And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 154: Justin Kalifowitz

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Today’s guest is a lifelong advocate for empowering creators and the Founder and Executive Chairman of Downtown Music Holdings. Since its start in 2007, Downtown has become the leading service provider to the global music business by driving equity and innovation across the industry. As Executive Chairman, he leads Downtown’s Board of Directors, drives strategic development and works with the executive team on transformational growth opportunities for the organization. Today, Downtown manages more than 23 million music assets on behalf of over one million artists and enterprise clients hailing from 145 countries from a catalog that spans 100 years of popular music, including music for film and television, and the single largest independent sound recording catalog in the industry. The company’s diverse client base features some of the biggest brands in music and entertainment, including iconic songwriters, composers and recording artists, major film and television production studios, gaming companies, the world’s largest music companies, music asset owners and other music service providers. Over the course of his career, our guest has received numerous esteemed recognitions, including Variety’s New Leaders, Billboard’s Power 100, Crain’s New York “40 Under 40,” and is a recipient of the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) Indie Award. He serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), and is co-founder of NY is Music, a non-profit coalition dedicated to advancing the importance of the role of music in economic development, culture, and education in New York State. And The Executive Is… Justin Kalifowitz! Watercolor by: Michael Richey White  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Come join our Discord, follow our socials, and share your music with the and The Writer is community. See you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Hey, what's up? It's Paige MacDonald, and this is your weekly music industry update. Jason Allen has been promoted to Senior Director of Infrastructure Operations at Digital Music Distributor TuneCore.

Sujada Murthy has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Media and Artist Relations at Universal Music Enterprises, the Global Catalog Division of Universal Music Group. Royalty-free music startup Slip. Stream has secured 7.5. million dollars of series A financing. Some of the investors include Sony Music Entertainment, third prime, and lightshed ventures. The online dance music retailer, B port, has acquired the Music Discovery Portal, label radar. Hypnosis song management has acquired the song catalog of Justin Timberlake. Sony Music Group is expanding its unrecooped balance program to eligible unrecouped artists and songwriters globally who have been with Sony Music for over 20 years and haven't received in advance in over two decades. Ferell Williams is launching a new NFT platform

called the Gallery of Digital Assets. A new artist development incubator called Versewire has launched in Los Angeles saying that it aims to act as a venture capital-like music fund. Sony Music Publishing Nashville and Black River Publishing have signed a worldwide publishing partnership deal. Social audio platform, Gimmy Radio, has raised $3 million during its latest round of funding. Warner Music Group has launched Warner Music Israel, a new recorded music affiliate based in Tel Aviv. Universal Music Group is expanding business in the Czech Republic, including the relaunch of Capitol Records, Island, Skybox, Def Jam, Sing It On, and Virgin Music Label and Artist Services.

Tim Pitt House has joined artist management company 360 as president of central services. Helen Sashdev has been appointed chair of PPL, PRS Limited, a joint public performance licensing venture operated by PPL and PRS for music. Nick Barr has been named vice president of ANR and creative strategy at Island Records. Madeline Napoleon has joined Warner Music Canada as its VP of Marketing. The London-born ticketing platform, Dice, has expanded into Germany. Zach Katz, the former president of BMGUS and former CEO of Raised in Space, is joining Faye's clan as president and COO. A big thank you to Hannah Rosenberg of Megha House for gathering today's news. Now stay tuned for this week's episode of Anne the Writer is.

Guys, listen up. Last year we started working with LAMP, it's a school. called Los Angeles Academy for artists and music production. It's run by and founded by Stargate. Their mentor list is nuts. It's, you know, Benny Blanco, Tommy Brown, Tenache, Emily Warren, John Cunningham, you know, a bunch of people who've been guests on this show. So obviously we're fans of them and this school has been amazing and I wanted to bring them back this year so they can tell you an update on how LAMP is going and ways for you guys to get involved in LAMP.

Tor, dude, good to catch up. It has been a very strange time in the last year, but you guys are still trucking through and it's even growing and growing. So I just want you to tell everybody, you know, what's going on? How's the school going? Well, as you know, Ross,

the Lamp is a one-year high-level music program. We're in Santa Monica in California, and we have a site with 48 students. They collaborate, write music, produce every single day. And we started this last year. We're just graduating our first class, and we're doing admissions for the next year now. And just the level of music that's coming out of this place is mind-blowing. We thought it was going to be hard to get people up to a professional level, but people came in with a growth mindset,

and they're already at a professional level. So these guys are ready to go out because we create a real world environment where it's just like being in a writing session. We pair producers with songwriters and artists and we write songs every single day. Then we break them down once a week. Focus on the songwriting, focus on the performance,

the production, the beats, are the beats hitting, are the titles great, are the melodies distinct? Is it memorable? What can we do to make it better? And that's the type of feedback. you don't get in the industry, right? No one's ever going to tell you what you can do to your song to make it better. They just won't call you back.

We have a program where it feels like the real world, but you get professional feedback from the best mentors in the game. I mean, I can't imagine if we would have had this when we were coming up, just the ability to not only meet some of the people that you have coming in, but the ability to actually get that feedback is priceless because it took most of us a lot of not-so-good songs. Exactly. I mean, when we started LAMP, it was, you know, the mission was, what can we give to the next generation that took us years to learn? What are the things that we wish we knew when we started out that we can tell people?

So there's no formula, but there's definitely certain key principles that never change in storytelling, and melody and song structure and all these key things to take your song from good to great, which is what it's all about. You know, it's not about having a bunch of good songs. It's about having those few that are. great. So tell me, if I'm a student and I come to Santa Monica to be at the school, what would a day look like for me? Well, typical days that we have mentors or workshop holders in the morning. We show up at 10 a.m. every day. And then by 3 p.m. you're in the studio.

We have 16 writer rooms where we have, you know, it's fully decked out with microphones and monitors and keyboards and everything. People bring their own, you bring your own laptop. And then you write songs and create music and try to make magic happen every day. That's our day and that's our week. If I can't get to Santa Monica, is there any way for me to still learn from school? I assume not every student comes to Santa Monica. Is there an online version of it?

We have an online program, which is just as big as, if not bigger, than the on-site, which is you get the same content. We share all the mentors. We share all the workshops. We put people in groups. So you Zoom or you FaceTime in with your group that week. You create songs. You exchange files.

