For the music industry, change and disruption are the new normal. But in a time of great upheaval, how do you set your priorities?
We spoke to Vickie Nauman (founder of LA-based consultancy and advisory firm CrossBorderWorks) and Sara Lord (SVP of synchronisation & project development at Concord Music Publishing) to learn about the new areas of the business dominating their time and what else they are preparing for.
Fit for purpose: exercise and music
Music + exercise used to mean cacophonous dancercise classes at the gym or contending with the person next to you on the treadmill who has music leaking out of their headphones. Now online and virtual classes are big business, but the case last year of Peloton and its licensing problems exposed just how important it is to get things right here for new players.
VN: Music and workouts have always been [linked]. There’s something that’s a really good fit there. I think that one of the problems in this space is that everybody knows it’s a good fit, but there are all sorts of issues about music licensing and fitness that become problematic.
If you have a running app and everything is at the same BPM but you want to modify the songs a little bit, that’s a problem.
You want to have on-demand video with music synched in the background? That’s complicated; that’s a synchronisation license.
You want to be able to let your instructors choose anything from any catalogue anywhere for their fitness class? That’s a problem.
Everything can be done; but you might have to make some choices about the music that you use. You’ve got to get the licensing in order or you will be forever buried in litigation and on the wrong side of partnerships.
I’ve had a number of companies that have called me since this [the Peloton suit] broke wide open that have said, “We see what’s happening over there. Is what we’re doing the right thing?” Unfortunately for Peloton, they’re the sacrificial lamb in the story of why you need to get your music licences in order. But I think it is doing everybody else a favour in that they’re saying, “OK, let’s not do whatever it is that they did.”
SL: As a concept, I think it’s excellent. You generally can’t do one without the other [music + exercise]. Many startups forget about music until the last minute. They may not all forget about it, but they should know that music is integral to them. They want music and they certainly want associations with certain musicians and artists, but a lot of them still don’t think that they have to pay for it. Or, if they do have to pay for it, they don’t have to pay well for it, especially if it’s proper commercial music.
“There is a need for continual education for people coming into areas where music is used and for understanding the value of it.”
– Sara Lord, Concord Music Publishing
There is a need for continual education for people coming into areas where music is used and for understanding the value of it – even if that is just making sure that their widgets are all working with Spotify’s APIs or whatever it may be. There must be an acknowledgment that the music that they use isn’t for free.
Will new exercise companies learn from what happened with Peloton? I would really hope so. It would be a great shame if they didn’t because it was a very big case in the music press. We all saw it, acknowledge it and discussed it. We took them to court on it and won.
All those things are great, but one would hope that if you have a startup that has music as an integral part then you would look at your music [licensing]. But there’s certain accelerators and incubators that I’ve been a part of and there is still, even though they are music-related startups, an alarming lack of awareness of how music gets paid for.
I think education and information are still a big part of what we have to do in order to embrace all these new ideas. I think they are great and are total innovations, but you can’t have the music for nothing.
Wishing well: meditation and wellness apps
Calm is the market leader here and has now got directly involved in marketing acts, being the first place people heard Moby’s most recent album (Long Ambients 2), while Above & Beyond put their Flow State album through it and Sigur Rós launched a Liminal Sleep playlist within it. Wellness is an enormous business, too, valued at $4.5 trillion globally and it also offers huge opportunities for a certain type of music that might not be top of the list for other uses like syncs in TV and film.
VN: Music is like a drug – in the most positive sense. It stimulates different parts of our brains and our emotions. With meditation apps that are integrating very particular kinds of music and the phenomenon of what has happened on Spotify with sleep playlists and ambient playlists with white noise, it’s all a symptom of a society that needs calm amidst the chaos of news and the chaos of life.
“Both health and wellness represent a really big opportunity for music. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the top of the charts music.”
– Vickie Nauman, CrossBorderWorks
Both health and wellness represent a really big opportunity for music. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the top of the charts music. I’m always really excited when I identify opportunities for broader catalogue in these niche markets. The 1% at the top of the charts that are doing billions of streams and playing sold-out stadiums, from an industry’s health perspective, that 1% is always going to be fine. It’s the middle 80% that needs these other kinds of opportunities that are going to provide meaningful licence fees as well as meaningful ways to reach consumers.
