Daniel Wolf posted a lengthy comment on my post about the insane business practices of music publishers. It is a reasonable outline of the problems that music publishers face. None of it is news, but it is always worth reminding ourselves of the obstacles in the way of innovation:

It sounds insane, and many traditional publishers make it more so through cumberosme processes, but finding an alternative is not as simple as sending out free PDFs. I’ve made a major investment over the past year in engraving the Alvin Lucier scores in the Material Press catalog. This represents time and money that I would like to amortize in a reasonable period through score sales, the only income for Material Press, as we do not get a share of license fees (allowing the composer to retain the 50% share assigned by GEMA or ASCAP et al to publishers). Initially, I was rather generous in allowing PDFs out, but I rapidly found out that these scores were being performed from the PDFs, without a purchase of the paper scores, and the PDFs were even being circulated, creating 2nd or 3rd generation performances. In starting Material Press, we had two principles: that the scores be inexpensive and that the composers retain 100% of the licenses, thus eliminating two of the major objections to traditional sheet music publishing. Even when I explain these priniciples, some people continue to insist on a right to make unlimited copies, as if my investment was a gift to the world at large. I have no objection at all when someone buys a score and makes a copy for their own use, but each subsequent copy passed on to someone else does have a direct effect on my ability to afford the production of new scores.

Some of the traditional publishers, like Universal, have been making moves in the direction of placing perusal scores for rental works online, but this is a slow process, especially with a huge back catalog, and they do it because they will still be able earn part rentals and license fees. I do believe that they are making a mistake by keeping chamber and solo works too expensive (they ought to be inexpensive enough to purchase that biulk library sales amortize the engraving and eliminate any need for perusals by making cheap study scores available), but many firms are, in fact, trapped in a downward spiral of increased costs, reduced staffs and copying in which they need to preserve any income streams so the idea of reducing prices appears counterintuitive to many firms; very few traditionals which have recognized that the essential service they bring to composers and performers is promotion and that reducing sheet music overhead is necessary to afford better promotion.

The final issue is about availablity of sheet music in general and what to do about orphaned or out-of-print sheet music. Sure, retail sheet music stores have disappeared and it’s not possible to just walk in and peruse scores. But I can still remember many of the famous stores and I can assure you that they were not always as good as their reputations. (The famous Patelson’s had a tiny selection compared to Ralph Pierce Music in Pomona, CA and their staff was surly and slow.) But guess what? Ordering online allows better selections, whether from composer themselves, publishers, or online retailers, and delivery times are much faster than in the past (in 1978, it took a year for me to get a copy of Cage’s Amores!). And sheet music prices have not kept up with inflation, so the costs to performers, in real terms are less. As for orphaned music, there has to be a legal solution for abandoned works, but copyright terms have been expanded so greatly that any such solution would involve an unprecedented takings of property rights that had been explicitly granted and I don’t know honestly how that would play out in the present legal atmosphere. In short, it’s such a mess that even the most reasonable proposal will be very difficult to implement.

I put an emphasis on the most central point in all of this: music publishers fail in their most basic function, which is promotion.

I always think back to the days of song pluggers, and I can never understand why that practice hasn’t been updated for the 21st century. If you were the publisher of a piece, wouldn’t you want the first result people see when they Google the title to be its product page on your site? Instead, when you Google the title of a piece, you’re lucky if the publisher’s listing is in the first 10 pages of results.