We teach you how to record your own vocals if you don't know how to do that. We teach you how to exchange beats, text over music, and then send that back and create a song by the end of the week. Deliver it on Friday and get feedback. Actually, you deliver it on Saturday now because some of the students have jobs. So we want to accommodate for that. Finish your song on Saturday. and the following week you get feedback from our listening panel. Awesome. So admissions open now. How would I apply?

You only get in by going to lampmusic.com and sharing your music. You don't need a degree. You don't need necessarily formal education. You only need talent and the ambition and the will to get better. So go to lamp music. That's L-A-A-M-P-Music.com. You share your music. We listen to your music. And we reached out, set up in the interview, and we'll take you from there. Tor, congratulations on, you know, keeping this going. You know, I just think you and Mikkel have been mentors of mine in many ways.

And I've just so envious of these kids that they get to do it. So congratulations. Thank you so much, Roth. All right, man. All right. Thank you. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golland.

Today's music executive savant is the brains behind one of the industry's most progressive publishing companies. His ingenuity developed a way to help all songwriters collect royalties. His foresight contributed to the catalog boom and his dedication has made him a leader for all songwriter rights. He hustled from the proverbial mailroom of legendary companies to the founding of downtown music, which has its hand in more than 23 million music assets on over. on behalf of over one million artists and clients from 145 countries from a catalog that spans a hundred years of popular music, including music from film and television and the single largest independent sound recording catalog in the industry. All the way from New York City,

this guy prioritizes his family first. So, song, trust me, his journey to the top is worth to listen and the executive is Justin Kalevowitz. Thank you, Ross. That was quite the introduction. Well, you know. Dude, so we've been friends for a minute and

I love your story because I think there's you know what the Peter principle is? No. The Peter principle is this idea in business, and this is not your story, is the idea that you get a job and you get promoted because of seniority eventually beyond your capabilities.

And the music industry is filled as all industries are with people who manage to get promoted without any skill set that actually should give them that opportunity. And most people who start at the bottom and work their way up, if they're long enough, they'll eventually get there. But most the people that I admire most in the business are the opposite of that. They're the people who are not trying to rush the process. They're just trying to make their own process so they don't get stuck in the mill. And they don't get stuck in the, and no problem to people who work in a company and work their way up and many of them are capable and should be in those positions. But you certainly went on a journey where you're like you started doing the typical like got jobs in companies and you could have gone that path but eventually you're just like, nah, I'm going to go and do my own thing and kind of revolutionize the industry. you know, I kind of just wanted to start from the beginning because, like, how somebody gets to doing what you've done is unique to only your story.

You know, this isn't the story of somebody who just had an internship and ended up eventually being, you know, a head of A&R, president of a company. Like, that's not your journey. So, let's start from the beginning, man. I mean, like, were your parents in the music industry? No, I never had any real connectivity to the music business whatsoever. My father was in the food business his whole life, managed restaurants, own restaurants, everything, you know, 24-hour hot dog stores that I worked out when I was a kid, little luncheanets that would deliver food down on Wall Street. You know, I was like 10-year-old kid bringing, you know, hamburgers and milkshakes up to stockbrokers when they still place the orders by phone and page of cash. And, you know, you know, But I was always told by my family that, you know, figure out what you love and then figure out how to get people to pay you to do it. And I remember being kind of stuck. My mom asked me that very specific question.

I was at an overachieving brother. And I was kind of, he wanted to be doing something very specific film and TV at the time. And I said, I don't know what I want to do. She's like, well, what do you do when you're done with all your chores? And I said, I like listening to music. and she laughed and said, go figure out how to get paid to listen to music. She just walked out of the door.

I was 13 years old at the time. And it's funny because in retrospect, and I was just with some friends from childhood not long ago, and they said, like, you know, since you were a kid, like, you only wanted to be in music. It was the only thing you ever did. And I never really considered alternatives. Like, I think a lot of people have this sort of, you know,

choice to make maybe what career. They don't know. They think about it a lot. Before I even knew anything about anything, I knew I wanted to work in the music business. And it became a very singular focus of mine. And I think that was a big part of the beginning of the story, you know. It seems like your parents are pretty practical, though.

If you're working in the food industry, everyone has to eat. Not everybody needs more entertainment. Not everybody needs more music. Didn't your parents, even if they were like, you should do what you love, was there ever an asterisk? Like, yeah, you should do what you love, but also be a lawyer?

Like, was it listen to music? And then did you ever get that? No, no. I never got any of that, any of that. You know, my mother was a teacher. She taught nursery school, her whole life, she still teaches nursery school here in the city. And she never, I never got that pressure. I never got the, you should be a doctor,

you should be a lawyer, you should be this, you should be that. It was very much, you know, follow what you want to do. when's the first time you get sort of you know saying you know you should make a living listening to music is not it's specific if you're just a human on the planet but it's not specific if you're in the music business how did you learn that there is more to the music business sure so you know my brother as I mentioned, he was a bit of an overachiever. He started a video company when he was 13 years old and filmed local events and got paid for it. And he ended up going NYU film school and doing all sorts of, you know, production assistant work throughout that time and, you know, learned about,

you know, the concept of interning and being in the music business. And he worked at automatic productions for a while, which did a lot of Sony's music videos. And this is in the 90s when, you know, shooting music videos was a huge deal and a huge production. He took me on a bunch of those shoots. I started to learn about the concept of what the music business was. Got a copy of Billboard magazine at one of those things, started reading about what it was. And when I was in high school, I started managing my friend's bands.

This is not because, you know, I had this idea that I wanted, oh, that's going to be my first thing. But it was, you know, my best friends were all musicians. They all played in bands together. but they couldn't get their act together to fill out a form to be in the battle of the vans. I never understood why they wouldn't get their act together to just send a tape to CBGBs or wetlands at the time to try to get a gig. We live here, we live in New York. Why wouldn't you take that extra step to try to further your career?

And I did that for them. And, you know, filled out forms, schlep gear. And before I knew it, we started to meet people here and there. applied for internships interned at independent labels a company called Prime Music, worked at Metropolitan Entertainment as an intern. They were the guys behind

the Woodstock 94, the 99 revival. They managed a bunch of artists like Art Garfunkel and Vertical Horizon. I interned at WPLJ, the hot AC radio station of the time here in New York, landed internship at RCA. that turned into the first time anyone paid me to be in the music business. Did that for a short while. And I had this sort of moment when I was graduating high school.

