Publishing: the tiny pot of gold

Hello, people. Recently, I just helped a buddy set up his publishing company and advised another friend to start one. For the benefit of those not in the know, music publishing applies to those of you who write your own tunes for whatever purpose in whatever way. Be it for your own amusement or just to contribute to i-bands, sooner or later, you'll be thinking about 'selling' your songs to professional artistes. Below is a favourite question:

"Trabye, I have a (or some) tune(s). Can you forward it to anyone who might be interested?"

This happens to me ALL the time. My advice is, get yourself signed with a publishing house e.g. Universal Music Publishing, Warner Chappel, EMI Music Publishing or even smaller companies like Karya Enigma (promosi ini berbayar... ha ha), Luncai Emas and the like.

"Why?"

Here are the reasons:

1. Music publishing companies have direct contact to all, if not most, A&R people and producers in the music scene. This gives your music a better chance to be considered for album release.

2. Once your music is selected to be included in an album, it will be recorded and released into the market. Once the album starts selling, you (the composer/lyricist) are entitled to mechanical royalties. This is your 'share' of the sales collected (normally a pro-rated percentage). The publisher will do the collecting for you on your behalf, minus a certain percentage (this will be in your publisher's contract). If you have only one song, it's no problem to collect your royalties yourself. But should one day, you have more songs in the market than M. Nasir, you can't expect to chase all these people for cheques. Publishers are here to lighten your burden, if not lift it totally.

3. Music publishers will advice you from time to time, the sales performance of your songs and inform you of any additional income.

4. Publishers will protect your rights and help you if there's any legal disputes. There have been rare cases where composers have similar tunes/lyrics and accuse each other of plagiarism.

5. If your song was released in an album, and someone makes a ringtone out of it, do you know that you are entitled for royalty? Music publishers handle that for you.

6. Publishers will also help you register with MACP, a collection body that collects performance royalties. Performance royalties are different from mechanical royalties. The latter is income earned through album sales. In the case of the former, MACP collects royalties whenever your song is played on radio, TV (satellite/cable/regular), movies, commercials, concerts, shopping malls, discotheques, pubs, clubs or wherever there's music being played to the public. Your publisher will then collect these monies and pass them to you.

7. And lots of other reasons (we'll get into it once you're serious about selling your songs)

"Banyaknye royalty...."

Yes, banyak. The individual percentages are low but if accumulated, it can reach to a five-figure amount. That's how much the 'big' composers get annually, I kid you not.

"Kalau macam tu, where do I sign up?"

Nanti dulu... HOWEVER, this will only work if people stop buying pirated music products. As a consumer, these contraband are value for money but if you're a composer, like me and many of my friends and family, our income becomes the sacrificial pawn, sliced up to give pirate supporters their "value for money". A Malay proverb goes "Berat mata memandang, berat lagi bahu memikul". It's easy to not care about composers' royalties when you're not one.

So next time you pick up a cd yang "kualiti baek punyee", think of how much you'll be taking away from us, the composers and lyricists in an ever-shrinking Malaysian Music Industry.

Trabye's take: Composers pun kenalah buat lagu yang lagi bagus but that's another story....