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Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of music notation, while ensuring that the composer, songwriter and other creators receive credit and royalties or other payment (where applicable). This article outlines the early history of the industry.
Music publishing did not begin on a large scale until the mid-15th century, when mechanical techniques for printing music were first developed. [1] The earliest example, the Mainz Psalter, dates from 1457, and is the second book to be printed on the Gutenberg press (after the Gutenberg Bible). [2] Prior to 1501, music books were owned by the wealthy or religious institutions, and music had to be learned by ear or copied out by hand. [3] This was a very labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so it was first undertaken only by monks and priests seeking to preserve sacred music for the church. The few collections of secular music that are extant were commissioned and owned by wealthy noblemen. Examples include the Squarcialupi Codex of Italian Trecento music and the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music. Hand copying persisted long after the invention of printing and music was widely disseminated in manuscript form well into the 18th century, both in personal copying and scribal publication.
The father of modern music printing was Ottaviano Petrucci, a printer and publisher who was able to secure a twenty-year monopoly on printed music in Venice during the 16th century. [4] His first collection was entitled Harmonice Musices Odhecaton and contained 96 polyphonic compositions, mostly by Josquin des Prez and Heinrich Isaac. He flourished by focusing on Flemish works, rather than Italian, as they were very popular throughout Europe during the Renaissance. His printing shop used the triple-impression method, in which a sheet of paper was pressed three times. The first impression was the staff lines, the second the words, and the third the notes. This method produced very clean results, though it was time-consuming and expensive.
Around 1520 in England, John Rastell developed a single-impression method for printing music. [5] With his method, the staff lines, words and notes were all part of a single piece of type, making it much easier to produce. However, this method produced messier results, as the staff lines were often inexactly aligned and looked wavy on the page. The single-impression method eventually triumphed over Petrucci's and became the dominant mode of printing until copper-plate engraving took over in the 17th century. This method was adopted and used widely by a Frenchman, Pierre Attaingnant.
The concept of musical copyright had its beginnings in the reign of King Henry VIII of England who required copies of all printed matter to be sent to him and offered protection to printers in the form of licenses, primarily to produce a new source of revenue. In 1575 Elizabeth I granted Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd a 21-year patent monopoly on the printing and publishing of polyphonic music. [6] In 1618 German composer Heinrich Schütz submitted a petition to Johann Georg I to secure an electoral printing patent, for a period of ten years. [7] Similar petitions were made in 1627 and 1636 (approval of the latter is preserved in documentation by Emperor Ferdinand III, 1637), and a request for renewal in 1642. [7] The first modern copyright law was the Statute of Anne (1709), which protected all published works for a period of fourteen years, later extended to twenty-eight years. The earliest attempt at a printed musical copyright notice appears in the "Shir Hashirim" of Salomone Rossi (Venice, 1623) which includes a rabbinical curse on those infringing the text, written by Leon of Modena.
The first international agreement involving copyright was the Berne Convention of 1886. The core principle of the Convention is its provision that each of the contracting countries shall provide automatic protection for works in all other countries of the union and for unpublished works whose authors are citizens of or residents in those countries. [8] Performance rights are included in these provisions. As of March 2012, 165 countries had become parties to the convention.
The first U.S. federal copyright law gave protections to "maps, charts, and books." Contrary to some scholarly accounts, the 1790 Act's protection of "books" did encompass musical compositions. [9] The first registration in the U.S. for a musical composition was made on January 6, 1794 by Raynor Taylor for the original song "The Kentucky Volunteer." [10] However, musical compositions were not explicitly protected until the Copyright Act of 1831, and then protection remained limited to reproduction rights. The copyright term was twenty-eight years plus a fourteen-year renewal period.
While England was a leader in the development of copyright, the French led the way in performing rights. In 1777, Pierre de Beaumarchais founded the "Bureau de Legislation Dramatique" which became the present Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) in 1829. Many years later, in 1847, this inspired the composer and librettist Ernest Bourget to claim payment for each performance of his works at Les Ambassadeurs, a leading Café-concert venue of that time. A lawsuit won by Bourget and others in 1851 led to the formation of the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM) – the first performing rights society in the world.
Other countries followed suit: The Italian Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) was founded in 1882 and the Spanish "Sociedad de Autores", predecessor of the current Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), in 1899. The predecessor to the Gesellschaft für Musikalische Aufführungs und Mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (GEMA) was formed in Germany by composer Richard Strauss in 1903. It became GEMA in 1915 when it merged with another small society. So, by the end of the 19th century, the foundation had been laid for the modern music publishing industry.