This was all in high school. My graduated high school, I had this moment of, you know, what am I going to do? Where am I going to go to school? And my parents, he said the question before, they pressuring me to be something, a doctor or a lawyer. They say, no, but they did want me to go to school. And that was a very important thing. And I couldn't imagine going anywhere other than the same. somewhere in New York City. And I did apply to NYU. I was not accepted to NYU. I spoke at

NYU yesterday, that was fun. It's always fun to go back and speak and remind everyone that they'd let me in. But I ended up going to the City University in New York. I went to classes early in the morning. I did accounting classes at 7 a.m. and I did marketing 101 at 8.30 a.m. and I was in the office by 10 a.m. and I was very fortunate because they gave me a scholarship to go there. I did that for a year. Then there was an opportunity in Los Angeles at Virgin, and I wanted to go, and I transferred into USC and kind of did the same thing. And I did this semester at USC.

And by November, and no disrespect to people in Los Angeles, driving a car, drove me crazy. I really wanted to be back in New York. I realized that just living in, I lived in New York my whole life. I couldn't do it. I wanted to be back in New York City. And I remember sitting in Virgin Records, and I was talking to Gemma Corfield, who was the head of A&R at the time. And, you know, we were talking about what I could possibly do when I moved back to New York.

And she said, you know, you really should work in music publishing because there's not many young people in music publishing. But it's where all the creativity can be, if you want it to. And she said, it's also where all the money is. She said, people don't tell you that they think it's here on the record side. All the money's in the publishing side. And I remember her saying this to me, I didn't know anything about it. I was offended by this whole concept. I thought she wanted me to work for a sheet music publisher.

I literally thought it was like pressing sheet music is what she was talking to me about, and I really didn't understand. Shortly thereafter, I started to dig in more. I spoke to more people at the company who were in publishing. I got set up with a handful of meetings in New York. And one of those was a guy named Mark Freed, who started Spirit Music. And I was one of the, I was 19 years old. I just moved back to New York, and I met with him.

And he was looking for a young person to, I think the title was creative coordinator. I don't remember exactly the specifics. But it was a great, it was a great opportunity. I was one of, you know, four or five people at a company that had a very historic catalog, but didn't have much contemporary music. And I was given a rope to go out and sign people and, you know, given a budget. And, you know, slowly but surely, we built out a really nice roster. We did admin deals at a time where that wasn't really.

really in fashion. You know, Cobalt was just kicking the door down telling people they didn't need to sell their copyrights. And we were out there offering admin deals to people. And, you know, it was an incredible time in the music industry where a lot of people, a lot of songwriters were owed a lot of money, part of really big hit songs, but didn't necessarily know how to collect it. And I found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience

to go find these people who had hits on the charts, just almost unheard of today, that they would have multiple hits on the charts for a year. and not think of themselves as songwriters or have not been sort of discovered yet by the traditional music publishing industry and just leaving, you know, in certain instances, millions of dollars in the table.

And in that short time period at spirit, songs like Family Affair by Mary J. Blige, you know, there were two songwriters on that song who had never did a publishing deal. The song had been out for like two years. You know, Hey Ma by Cameron, the producer of that song, DR period, one of the most amazing producers out of New York. Never did a publishing deal.

And we went and, you know, literally knocked on his door in East New York and said, you know, I think you wrote some money. And we ended up doing deals with lots of people here in New York area who were writing and producing on pop and hip hop records at the time and, you know, uncovering, you know, a small fortune for a lot of these people. And it was an incredibly rewarding experience for me those first couple of years of period. And I'll tell you that period, sort of like 19 to 22, 23 is when I really started to understand the business. a very different way than I had when I was a kid just going, I want to work in music. This I understood as a business. Yeah, I think once you see the actual dollars that transfer from the creation of IP

to somebody's wallet, that's when you really recognize the business, even if you talk about it, you talk about it. It's another thing when you actually see the royalty checks or see the writers actually change their lifestyle because all of a sudden they've made it. A few questions I guess because that was a lot of information. When

you're told that the real money's in publishing and before we continue on in current day we still you know it feels like all the money's on master's side and yet all this

private money has been flooding into catalogs and whatnot because they you know evergreens still have so much value as for for music do you feel like now that it's still true that publishing is where the real money is well i think that i think just to break that comment apart so back then right i think the comment the real money is in publishing is like record companies would spend a fortune right to break a new act and you know that was definitely the time where one in ten happened. The other nine were written off and dropped, right? And they would spend astronomical sums of money. And, you know, it was really felt almost like a feast or famine as a business, right, as those recorded music businesses,

particularly like the new music side of it, right? Like, you know, the catalogs of those companies really sort of kept them afloat. But the new music releasing business, you know, to this day, is still not that fantastic of a business on a standalone basis, which from a profitability standpoint, they oftentimes spend far more than they make, and if you exclude the catalogs, it's not there. So I think that's really more of where it was also a more disciplined business, right, is part of what she was talking about. It's the notion that in publishing is a far more disciplined segment of the music industry.

I mean, I can't necessarily say that that's true today. But, you know, back then, that was certainly the case. Today, as far as money, look, yeah, we are definitely moving towards more equity, right, for songwriters and publishers than what was back in the day. but I will say that I think what drew me to it back then, right, was also that back then on the recorded music side, you know, if you were on a 88-12 deal, right, or you got 12% artist royalty, like, that was all right, you know,

you weren't at 10. But in publishing, it was the inverse, right? And so I thought it was great to be, you know, the other thing about publishing I was excited about was that even when you did cop-pub deal, 75-25, in favor of the writer, which is the complete opposite of what was going on in the recorded music business.