SL: There are artists and songwriters who are doing special playlists for those apps or doing guided meditations where their voices are well known. All of that is fantastic. As long as it’s licensed properly, we wouldn’t have any issues with those things. Wellness is such a huge industry that we would be crazy not to fully embrace it.
We’ve done a deal with Nick Murphy, who was known as Chet Faker, and he’s just made an album called Music For Silence. He did it purely for Calm.
For a good three or four years, some of the main references we get for a lot of tracks [for sync and licensing] is Max Richter and Ludovico Einaudi – very much along those lines.
That works in film very well. It also works very well in trailers and in TV. It’s definitely across the board.
Toking heads: TikTok and short-form viral clips
It is the hottest app in the world and has over half a billion monthly active users globally. Music is a huge part of it and the app is proving a place to not only break tracks but also to find new songs and artists. Its core audience might be 16-24, but its wider impact, especially when a song takes off, can be phenomenal.
VN: TikTok is something that adults probably don’t completely understand. I think for most people at labels and publishers, it has slipped by everyone. I think that they thought, “Oh, it’s going to be some fad.” But what has happened is that artists have broken on TikTok – look at Lil Nas X – and this is now a format.
There used to be this mindset with rightsholders that our music is perfect. That song is three minutes and 49 seconds and it’s perfect in the studio. We don’t want anyone to alter it, we don’t want any UGC, we want it in its pristine environment. That has largely gone out the window.
You can still have those listening experiences, but between YouTube and TikTok I think that the industry has just said, “OK, we can’t possibly anticipate how a platform can transform music like TikTok has.”
It’s a real challenge to license music like that. If you need to use under 30 seconds, then you have to go and declare 100% of the publishing for everything on that. It’s this insane undertaking.
“We have a whole generation of kids and listeners that are engaging with music in a way that we could have never really anticipated.”
– Vickie Nauman, CrossBorderWorks
However, look at what has happened here. We have a whole generation of kids and listeners that are engaging with music in a way that we could have never really anticipated – and it never would have happened if we hadn’t had the openness and willingness to let them play around and alter the music a little bit and bring their own creativity to it.
SL: With the licensing in places such as TikTok, it’s like streaming numbers; you’re going to see the income coming in from those numbers. Whether it’s as much as it should be is another conversation.
It’s great that there are as many outlets as possible for music, but the issue of whether the fees coming through for songwriters are sufficient or not [is an important one to address].
“It’s great that there are as many outlets as possible for music, but the issue of whether the fees coming through for songwriters are sufficient or not [is an important one to address].”
– Sara Lord, Concord Music Publishing
For the fully monetised platforms, you could still argue that the fees the songwriters are getting isn’t enough. We are battling with Spotify and Amazon again at the moment for the songwriters’ cut to be increased [i.e. the Copyright Royalty Board hearing in the US].
In general, if you have a viral hit on TikTok, it’s about awareness and how that then filters down. From the sync point of view, it filters down into whether that’s then in the consciousness of the creatives at the agencies who might want to use the song in an ad; or if it’s got a cultural relevance that needs to be addressed in an advert somehow. That’s always an upside.
Doc ’n’ roll: the renaissance of the music documentary
We hesitate to call it a new golden age for the music documentary, but the arrival of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple Music and YouTube as both platforms for, and investors in, music documentaries means there are lot more of them being made and being watched than ever before. And as more music documentaries are made, they have to move further and further away from the well-trodden paths to find acts, genres, scenes and themes that have previously been overlooked or ignored. Plus they can go long – running to multiple episodes. There is the extreme short-form content of TikTok on one hand and the in-depth scope of documentaries on the other but it’s not a binary thing: music is able to adapt to both extremes.
VN: Everyone here is in a race to have enough content to make their video service viable. You’ve got Netflix, Disney+, Apple, YouTube, Amazon and more. Everyone’s trying to acquire enough content to create a differentiated video service.
“People are really hungry for more information about artists that they care about. I love the streaming services because they’re so affordable and they’re in the background on all the speakers in my home, but they don’t give me context.”