As England was a leader in developing copyright systems and France was ahead in developing performing rights, Germany was the pioneering country in modern music publishing. The first German music publishing enterprises date from the 18th century. Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf of Leipzig, a printer and general publisher, decided to specialize in music printing as of 1754. He became successful by developing improvements in the setting of music type. Gottfried Christoph Härtel joined the firm in 1795, which soon became the partnership of Breitkopf & Härtel . They were the original publishers for a who's-who of great German composers, including Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Wagner.
Schott Music of Mainz was founded in 1770 by Bernhard Schott and still exists today. They specialized in French and Italian operas and, more recently, have published works by Hindemith, Stravinsky, Orff, Schoenberg and Henze. N. Simrock of Bonn, and later Berlin, was established in 1790 by Nikolaus Simrock. Their original publications included works by Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.
In 1764, Josiah Flagg compiled the first collection of popular and religious music, printed on paper made in the colonies. The post-revolutionary period was notable for the arrival of the first professional music publishers from Europe in the 1770s. They opened shops in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Baltimore, bringing with them European technology. Benjamin Carr and James Hewitt were two important early American music publishers. The first song published under US copyright was The Kentucky Volunteer, by Carr's own house.
In the first quarter of the 19th century alone, 10,000 pieces of popular music were printed by U.S. publishers. The industry, however, did nothing to promote music or develop writers. Songs became popular by word-of-mouth. Most minstrel troupes and professional singers wrote their own music or had songs written to order. Stephen Foster was the first composer who tried to make a living as an independent professional songwriter but, in the 1850s, copyright protection was so lax and royalties so small (or non-existent) that he found himself living in poverty. This changed only gradually as young men involved in other business enterprises began to perceive the possibilities for enrichment in song publishing.
Prior to the 1880s, popular music publishing was a secondary function of music stores or "serious" (Classical) music publishers. After 1880, publishers in New York developed a promotional technique called plugging. By 1900, most music publishers had clustered their businesses along 28th St. (between 6th Ave. and Broadway) in order to be closer to New York's thriving entertainment center. This area came to be known as Tin Pan Alley. The first decade of the 20th century saw the production of more popular music than had ever been written up to that time: about 25,000 songs annually. In 1893, sheet music for the song "After the Ball" sold one million copies and, over the next ten years, went on to sell a total of ten million.
Despite the enactment of new U.S. copyright legislation, including the 1891 Chace Act, which allowed for the international protection of copyrights, the provisions of the 1909 Copyright Act were generally ignored. To correct this situation, operetta composer Victor Herbert established the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), in 1914. It quickly attracted prominent composers such as Irving Berlin and John Philip Sousa, and was able to ensure that everyone was properly paid and credited for their work.
There are many aspects to music publishing. Chief among them is the licensing of music for use in advertising, television, films and other purposes. Music publishing started out by just being the publishing of the actual sheet music, and not even the score. Song sheets were made which just had the lyrics of a popular song. In the 19th century, sheet music for songs began including a simple piano accompaniment and notation for the song's melody. In the 2010s, music publishing is the exploitation of compositions (songs, instrumental pieces, and other music) for various performance uses, including newer uses such as licensing for video games, for use by recording artists looking for their next hit single and for use in a range of licensing purposes.
Within music publishing there are many different types of licenses. For instance:
A blanket license is an annual fee paid to one of the key performing rights organizations (PRO) (SESAC, ASCAP, or BMI). The blanket license paid to the PRO covers every work that is in the PRO's catalog. Blanket licenses are mostly used by television networks and radio stations so that they have the right to play any song or piece from one catalog instead of paying license fees for each song individually. [11]
A mechanical license is issued when a recording artist wishes to sell their recording of a written composition. It serves as a notice to the composition owners that sales are forthcoming and that royalties dictated by a statutory rate will be owed and paid to them.
A Performing Rights License (PRO) is the license that gives the licensee the right to publicly perform the song/work. [11]
Lastly, a sync license grants the right to use the composition in the synchronization of a recording over a moving picture in a film, advertisement, television show or any other audiovisual work. For the same synchronization use, one must also obtain a master use license, which grants rights to use the sound recording, which is a separately owned asset from the composition.
A music publisher negotiates the uses and fees for the songwriters and composers on their roster. In the 2010s, publishing companies are a main source of revenue besides live touring, because sync licensing has persisted as a substantial income source while the music industry underwent changes that saw their previously dominant income source, record sales, steadily decline.
