The changing world of library music

feature | Library Music
The changing world
of library music
By Juliana Koranteng
If the different elements that make up
the music industry were to play a game
of poker, it would be tempting to say that
library music had been dealt the hand
with the fewest picture cards.
As a sector, it doesn’t strike poses for
the paparazzi on Hollywood’s red carpets.
Nor does it strut around the stages of the
world’s biggest arenas, fall out of exclusive
nightclubs, or marry supermodels. To the
general public, the term ‘library music’
always has to be explained, even though
they have probably heard more library
music over the years than music by John
Williams, Hans Zimmer, or even Elton
John.
However, while you won’t find
categories for library music in the
upcoming round of awards shows, the
sector continues to be a major, if largely
invisible feature in the music business
landscape.
Despite the havoc wreaked upon
commercial music by illegal file sharing
and online piracy, along with the negative
impact of 24 hour programming, multichannel TV and falling advertising
revenues on budgets in the broadcast
world, the odds for library music (to
return to the gambling analogy) look
pretty good.
“We’re one of the most profitable
and highest-margin businesses within
Universal Music Group,” declares Gary
Gross, Worldwide President at Universal
Publishing Production Music (UPPM).
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“As a sector, it doesn’t strike poses
for the paparazzi on Hollywood’s
red carpets”
However, like most businesses in
the post-digital revolution 21st century,
library music (also known as production
music) is experiencing radical changes in
the way revenue is generated, product is
delivered, suppliers are remunerated and
the needs of users are met.
“The face of library music is
changing,” says composer Mark
Fishlock. “Traditionally, it has been a
straightforward joint venture involving
the writer and the publisher, both
operating within a well-defined and
regulated framework. But everything
seems to be fluid at the moment.”
From monophonic jingles to
large-scale orchestral works, library
compositions come in all shapes and
sizes. From Christmas carols to children’s
choruses, uplifting gospel to brutal bass
beats, the most contemporary sounds to
works for lute and sackbut.
Composers who have written for
libraries are equally diverse. There is the
library aristocracy, including writers such
as Keith Mansfield and Johnny Pearson.
Rob Foster, Richard Harvey and Graham
Preskett all have dozens of albums under
their belts, while former top session
guitarist and now film and TV composer
Alan Parker is also a prolific library music
writer.
Jimmy Levine, composer of music
for Glee and Damages, is another, while
you can also find library tracks written by
Hollywood giants Jerry Goldsmith and
Quincy Jones, as well as rapper Snoop
Dogg and the Dutch electronic musician
Junkie XL.
In addition to writing the music,
library composers are expected to
possess other skills. “They have to find a
way to make what they’ve written easy to
edit, which is a talent in itself,” explains
Alex Black, General Manager at Imagem
Production Music, which includes
the world-famous Boosey & Hawkes
catalogue.
The corporate sector is also a
significant and lucrative market for library
music. Non-broadcast applications
include product launches, promotional
or training films, in-house campaigns, and
even music-on-hold during phone calls.
“There’s a huge demand for
contemporary music,” says Tim Hardy of
publishing house Repertoire Music about
corporate customers.
Library music composers and
publishers earn from both mechanical
and performance royalties generated by
the use of the music. Many uses will not
attract PRS income, either because it falls
outside the PRS domain, such as the nonbroadcast examples mentioned above, or
as a result of the sampling system applied
to the smaller TV channels. Library
music is generally a cheaper and always
a quicker alternative to commissioning
a composer, so productions with smaller
budgets will often source their music from
libraries. These programmes on minority
channels are more likely to be missed in
a sample by collection societies, which in
some cases may only monitor a handful of
days every year.
MCPS administer more than
500,000 production music tracks,
registered by more than 200 libraries.
While commercial music users have
to approach several rights owners to
obtain the necessary clearances, library
publishers acquire the mechanical,
performing and performers’ rights,
along with a waiver of moral rights. They
become de facto record labels as well and
provide users with a convenient one-stop
shop for acquiring recorded music.
MCPS rates currently range from
Mark Fishlock
Café Surreal – one of Rob Foster’s many albums for KPM
“Library music is generally a cheaper
and always a quicker alternative to
commissioning a composer”
Terry Devine-King
Rob Foster
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feature | Library Music
Audio Network’s Andrew Sunnucks
Alan Parker
The user is charged an administration
fee of £8 for every licence issued and
MCPS take a 12.5 per cent commission
before distributing the royalties to the
publishers. The publisher then shares the
proceeds 50:50 with the composer.
Terry Devine-King, who has worked
as a session musician with Trevor Horn
and was Jimmy Ruffin’s musical director,
admits there are easier ways to make a
living.
“It takes up to six months to write,
record and master a composition. Then
you have to wait for it to be picked up by a
programme maker. By the time it reaches
the broadcaster and aired, it still has to go
through the PRS process. As you build up
your catalogue however, you start to see
the real benefits after four to five years.”
Library music is famous for its ‘long
tail’ and is often described by composers
as a pension plan. “I always find it
intriguing to see tracks I wrote 15 or more
years ago still turning up on statements,”
says Mark Fishlock. “All these years later,
someone, somewhere in the world has
decided to take that off the shelf and use
it. It’s bizarre.”
The MCPS and PRS systems have
provided a level playing field for music
“Library music is famous for its
‘long tail’ and is often described by
composers as a pension plan”
£15 for up to 30 seconds of music in
a small radio ad, £5,500 for up to 30
seconds of music used worldwide in a TV
ad, to £15,000 to use a full track in any
type of media globally.
“As long as the music is within the
MCPS catalogue, the same fee rate applies
to every composition for perpetuity.
It’s usage that drives the value,” says
the society’s Licensing Manager
Andrew Ewbank.