If you've been to your office, and I know SongTrust is part of downtown, we'll get to SongTrust later, but you have people who are literal humans looking for literal numbers on Spotify and whatnot to basically discover which writers are owed money. like you actually employ people who do what you were doing at the time looking at charts but just you know now it's it's not just songs on charts that are creating some revenues

so is that uh was that the idea behind oh yeah creating something like song trust anyway was just to replicate the success you had you had a younger self yeah i mean the question was is like, you know, I can only go knock on so many doors, right? And the question that, you know, was that I kept asking myself is, you know, can we do this at scale, you know, and that was really what led to Song Trust. You know, the middle jump of the story was, you know, in my last few years at Spirit, we started to get into the catalog acquisition business and started to buy quite a bit of catalogs, as well as due administration for much more well-known and well-established artists. You know, We worked with Chris Blackwell on doing administration for the Bob Marley estate, worked with

Lou Reed, Shaka Khan. And we started to buy catalogs, things like Wang Chung and Rick Noles' catalog back in the back at the time and C&C Music Factory and things like that, which was an amazing thing to be part of, right, and to be part of the acquisition of those copyrights and see how that segment, the music investment side worked, you know, working with outside financing. you know and I was really interested in seeing if there was a different way to do it and if I could frankly if I could do it on my own you know and if I could start something from scratch and I got the good fortune of starting you know downtown music publishing

as an offshoot of downtown records back in 2007 and they just had tremendous sorry how old were you in 2007 25 at this point it seems like all the moves are lost You know, you go from, I'm going to get internships, helps to have a brother that sort of opens doors, you know. But you seem to, as I always say, like, you know, I always walk through doors. And then once you're walking through, you have to prove that you belong.

And then they'll open up more doors. You just keep walking through. It all seems like you never went into the wrong door. And where, you know, like some of these, I guess you could argue that with Virgin, if you're being sent to USC, you know, to L.A. You're working through high school, through college. At least you have to fall back on school. But how did you not make any missteps?

You know, I wouldn't say I didn't make missteps. I made missteps. But they were, you know, I think everything was somewhat, is a mix of being calculated, right? and being very considerate. I think one constant theme is feeling like I have an opportunity to take my vision and see it wherever it was, right? Even, frankly, as an intern, right? There were internships that I quit because I didn't like them and I didn't like what they want me to do. I'm not there to answer the phone.

I'm going to answer the phone, I'm not here, you know. But I was very fortunate both in my time and spirit and with downtown to, be allowed to take my thoughts and take my ideas and really take them out for a rot, you know? And I would say

the difference between at Spirit, it was a lot of, I feel, the things that I did personally and as part of a team. And at downtown, it was about building a team. You know, and I was given the opportunity to really build a team. So being given the opportunity, that's such a, it's a very short sentence that means a lot of big things.

I think a lot of times, one, anybody can start a publishing company, a record company. So you can start your own opportunity. But what you're talking about is a different thing. When you're talking about the opportunity, who flags you and did you seek out, you know, did you seek out funding? Did somebody say you're the guy, I'm going to give you some money, go sign some of your own artist? Yeah, I mean, it was Josh Deutche had established a long-term relationship with in the years before who was working with Downtown Records, started Downtown Records with two high school friends of his, Terence Lamb, and John Josephson, who's now the CEO of CSEC and was then at Allen & Company. and Josh and I were talking at Meadem in January of 2007 about the success he had had with Narls and I just asked the very basic question of, you know, did you ever think about starting a publishing company or picking up the publishing for that?

And he said, in fact, we had. And that became the kindling for a discussion around the formation of downtown music publishing. And, you know, it was Josh and Terrence and John. who really gave me that shot early on. And then eventually our partners in the Myers family who have been our backers in downtown ever since were the ones who gave me that shot. And I've been very, very fortunate to have them

to have the Myers family with me this whole time. When somebody says to you, okay, here's this opportunity. You've now, again, like, doors are open, but you also open doors. it open, you said, you know, have you ever thought about this? He says, sure, this, you know, I'm sure it's not like that happens in a day. There are weeks, months go by, but you establish this role and you have to then go out and actually start a thing. When you have the kind of numbers that you have behind downtown now, you know, 23 million music assets, there's, you know, you know,

cut back to the beginning. It's a weird thing. I'm going to start with the first. You want to know? You want to know that you want to know the first? So a songwriter producer that I had established a long relationship with him, Troy Taylor, and his manager, Delante Murphy. Troy is one of, in my opinion, the greatest R&B songwriter producer,

particularly vocal producers of the 90s and 2000. into the 2010s. He worked with everyone under the sun from boys to men to marry J. Blige. He did Sweet Lady for Tyrese. He did B2K. He discovered trace songs and wrote and produced most of those first three, four albums. An enormous, an enormous songwriter producer. The first deal I did at downtown was for Troy's catalog. Troy also, besides some of those more contemporary names, had worked with a lot of legends on some recent albums. Aretha Franklin, Patty LaBelle, et cetera, Isley brothers. And I remember we did the deal for Troy. And we went into a meeting afterwards and someone said to me, well, what do you have at downtown?

You just got going. And I said, we have a wonderful catalog. It includes everything. Songs that were written and recorded by the Brooklyn and Patty LaBelle and the Isley brothers. and, you know, Tyrese and B2K and Mary J. Blige and so on that one. And, you know, and that's how it goes, you know. And then we were also, we got an introduction to a production team out of Miami that had an artist that had just gotten signed to Capitol.

And they had a record called This Is Why I'm Hot. And we quickly became the publisher of their share of This Is Why I'm Hot. And then we had our first number one. And they were able to point to that. And, you know, we're very fortunate also to meet Antonina Armato a few months before Miley Cyrus' first album as a solo artist came out. And Antonina wrote, I think it was 11 of the 12 or 10 of the 11, something along those tracks in the album. So in year one, now we're also working with Antonina on, you know, one of the biggest pop records of the year.

So it was an exceptional couple of signings that were people who took chances on us, right? Because I say people took chance on me, start the business, and then creative people took a chance on us as well to deliver a service. And, you know, that's something that, you know, you don't forget easily. And it helps you build the basis of a business. in order to sign those people with that catalog did you have to give them terms that were advantageous compared to a major publisher

to convince them to come to you or were you going to these people where these major publishers weren't going or is it just your abilities that you know that the service you're providing is equal or better to any major? I think it's a combination, right? I mean, I don't think we did anything on the terms.

