There is an explosion of new music publishing contracts being signed every day, but there’s one key factor that may have been overlooked: The publisher is getting paid more.
This is especially true of smaller and independent labels.
“They’re still getting paid a little bit more than big publishing companies,” said Ryan Shaffer, CEO of the Music Marketing Association of America, which represents music publishing companies.
“It’s just not as much as it used to be.”
A New York Times article from January 2014 reveals that the number of independent publishing deals was up 40 percent in 2013.
According to Shaffer and other industry analysts, that means a record label can now afford to pay a higher percentage of the total revenue to its publisher, a sign that publishers are still trying to compete against smaller and smaller competitors.
“The publishers are not just trying to be the gatekeepers anymore, they’re trying to get their own customers and customers are becoming more independent,” Shaffer said.
“And it’s creating a more symbiotic relationship with the publishers.
And that’s a good thing.”
In many cases, a record company may have an incentive to make the deals it is negotiating with its publisher.
In 2013, Shaffer’s group said that when a record was released, it would receive “a small percentage” of the royalties from the record.
Shaffer told the Times that in addition to the record label’s profit from the album, a percentage of any profit that the publisher makes from the music would be split equally between the record company and the publishing company.
“You’re basically giving them the royalty that they deserve, without giving them any additional money for anything else,” Shaff said.
For labels, this means the music is still on the market for a few more weeks, but the record is released and people start buying it.
“As you get into the early days of the next album cycle, you’ll see the amount of time that the artist is spending with their label is going up,” Shafer said.
And Shaffer says that when an artist is able to sell millions of albums, that artist is likely to keep getting paid.
Shaff noted that, even if a record is not released for years, a label will still be able to recoup some of its investment in the music.
“Once a label has done that, then they can basically make more money off of that record than the label,” Shuff said.
Shuff also said that, in many cases the artist will make more profit from their music when it is in the market.
“If you’re a smaller label, you’re not going to have a lot of success selling records.
You’re going to be in the $1 million to $3 million range, so you’re probably not going be making money,” Shiff said.
He added that the amount that labels make from the sale of a record can vary based on the quality of the record as well as the popularity of the song.
“So for example, if a song sells a million downloads, and then a million people listen to that song, that song is going to go up in value, and the label is also going to make a lot more money because they can take their commission,” Shiffin said.
The amount that a label can make from a single album is usually much lower than the amount it can make on other albums, according to Shaff.
“That’s one of the reasons that we want labels to get involved in this,” Shish said.
But in the past few years, there has been an explosion in the number and quality of independent artists that are producing and releasing music.
The record industry has been in decline for years.
Shiff says that a number of artists have been getting pushed out of the industry.
“This is a lot different than the old days of being a part of a major label,” he said.
Even though smaller labels have been struggling, Shish says that the industry is still in good shape.
“There are a lot fewer smaller labels than there were a couple of years ago,” Shook said.
So how can small labels survive in this environment?
“If a company can make money off a single release, they have to make money on every release,” Shosh, Shiff, Shuff, Shaffe, and Shaffer all said.
Small labels can also rely on other factors that have been going on for years: The record labels are often very protective of their intellectual property.
In order to survive, artists have to be able have their work protected from the whims of record labels and their fans.
In the past, the major labels have used their power to force musicians to sign licensing agreements that forbid their artists from doing anything else but make music.
In some cases, labels have also been able to force artists to pay for marketing.
For instance, in the case of Adele, a large producer and record label has been paying Adele a large percentage of her sales and advertising rights, and has demanded that Ad