned up that was exciting and new, much of what was cutting-edge and exciting was ignored simply because you couldn’t access it, while single artists were puffed up and shoved down our throats. Then along came MySpace, YouTube, Garageband, self-releasing CDs, CDBaby and that was that. The entire industry collapsed, and is currently, and happily, approaching its final gargle… now Cyberspace is an exciting music place. Niche groups such as my own have seen significant increases in visibility and music sales simply because consumers can access us by typing the word into Google.
     
    This is exactly what is happening, albeit very, very slowly, to Choral music. The availability of performances online to view on YouTube, the advent of composer created websites for their music [many of them hugely self-important I would agree] and crucially, the advent of portable reading devices for sheet music such as the iPad, plainly and simply mean that whatever system has survived until now will not be around in 10 years. I counted six singers out of 22 last night at my rehearsal viewing music on electronic devices. When they want to correct my pitch quibbles they use an iPhone app, or can give me a metronome pulse if requested. Some of them can also tell me what level of pitch a piece has fallen during performance…
     
    Composer self-publishing is the tip of the iceberg. I see huge changes in choral music. It will either be embraced or will eventually rampage [quietly : )] over the existing structures.
     
    Michael McGlynn

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