– Vickie Nauman, CrossBorderWorks
People are really hungry for more information about artists that they care about. I love the streaming services because they’re so affordable and they’re in the background on all the speakers in my home. I can take my Spotify or Apple Music songs with me everywhere, but they don’t give me context. They don’t give me any information about the artists, their background, anything about it. And I know there’s a lot of really interesting stories there. It seems like that thirst is being quenched by these music documentaries and biopics.
It’s not only as a way for fans to learn more about artists that they care about or stories that are important in their lives, but it does give you all sorts of different understandings and contexts behind the song. That is ultimately why I think music resonates with you more when you’re in an immersive story than it does if you’re just listening on your iPhone.
It doesn’t have to be the most current pop. There’s oftentimes not enough of a story on the emerging artists. It’s really about the history and the artistry that went into making that artist over decades. That Aretha Franklin film [Amazing Grace] is the perfect example.
SL: What I like about a lot of these platforms is that the stories that they’re finding and the stories that they’re sharing are not necessarily just your average 45-minute or 50-minute documentary on the rise and fall of a certain band. They’re being quite innovative and looking at bringing the story across in a really interesting way.
I think people are looking at the success of certain documentaries and trying to emulate that.
“We try and be very proactive in looking at our catalogue. Rather than waiting for a production company, a writer or a director to come to us with an idea, we’re looking at some of the incredible things that we’ve got and are approaching people to collaborate with them on ideas.”
– Sara Lord, Concord Music Publishing
Something that we do a lot of here is to try and be very proactive in looking at our catalogue. Rather than waiting for a production company, a writer or a director to come to us with an idea, we’re looking at some of the incredible things that we’ve got and are approaching people to collaborate with them on ideas. That’s one way that rightsholders can be a bit more involved in that process rather than just waiting for the phone to ring.
School’s out?: music tuition
In the early 2000s, as labels were fighting to control P2Ps, music publishers also had to contend with unlicensed tabulation and lyric sites popping up. Genius, LyricFind, Fender Play and more are now trying to create a licensed environment for lyric use and tuition, but there is still an element of lawlessness out there.
VN: If you go to The NAMM Show [the National Association of Music Merchants’ annual trade event] and walk around there, you would never know that music has ever had a recession. It’s just abuzz with people who want to buy and learn how to play musical instruments and to find out how to be an artist and what that means today.
People want to create, but what people oftentimes find is that it’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline. You don’t just pick up an instrument and become a master of it in a couple of months.
In the same way as fitness, there’s a boom around, “How can I learn how to play the guitar better online?” I think the jury’s still a little bit out on what that use case is.
For new guitar players, I think the attrition rate is over 95% after one year. You realise it’s actually painful, you don’t have the calluses on your fingers, it takes a lot of time, you’re not very good, you have to get motivated, you’re distracted by everything. So it’s in everyone’s interest if you invest in a guitar to see yourself improving because then you’re going to be much more likely to continue to play over the course of time.
I just don’t know what that killer app is yet in online music, education and learning to play instruments. We’re still figuring that out.
“That’s another very complicated licensing structure. If you want to learn to sing online or if you want to learn to play guitar, you need a set of rights around the music that you’re using in that lesson.”
– Vickie Nauman, CrossBorderWorks
That’s another very complicated licensing structure. If you want to learn to sing online or if you want to learn to play guitar, you need a set of rights around the music that you’re using in that lesson. I think it’s another opportunity, but I am not exactly sure what the Peloton equivalent is. I don’t know that we seen that yet.
SL: We have licensing deals with a few sites. We do something with ClicknClear that uses all their mixes and remixes for cheerleading and gymnastics routines.
They saw an area that wasn’t being monetised. It wasn’t being legislated and they went to the bodies that oversees these competitive sports and they now have a licensing system in place which is fantastic.
It’s never pre-approval on those sort of things, because we can’t [do that]: it’s not up to us; it’s up to our writers. Everything is on a case-by-case basis. We don’t have an overall policy on it because it has to be individualised. A new songwriter might be up for it but Daft Punk might not.
The official ones are licensed, of course. The one that Quincy Jones helped start [Playground Sessions] absolutely is. I can’t imagine that any brands like [Fender] that has associations with music already would not be doing that. It would be really daft not to.
