Today's music business is a fast-moving and highly globalised place. It takes a great deal of effort and knowledge to survive and make money off your music. We asked Philippe Manivet, the President of Music publishing and rights management company Musigamy, a few questions about the importance of publishing and the collecting of data as an independent musician and/or record label.
Everything has been changing during the last decades and for the non-digital native, it is not so obvious to work on a brand new way. The relationship with the audience is so different. You have now to convince people in less than 30 seconds. Back in the days, you sometimes liked a CD’s after the fifth or the tenth listening but you had to give this chance to a better understanding as you already invested into the CD.
Moreover, you have to be at the top of the audience’s mind every single day because succeeding in the streaming era is having a constant relationship with the audience which means an intense social presence as well as frequent releases. The competition is terrible!You have to face all the music history and music from everywhere in the world! Before, you had only a few hundreds of competitors mostly local who released during the same quarter. Now being there is easy, standing out is really more difficult than ever. The relationship with time is also really different.
Before, the lifetime of a release was three months. Now you go on working until the next release, sometimes during more than a year. The challenge is to accept these changes and to be the most effective possible in this new model. It’s a mix between ubiquity and focusing on what makes our real strength. We have to be closer of the audience than never and to be active in every single market to make accidents happen. Musicians can’t be only musicians now, they are the general manager of their own brand which involves them in many different tasks.
Publishers are probably the most global partner you can have involved in a musical project. Artists and labels need a massive knowledge and publishers are in the middle of this. We can be helpful in finding partners because we have a network but also because we have a deep understanding of the music industry and which kind of help is needed. The publisher will prevent bad partnerships.
A publisher can be a catalyst to the success of the project, in exploiting the works under all forms. Synchronisation is a really good example of this.The work of a publisher is to exploit songs, which means a really concrete action as well as a long-term commitment to the interest of the writers. A publisher’s action is automatically at an international level. It’s is really important to enter this worldwide aspect into developing a musical project in the digital age.
We can no longer put all the independent music business into the same bag. There are really different types of structure and ways of working. All the online data give a lot of insights to analyse what happens with our music in real time. It permits us to put our effort into what really makes sense and to make a lot of tries without taking big financial risks.
As independent music business, we work on a reduced number of projects which permit to spend more time on it and to emphasise the benefits of online data.
Income tracking is a key point of publisher’s work. When there is broadcasting somewhere, there is income to collect. Radio airplay, TV broadcasting, Streaming data, all is very meaningful. The geographical information is also a key argument to work with local partners to make discover our music and artists.
Obviously, radio is still really important. First of all, because it can generate a good income. Moreover, because it talks to a specific local market which permits us to tighten the links with the local audience. When you reach one thousand people through the internet all around the world in how many cities can you fill a venue? Live music is more and more important for artist and radios are great partners to emphasise your presence locally and make things happen.
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Want to read more about radio? Check out our other blog article about the value of radio airplay: How much is a radio airplay worth.
And also: Why we need new radio airplay charts!