We've always prided ourselves on not being a company that gives away our services for free or, you know, below market value. But I think it's a combination of those three things. You also have to remember that that period was a different time. People were scared in 2007 in a lot of places. There were more publishers back then. If you think about all the consolidation. So on the one hand, you had people worried about what was going on,

the future of the business. the value of songs, right? Because the album cuts weren't as valuable anymore, right? So there was a little of that trepidation. But on the flip side, relative to today, you had so many more publishers who were doing deals with that kind of sort of stage writer. I think our flexibility in the early days

of doing all different kinds of deals, right? Administration agreements, co-publishing agreements, full catalog acquisitions, a mix of them. That really helped us out. It also helped us out that, you know, the first person I hired was a guy named Jed Kutran. who still works with me today. We've been working together. I want to say it's 19 years. We can't figure it out because he was with me at Spirit and oversaw Stink licensing at Spirit. And he became

the first person I hired and truly an extraordinarily gifted executive bridging the gap between music and media. He does it at the absolute highest levels. He's also a walking encyclopedia of music and one of the kindest, most gentle people you'll ever meet. And so having Jed with me every step of the way is another way in which we were able to recruit some of these early names that we have. And then the team that Jed built was able to deliver for them. And again, if you remember the time, 2007, you're still convincing people to agree to the Sink license, right? To do it in general.

And so, you know, Jed was very, very good at that. And, you know, it was a time when Sink was really just maturing as an important part of the industry. and he really built a team that I think continues to be second to none. But revolutionized a lot of how that works. The writer-publisher relationship around the use of your art in another form of art and negotiating the right fee and explaining this is good for your career, this is good for the copyright, or this isn't good for your career and this isn't good for the copyright.

Fewer people will be better at that than Jed. And I think that having him on board from the very early days was a huge part of our ability to get to where we are today. 2007, 2008, those, you know, basically that shift in both the economy here, like, at large, and the music industry, technologically speaking, you had to have also some of the same trepidation everyone else had. I mean, bands were kind of like disappearing, And, you know, if it wasn't for Dr. Luke and Max Martin for the next four years at that point, it felt like there were very few people who were really playing in the sandbox.

It was a really tough time outside of certain clicks. You know, MP3s are kind of hitting, are still doing well. So there's some mechanicals at that point. But weren't you at all nervous of the industry? We were, I would say to people then I remember saying it often. When I go into my board meetings, I'm talking about every incremental dollar because we didn't have a catalog that had been used to earning money from CD sales from tracks that people may or may not have listened to.

We didn't know from the gravy train of owning a catalog. Every dollar we made was on our back from the next. decision that we made as a company and from the next writer we signed or the next catalog we administered. And I think that gave us a lot of clarity, right, because we weren't sitting there showing all these different economic models of what may or may not happen to this gigantic valuable catalog that we're managing because we were new. And that was one of the benefits. We just weren't distracted, right? And we went where there was opportunity. One of the places that we went very, very methodically,

that period was Japan. We made more money in Japan in 2008 and 2009 than in any other country besides the United States, which is extremely rare. But that's because we employed people who their sole focus was to manage relationships between songwriters in the United States and Europe and the Japanese pot market. Because those albums were, despite what was happening around the world, they were still moving a million physical units. And their royalties there, nothing you know you can't even it was a dollar 80 in publishing royalties two dollars in publishing royalties a unit you know the airplay was tremendous they put out three or four versions of the album they do a holiday version of the album they would do a best of every other year uh Japan was an extraordinary market at that

time so people were talking about oh yeah the music yeah but there were pockets there was exciting places to go Japan was one of them and so I think we were able to kind of zig where the people zag that We would say that to people in meetings and they'd be like, what? And, you know, they wouldn't understand. And, you know, still cry about the, you know, decimation of physical or iTunes kind of flatlining them. And, you know, for us, we just, everything was upside. I don't think we weren't, we weren't really worried. And I think ultimately true, like, I didn't ever think music was going away, right?

It was just format change. And how many times the industry been through format change, right? It just happened to also correspond with the global financial crisis, which really meant that every newspaper headline around, the music business was bad. Well, not to keep going back and forth, but here we are in an era where there are

huge populations in India, China that are still yet to be monetized well. Are you still looking for those pockets and how much of your effort now, are you spending looking for that versus now you have your own gravy train of

23 million assets? Do you still feel the drive to look for those pockets? A hundred percent. I mean, I would say as far as the company is concerned, you know, we made a shift in new markets a number of years ago. We bought a business called Shear Publishing Africa, which is the largest independent publisher, administrator on the continent based in Johannesburg, and it for a long time is run by a gentleman, David Alexander, who I've known forever. And part of the reason it was exciting to work with David and to acquire Shire was not only to have a footprint and a foothold on the continent and get to learn from absolute experts on his team music from across the continent, because of people everywhere are to sign from all across the

continent. but based in what is by far the largest music economy in the continent. David had a tremendous ambition to explore new markets. And last year, he was named to lead our new markets around the world and the expansion of our business. We have people on the ground now in 20 cities around the world. And as far as places that I'm excited about, I think there's markets like Brazil, which I think Brazilian music over-indexes globally.

And, you know, I think from a service provider level, there's a lot of opportunity. I think, you know, places like China, unfortunately, copyright law not so great. And so for some reason, publishers a little harder, master recordings do better. India is exciting to me because music is built into the fabric of, you know, everything in India in popular culture and in life in general. I am very bullish that in India things are going to, it's going to be a very significant. significant driver of revenue for the music industry and something that we look at. All right. So we're going back. You know, you guys are growing your market share in a time when people are starting to consolidate their publishing companies. You know, EMI has still has like a few

more years left before it ends up being consolidated. And some of these big companies become one. but you guys I guarantee people offered to acquire you along the way what prevented you from from taking that leap wouldn't that have been easier

yeah look I think people enter the music publishing space with two sort of different views one is like are you building a company or are you building a catalog right and a lot of people have built some wonderful catalog song by song they buy assets you know, we were building a company.