The invention and development of sound recording resulted in a redefinition of the concept of publishing, much the same as online music stores in the 2000s would later revolutionize how recordings are purchased. Initially, popular music was slow to take advantage of the new technology. In 1910, when sales of the new disc format exceeded those of the old cylinder, more than 75% of the records sold were classical music. One factor in this may have been the expense, which would have concentrated sales among the more upscale purchasers. Until 1925, sheet music sales continued to surpass discs and were the primary source of revenue for publishers and composers. At that point, sheet music sales began to decline while records were still providing inadequate income to compensate. This led to short lived but serious economic problems for some publishers.
Samuel Fox (1884–1971) who founded the Sam Fox Publishing Company in 1906, was the first to publish original film scores. [12] In 1927, after the release of The Jazz Singer (the first talkie), the need for music led movie studios to buy music publishing companies, gaining both catalogues of music and experienced composers at the same time. For example, in 1929, Warner Brothers paid 10 million dollars for Harms, Witmark and Remick; MGM bought Leo Feist Inc. and some smaller companies; Paramount started its own publishing division, Famous Music.
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States and fair dealings doctrine in the United Kingdom.
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score", which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper. However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.
A performance rights organisation (PRO), also known as a performing rights society, provides intermediary functions, particularly collection of royalties, between copyright holders and parties who wish to use copyrighted works publicly in locations such as shopping and dining venues. Legal consumer purchase of works, such as buying CDs from a music store, confer private performance rights. PROs usually only collect royalties when use of a work is incidental to an organisation's purpose. Royalties for works essential to an organisation's purpose, such as theaters and radio, are usually negotiated directly with the rights holder. The interest of the organisations varies: many have the sole focus of musical works, while others may also encompass works and authors for audiovisual, drama, literature, or the visual arts.
The history of copyright starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books. Over time other uses such as translations and derivative works were made subject to copyright and copyright now covers a wide range of works, including maps, performances, paintings, photographs, sound recordings, motion pictures and computer programs.
The music industry refers to the individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, represent and supply music creators. Among the many individuals and organizations that operate in the industry are: the songwriters and composers who write songs and musical compositions; the singers, musicians, conductors, and bandleaders who perform the music; the record labels, music publishers, recording studios, music producers, audio engineers, retail and digital music stores, and performance rights organizations who create and sell recorded music and sheet music; and the booking agents, promoters, music venues, road crew, and audio engineers who help organize and sell concerts.
Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. Music licensing is intended to ensure that the owners of copyrights on musical works are compensated for certain uses of their work. A purchaser has limited rights to use the work without a separate agreement.
A publishing contract is a legal contract between a publisher and a writer or author, to publish original content by the writer(s) or author(s). This may involve a single written work, or a series of works.
Pierre Attaingnant or Attaignant was a French music publisher, active in Paris. He was one of the first to print music by single-impression printing, greatly reducing the labor involved, and he published music by more than 150 composers.
The Copyright Act of 1909 was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; but some of 1909 Act's provisions continue to apply to copyrighted works created before 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication and extended the renewal term from 14 years to 28 years, for a maximum of 56 years.
In copyright law, a mechanical license is a license from the holder of a copyright of a composition or musical work, to another party to create a "cover song", reproduce, or sample a portion of the original composition. It applies to copyrighted work that is neither a free/open source item nor in the public domain.
Public domain music is music to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply.
Production music is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries.
A music publisher is a type of publisher that specializes in distributing music. Music publishers originally published sheet music. When copyright became legally protected, music publishers started to play a role in the management of the intellectual property of composers.
Music Law refers to legal aspects of the music industry, and certain legal aspects in other sectors of the entertainment industry. The music industry includes record labels, music publishers, merchandisers, the live events sector and of course performers and artists.
John Walsh was the name of a father and son, two printers and publishers of music, active in London from the late 17th Century, and through the first half of the 18th Century. They published much important Baroque music, including works by William Babell and George Frideric Handel.
Music royalties are royalty payments for the writing and performing of music. Unlike other forms of intellectual property, have a strong linkage to individuals – composers (score), songwriters (lyrics) and writers of musical plays – in that they can own the exclusive copyright to created music and can license it for performance independent of corporates. Recording companies and the performing artists that create a "sound recording" of the music enjoy a separate set of copyrights and royalties from the sale of recordings and from their digital transmission.
Frank Harding (1864-1939) was a Tin Pan Alley music publisher, who was credited with creating the method of selling music called plugging. Harding paid singers to sing his published songs in shops and beer halls to get them known and attract customers. Composers such as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin later got their starts as pluggers. He was active from the 1880s through the 1920s.
The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act or MMA is United States legislation signed into law on October 11, 2018, aimed to modernize copyright-related issues for music and audio recordings due to new forms of technology such as digital streaming. It is a consolidation of three separate bills introduced during the 115th United States Congress.
Ottalie Mark was an American musicologist, copyright consultant, composer, and music editor.
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