What's the most common reason for a return?
— Stan Morris

Hi Stan,

Although this is only anecdotal, my observation would be that the submissions don't fit the listing genre would win by several lengths. To get opinions from individual members would skew the results towards their personal submission habits.

One trip to any Rally listening panel would quickly show you how many people don't seem to know what genre their music is in. We ask members to put their music in boxes by genres, then we pick them from those boxes randomly to play for the panel. Audience members are typically astounded by how far off people are on their genres, and how often it happens. Pretty reflective of what we see at the office.

That's why we ask the industry people to give examples of artists and songs for their listings. Also why we provide links for members' reference.

Oftentimes, when we get members questioning why we don't forward them, they reference something MENTIONED in the critique, but they tend to ignore what it says in the box in the lower right hand corner which says, The main reason you were not forwarded for this listing is/was.

If you were to look at a random cross section of how members categorize their own music on our hosting site, you'd see that a majority list themselves as mixed/multiple. We're never quite sure if they don't know or they're playing to the misconception that versatility is a good thing. It CAN be in film/TV, but definitely not in records. Labels like you to be just one thing for marketing reasons.

Warm regards,
Michael

What are the main differences between a publisher and a music library? Are there any?
— Jamie Leger

Hi Jamie,

They're both publishers, and it's my observation that the best libraries get most of their best placements by doing hand-to-hand combat—meaning that they develop relationships and actively pitch. Another observation is that music supervisors really don't like to search databases for music. They'd rather e-mail or call a human, have them cull a few tracks they think would work, and pitch them, whether by e-mail or in some cases, in person. The world's biggest and best libraries have sales forces all over the world.

A straight up music publisher like Warner Chappel or Universal Music Pub might have as many as 250,000 (or more) titles in their catalog (spanning decades) and a staff of creative people who act kind of like TAXI, in that they tell their writers which songs are best, give their writers some creative advice and hand-holding, sometimes in the form of pairing up co-writes, as well as pitching their songs to artists, and yes, even film and TV opps.

A couple of major differences are that pubs like Universal typically don't sign single songs. Instead, they sign songwriters, give them an advance against future income, and the songwriters need to turn in a song or two per month (that meet the pub's standards), depending on the number of co-writers they will be splitting the income with.

To get a staff songwriter deal, it typically takes having a song that's already been cut to get the publishers interested. Once they know there's an income stream, they're much more interested. They often want a piece of the existing cut. Another way to get a pub deal is to get a record deal and be the songwriter in the band, or for yourself if you're a solo artist. Once you've inked the record deal, a publisher will often offer you a pub deal because there is some probability that the record will generate mechanicals, and with tons of good fortune, performance income as well through airplay, etc.

A big difference with libraries is that they typically don't give advances (unless you're creating custom projects/CDs they commission you to create to order), and many of them offer non-exclusive contracts on single songs. I think it will be quite some time before the majors do non-exclusives, as they're interested in building equity. Exclusive rights build equity, much like equity in stocks or real estate. Eventually, they cash in their chips and sell off the entire catalog for what is called a multiple, similar to selling a business for X times net profit.

Gotta stop now before I write a book. Hope this helps,
Michael