Our company was going to, you know, own copyrights. We were going to manage copyrights on our behalf and on behalf of others, and we were going to develop new copyrights. That is not a catalog building business, you know. And I think for us it was always very important. The number of copyrights, you know, that we ended up owning, always dwarfed the number we ended up managing for other people. And so the business of being a service provider to other,

was innate to the company. It was what the company was. The fact that we also owned an asset that we could maybe monetize one day or not, that's just a function of how we ran the business. But it was a business, not a catalog. And I think we all know anyone probably listening to this, and yourself included,

know the difference between companies that are building catalogs and companies that are actual companies. We talk about this a lot for unknown music, you know, my company. We always say it's like, you know, you can get hit songs, but it's about writers who write hit songs because those people have multiple songs. And there's, in order to play the copyright game where you're buying actual songs versus working with writers who are writing multiple hit songs, it seems, you know, more expensive to keep up in a weird sort of way from my perspective being a writer where I feel like you can develop writers who can

build their own catalogs, that seems more streamlined in a way to me than being able to compete where you're actually buying existing assets. That feels like that's an expensive way to try to run a publishing company. It depends what your ambition is. I mean, our ambition was, you know,

back in the day, was around, you know, the ownership of copyright and managing for others and developing. And I think, you know, our view is that we ran a very good business doing all three of those. many of the copyrights we bought over time, either we bought all or some economic interest in, were things that we were already the administrators for.

And so, you know, there's a pretty fresh pipeline of deals that are really not on the market, not trading. I mean, I think for every, you about this now, all these, you know, where market multiples have gone. And I think that, you know, for every deal, certainly back then that was, you know, promoted in the trades, there were 50 deals that actually happened, right? And a lot of people, a lot of writers don't want to talk about the deal. A lot of estates don't want to talk about the fact that they sold a piece of this or a piece of that or, you know, it's no one's business. And I think that, you know, for us, it was a really multifaceted approach. I think, you know, we were able to win deals by being able to do all things.

You know, I mean, I point often to the deal we did with Ryan Tetter, where we acquired Ryan's back catalog. It was all public. We acquired Ryan's back. catalog in 2016, but also did a going forward deal with him, an administration deal with him and worked with him on his new publishing company at the time, Patriot, and the writers that he had signed and helped him establish that and did some JVs with him in that deal. But the flexibility to do all types of deals, I think, enabled us to attract the widest number of potential clients. And I say potential, because on the publishing side, we're offering creative services,

that's not something I think scales particularly well. I think that's something you can't really do at scale, you know, relative to the royalty collection side, which I think it frankly benefits from scale. Yeah, I mean, I want to ask at some point about PROs, you and I've had multiple conversations about PROs, and that's something where the whole argument is the scalability of that and how that overall collection of an entire population of songwriters, in theory, according to them, really benefits each individual writer.

I guess we can jump to that right now, and then we can go back to your story. But you have a specific point of view when it comes to performance rights organizations, who are the organizations that collect for performances, live, radio, you know, they have a TV show is played and you have a song in it, all that gets collected under the performance rights organizations. they're also generally speaking not the most progressive technologically speaking and they're stuck in a world where they're collecting and it's very difficult it almost has Harry Fox vibes when you talk about PROs because Harry Fox used to collect mechanicals and

struggle to do it that's now why we have the MLC Music Modernization Act I know for a of people this is this is like publishing 301 here but explain where PROs are in your head and what they could do to be better I think it's a very challenging environment for PROs to operate in because on the one hand you have a lot of wait real quick PRO is being ASCAP BMI CSEC GMR so on and so forth Continue on. Yeah, and obviously all over the world, every country outside of the United States principally has one.

They have a monopoly. They're allowed to operate as monopolies in a lot of these countries. Some have more than one, Brazil, as many. But, you know, I think it's a challenging environment for them for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, you know, most of them are nonprofit, you know, membership organizations. They are not structured as businesses that, you know, can offer, you know, top-tier technology, talent, you know, equity packages to come in and help innovate in any kind of way. It's just not like as a business. They're not structured that way, right? The second thing is, is that, you know, there's this

great quote from many years ago, the former CEO of Pandora that said, you know, music is global, but copyright is local. And every one of these organizations has their own rules, how they collect money, how they distribute money, how you can become a member, how you, maybe you can't become a member. And it's very complex and very complicated. And the reason, like, ultimately, right, is this is where I think they have the hardest time, is that these organizations were established at a time when a small number of songwriters and publishers controlled all the world's music that was recorded many, many, many times over and over and over again, right? All these organizations date back 100 years, you know, with GMR as a novel exception.

And they were, you know, it was the age of the Great American Songbook, and how do we collect that money? And how do we collect it from a handful of radio stations and television companies? how do we go out to the biggest venues in the country, make sure we get paid, and distribute that money to these very small number of songwriters and publishers. Today, they're dealing with volumes that are unheard of, right? I mean, whether or not you believe Spotify has 20,000, 40,000 or 60,000 songs being uploaded a day

is the equivalent of a new record store every day coming online, right? Many of these songs are never registered with collection societies around the world. And so they get these huge data files, right, from everyone who's licensing music all over the world. And none of it corroborates with what's in their database. And it's an enormous mess for them, you know, and it's a real significant challenge.

On the flip side, they're clients, right? Songwriters and publishers. Publishers who have direct relationships with certain digital services like Spotify or YouTube ask, I think, a legitimate question. I get paid directly from them. Why do I need you in the middle on the performing right side? Why can't I also get from them? They pay me monthly.

Why, you pay me quarterly with a nine-month leg? What is this? You know, what is the rate I'm paying? Oh, it's your overhead? What's your overhead this year? What if it's more next year? And so I think a lot of publishers are asking a lot of questions, which puts a lot of pressure. And then there are traditional sources of revenue, which radio and television are, you know, tumbling.

Like, I don't need to tell you that radio and television around the world is tumbling. And then in the most recent time, obviously the pandemic, eviscerated. quite a lot of the live performance income and all the money they would get from restaurants and bars and hotels and nightclubs and things. And so it's made it a very challenging environment to be a PRO today. But I'm hopeful, right? Because I'm hopeful there's going to be more innovation. I think there's an opportunity for innovation. I think songwriters are becoming more educated and active. I think publishers, frankly, money coming in from, you know, financial institutions that might provide a little more scrutiny as to where the money is actually coming from and how it's being managed is going to

probably put a lot of pressure on these organizations to deliver. It's not reasonable to charge 25, 30, 40% for your service. It's just not. It's not reasonable to sit on money for nine to 18 months in this environment, you know, but that is how they operate and I think it's going to take a lot of pressure to get them to change. It's interesting when you're saying, you know, 30, 40% isn't necessarily, you know, worth that. When you, in other parts of the industry, when you're talking on 88, 12 split from record labels to artists or publishing being 50-50 on publishing, you could argue it's 75, 25, 25.