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libraries, suggests Rob Foster, who has
been writing library music since 1984 and
has a catalogue of some 53 albums with
KPM, Music House, The Scoring House
and others.
Imagem’s Alex Black says he has
introduced 150 new writers to Boosey
& Hawkes. He makes about 38 albums
a year and with each album featuring
perhaps three composers, he may be
working with 120 different writers at any
given time.
However, the new century has
seen the establishment of new business
models, with many sectors seeing trading
norms thrown into a large sack and given a
good shake. What emerges often presents
challenges to industries used to working
within
well-established
regulatory
frameworks.
Audio Network, which launched 10
years ago, upset the library music apple
cart when it adopted a business model
operating outside the MCPS system.
The model is based on subscription,
charging users a standard licence
fee of £3,000 a year for unlimited
synchronisation use, plus an additional
£1,000 for using the music in retail items
such as DVDs. It’s an ‘all you can eat’
principle, which is common in mobile
phone bundling and cable TV packages.
Audio Network’s founder and
Managing Director Andrew Sunnucks
argues that the MCPS system had become
a monopoly that was making library music
too expensive for its users.
Audio Network composers receive
a non-recoupable payment towards the
cost of recording and are entitled to half
of any PRS royalties. However, because
the works are not registered with MCPS,
Audio Network’s composers receive no
mechanical income. Neither does the
publisher of course, but the contentious
issue is that the composer does not get
a share of the subscription income. This
breaks the link with the 50:50 split of
all revenue, which up to this point had
underpinned the library music model.
“Audio Network is simply responding
to the market requirements of music
users worldwide and by doing so, grow the
revenue-earning opportunities of British
composers,” Sunnucks argues. “We’re
very open with our composers that they
will not participate in synchronisation
fees. But we make it easy for music users
and they will use more music.”
He also refutes criticisms that
corporate usage, which is categorised as
non-broadcast, does not generate much
“The new century
has seen the
establishment
of new business
models”
in terms of PRS. However, composer
Alan Parker disagrees. “Some pieces can
be dubbed 20 times (for mechanicals)
but broadcast only twice (for performing
rights), which reduces your options if you
are out of the MCPS system.”
“The simplicity of the MCPS system
has made library music much better
value,” states Peter Cox, who ran KPM
for 30 years and is now Creative Director
at The Scoring House. “If users had
to negotiate for each use, it would be a
bureaucratic nightmare. But the business
is getting competitive and Audio Network
was in the right place at the right time.”
The internet has led to many new
library publishing operations popping
up all over the world and the opening
up of the market has attracted some
heavyweight players. The BBC, arguably
the UK’s leading user of library music, is
becoming a library itself.
The Corporation’s commercial arm,
BBC Worldwide, has formed a joint
venture with Universal’s UPPM to launch
a BBC-branded production publishing
company.
“The BBC has a unique selling point
in terms of quality and creativity,” says
Dominic Walker, BBC Worldwide’s Head
of Licensing. “We can make its music
available to people who couldn’t afford
to commission original works of that
standard. It also offers an opportunity
for the secondary exploitation of the
music we commission.” The BBC/UPPM
venture, due to launch in September, will
be registered with MCPS.
Another development that has
concerned composers is how publishers
are increasingly recouping recording costs
before the royalties are split. This used
to be regarded as part of the publisher’s
input and recoupable against their share
of future earnings. Some may see the
irony in the fact that Audio Network does
put up these costs… or a least a proportion
of them.
The cost structure is changing with
the future delivery of library music certain
to be online. No longer manufacturing
CDs, artwork and shipping them to
production companies will represent a
saving, while new hard drives and the
building of sophisticated search engines
will mean new costs. Library publishers
also play an important role as music
advisors, where knowing a catalogue
inside out and pointing a director or
producer to exactly the music they want
is not a service to be underestimated.
“Of course, it gets a bit scary when
new business models emerge,” observes
Devine-King, who is signed to Audio
Network. “The industry has changed and
you have to make a balanced judgment
about who you work with. In these days
of prices being forced downwards.”
“The subscription model has blown
a large hole in the MCPS system,” says
Fishlock, “but no one is breaking the
law. The world has changed and it would
be naïve to think things would always
be the same. We all have to adapt,
especially in the digital age. It’s hard
enough to make a living as a composer
and it would be quite wrong and
frankly ridiculous for BASCA to look
disapprovingly at one of its members just
because they’ve signed up with companies
like Audio Network.”
Library music will always be
speculative, because the decision about
whether to use a particular track is out
of the composer’s or publisher’s hands. A
cheque for many thousands of pounds may
depend on a CD being at the top of a pile
in a dark dubbing studio in Sacramento.
However, it is important for all composers
to be aware of which avenues for income
are open and which are not.
John Minch, Imagem’s CEO and an
MCPS board member, says: “There’s a
temptation among publishers to charge
nothing for the music and for composers,
“Library music will always be
speculative, because the decision about
whether to use a particular track is out
of the composer’s or publisher’s hands”
of hundreds of TV channels worldwide,
each demanding British music but not
necessarily using the MCPS system,
Audio Network was in tune with those
changes.”
“Of course, ‘price-fixing’ is a possible
interpretation of the MCPS system,”
counters Foster, “and there is a case for a
free market in which the customer decides.
But many fear it could lead to a price war
in which quality suffers as a direct result
so determined to be heard, that they accept
only PRS money on the grounds that it is
better than none at all. But we regard that
as a chase to the bottom. If you add value
to the mix in the right way and you’ve an
endorsement of a major publisher, you’ll
be able to charge a fair rate for the music.
That can only be good for writers.”
Juliana Koranteng is a London-based
journalist who writes for Billboard
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