But all of those are pretty significant chunks. Do you feel like that other parts of the industry are also overcharging for their services? Oh, yeah. I think the cost of capital is a lot lower today. people understand royalties in a much different way. When you think about, you know, look, an emerging artist who has no proven track record, right? It's all risk capital that they're investing.

And I think that whoever puts that money to work is entitled to a reasonable reward. On the flip side, when you are paying nothing for the right to collect someone's money, saying that it costs you 30% to do that job is just not reasonable. Or frankly, holding on, you know, paying out, distrable. certain income types once a year because you can't invest in the technology to make it, you know, twice a year, four times a year, much less weekly. You know, I mean, I find it ironic that there are services that we offer at downtown and other segments of the business where, you know, we pay our clients weekly. And, you know, that's kind of, it's sort of comical to me that, that in this day and age, that there's any entities in the industry that can think they can get, I think that it's reasonable to make semi-annual or annual distributions. I don't understand. understand. Inevitably, somebody's going to respond to this. Oh, blockchain answers everything.

Maybe. Thinking that essentially you could, you know, is that something that you guys invest in as ways to continue to, you know, is weekly even too long? I think so. I mean, I think that, you know, there are certain, there are certain things that will require. I mean, I think, look, the ability for someone to come in

and rather receive on an automated basis, any monies that flow through our pipes is, you know, our North Star, if you will, right? There are a lot of things that go on in the industry that unfortunately make that impossible at the moment. You know, will blockchain potentially help? Possibly, you know, and something that we're looking at were investors in Verify Media, which is, you know, looking at blockchain an interesting way with a number of other companies. In the industry, we keep our eye on it, but I think there's so much to be. do. I think people saying like, oh, there's this new technology that if we just did this,

everything will be great. I promise you it's not the case. If that were the case, we'd all be there, right? It's also worth noting that there are, you know, and I won't get into the details, but it's worth noting that there are a lot of actors in the music industry that don't want to see this change. They don't want the efficiency. And they talk what they do. But I don't, I don't necessarily believe that everyone coming to the table is necessarily interested in, in that transparency and those that are perhaps are not interested in the investment necessary to get you there, right? Yeah, it may not even be the transparency as much as both the capital and time investment

it would take to completely overhaul a, you know, a 70-year-old, you know, company or something like that. True. And I also think that it's worth noting that, look, you know, across the industry, many of the same people who, were here for when, you know, we had record profits in the 90s and early 2000s and made a lot of decisions that resulted in the industry not having those record profits anymore and seeing an industry in decline and weren't necessarily willing to be at the forefront of digital innovation in the late 90s and 2000s are actually the very same people that are involved today.

And I, you know, you'd hope lessons are learned and we hope for more innovation and we hope for more pushing, you know. But I look at things like Spotify is still charging $9.99. The whole world has inflation, except for the value of access to all the world's music, right? That's still the same price. We're still paying, you know, is it, $2, $9.99 and $2012 for Spotify, right? I think the issues are on both sides. You have people not charging enough for the music. And then when the money comes in, we do a horrible job as an industry sharing it with people.

We're getting better, right? Things like the MLC, big steps forward. But, you know, I do believe on behalf of creators in particular, we have a lot of work to do as an industry, both to help raise rates, which is something only the industry can do. And number two is to do a much better job distributing. I think a lot more effort and attention needs to be on both of those points. It's critical that we continue to do that if we want to have the growth that we've seen actually be material for the creatives. If mechanicals, which traditionally were for CDs, vinyl, tapes, so on and so forth,

anything physical have depreciated because people aren't buying that, although obviously we celebrated before this call, the statutory rate going from 9.1 cents to 12 cents is an exciting thing, even if it's only 1% of the overall revenue for the industry. It's still a move in the right direction. But if mechanicals are disappearing and then also radio and television are disappearing for songwriters on the performance side, where are songwriters going to buy,

like how can a songwriter ever buy a house or a car or pay rent? What would they have to do in order to create where are you seeing revenue for an individual songwriter? As publishing as a whole, you see how it's scalable if you can have more and more writers that are creating more, you know, it doesn't matter if they're creating less and less revenue if you have more and more writers to sort of compensate for them.

which we'll get to for some of the admin stuff that you've been a part of. But where can an individual songwriter make a healthy living in 2020s? You know, I think there will always be a market for really great songs, right? And I really do believe that there's this sort of cream of the crop, you know, if you will, in terms of the ultimate popularity of them, right? But the reality is that songwriters are facing, I think, you know, stiff competition in a lot of ways, right? And I think a lot of it actually comes down to how people, general public, consume music, right? Like, it used to be that, like, listening to music was an active thing you did, right?

Like, you would put on music, and that was the activity, right? And now music is in the background and everything we do. There's, like, almost nowhere where you can escape music where it wasn't intentional. even when people put up, you know, reels on Instagram, it's music in the background. Everything is with music in the background. Walking into a Walmart is very hyper, you know, specific music selected based on the department you're in, right? You can't escape it.

The industry is doing a much better job catching up and charging for those uses, right? I mean, think about Facebook, Instagram license from a few years ago the first time, right? TikTok finally being licensed. I think this all matters, right? because, you know, if the industry continues to be aggressive, I think the way that David, Israel, NNPA have been in terms of driving new licenses forward and delivering new value, that you'll see, you know, categories like fitness, you'll see social gaming, you'll see those things, add material amounts to the pie. But it's still going to have to go through that to get, you know, dripped out to individual songwriters

based on, you know, effectively the popularity of the music. Are there things that certain songwriters can do to individually earn, additional income, sure, but I think it's entirely situational, right? And it depends on sort of what their own interests are and what their intent is and what they're looking to do with their lives. As writing songs directly, I mean, there's a variety of different ways in which it can go. But I think it really is a specific conversation. This goes back to the scaling question, right? Like, I think the writer-publisher relationship can be one where a publisher based on what the writer wants to do, the skill set of the writer, their ambition, they can sit and come up with a plan

and help figure that out. The royalty piece is going to be one component of that. But it's an industry question as to whether or not it can deliver enough money for them to be able to buy a house. Yeah. It's a really interesting time to be a new writer with talent because we're back to some sort of quantity game of, you know, not only you can aim for that quality piece of music,

but you also need to see. somewhat compete with the 2040 60,000 songs that are being uploaded a day. That's a sea of music that you have to compete with. And yet it's really hard to adjust to doing just quantity for the sake of trying to buy a car. I was as I mentioned, I spoke at NYU the other day and someone said to me, do you think what happened with photography is going to happen with songwriting and the creation of music and releasing? And, you know, everyone's a photographer now, right?

and, you know, we're all fantastic. We could put filters on. We could do all these great things. And I said, I don't think that's necessarily, you know, going to happen in music. I do think many more people will create music. 10x what we have today, just in the next couple of years. But I think that, you know, there's that class, right,

of music that touches a lot of people. That art form, I think, which is unique, which I think will often hover above. And I think that's okay, right, because I don't believe that every one of those people who, I don't think everyone who uploads music, creates music, shares music, has the intent to be, you know, a major global superstar,

you know, or has the intent to be a Grammy Award winning producer or a decorated songwriter. I think a lot of people create music just to create music, you know, far more than wake up every day and wanting to, like, be successful at it. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the idea of the numbers that we're talking about being uploaded today, record store just landing on Spotify, you know, and the fact that you can create a beat on your phone and essentially upload it from your phone right now is what it's done is it's made it

harder to, when you walked into a Best Buy or a Virgin or, you know, any record store from 20 years ago, it was somewhat curated for you. I'll say that euphemistically, you know, but for the most part, the, you know, the popularity, some of it was thrust upon us, but a lot of it was music there that was intentionally placed on end caps, you know, everything had its place in a record store. And now the idea that, you know, you could just walk into the virgin and just put your music in the, you know, you can just, alphabet, put your music along with, you know, whoever you want, you don't necessarily get the N-CAPs. That's what Playlists are. Yeah, that's true.

But you don't, you don't, you don't, you can compete with the majors, which is amazing. But it definitely makes it harder to find the N-Caps of, you know, that cream of the crop. Yeah. I think playlists are going to be more and more important. And that's going to be the thing that labeled. hold on to.

Anyway, going back to your journey through the 2010s to where we are now, you really diversified the people that you worked with. I mean, some of the names are classic, classic musicians and artists. How much of, you know, I don't know how many of these are actually downtown or not, but this is what's in my notes. Bob Marley, Lou Reed, Chaka Khan, we mentioned. But also Motley Crude... Those were all

Spirit. Oh, that's all spirit. Okay. So where you know, when under downtown you had a number of really big artists and writers, how much of this job for you had been and continues to be you as the music fan since your

mom said it was you listening to music versus how much of it is because acquiring these writers and catalogs is good for business. So one of the things that I personally always felt, you know, in downtown's days is there are, for me personally, my own personal taste is not dictating what the company signed ever. You know, there were things I was a fan of that also were a good business decision. but I never really sort of leaned in in that kind of a way.

I hired people who did, you know. As far as building the catalog, you know, the mission was, you know, oftentimes, whether it was administration agreements or acquisitions is, you know, a microcosm of all the world's music, right? And so, you know, when Motley Cruz catalog was available for administration, they've been a Warner for a long time and they were just thinking of a fresh start somewhere else as they were building back up to go back on tour and with a first record. out in a very long time.

You know, we came into administration agreement and then several years later ended up acquiring those rights from Nikki Six, who's the principal songwriter of the band, you know, and then similarly along the way, like, you know, there are times when there's an intersection between a great business opportunity and I'm a fan when we started working with the estate of John Lennon and with Yoko Ono directly. That, you know, goes without, almost goes without saying. you know and I feel you know that those moments are amazing right when you get to marry what you do in business with what you're actually a fan of but you know the the building i i never thought it

made sense for me and when i was running the company to really impart my own personal taste too much on i mean some people disagree i just that's not when you have the goal of what our goals have been it doesn't necessarily make make sense When, you know, you're working with the John Lennon's now and you have this company that is becoming, it's become, you know, synonymous with the other majors. I mean, even as an independent company,

it becomes a major independent. You end up being on the NMPA board, the National Music Publishers Association. When, did that, make you feel like you had made it. Was there a time, you know, for like artists, it's always like, ah, you hit a chart, you did this. Was that the moment that you felt like you had made it? You know, I actually, you know, I get asked that question a lot.

Like, when do you think, like, what was like an inflection point for the business? And so, you know, in 2012, we had built a very nice business. We were frequently, you know, one of the top 10 publishers and the Billboard charts and all that fun stuff. I was not yet on the NMPA board. But we made this decision to sell our recorded music business, actually back to Josh Deutsch and a group. And we went like full throttle on publishing and building out our song trust business and like really kind of focusing on that side of the coin and really taking a sort of a different bent on service and really sort of scaling the services you were providing. And we got a phone call, right, which was that phone call about, you know,

would you be interested in making a proposal to administer the estate of John Lennon? And my view in terms of an inflection point for the business, and I've said this before, is that that was really an inflection point, right? When the arguably greatest songwriter of all time, the people who handle his music, reach out and say, would you like to manage this? You know, this thing? Yeah, by the way, it includes Imagine,

which is, you know, one of the most well-known songs of, all time ever. You know, and it includes, by the way, it also includes a couple of Beatles cuts. You know, it's the first four Beatles songs. You're like, and you say, wow, like, we're, yeah, we've made it that we've been asked, right? And I think we took that very seriously and we've, you know, feel very lucky to have won that and continue to, you know, I guess it's almost 10 years later, still represent the estate and they've been incredible clients who've done a,

amazing work with them, including one of the things I'm most proud of, which was getting Yoko Ono credit for co-writing imagined, which she did, which she never got credit for. In fact, something that David Israelite had a hand in doing when we presented an award to the estate for the song and also announced that very day that we were changing the copyright to include Yoko's name, which was something John wanted to do just before he passed away. Well, this brings us to our next segment of what would David Israel, I ask Justin Kalifowitz on And The Writer is. And he asks, why do you make him feel so old being that you're the youngest board member? Oh, I just got lucky to start early.

I don't know. David, David's always the youngest looking guy in the room. Yeah, he does look good. Shout out to you, David. That was obviously a big deal to have Yoko added to imagine. I imagine that also had, you know, she's such a legend and infamous in many ways. Not rightfully so, but so it is. Did that have any political backlash?

Did it have an economic, not backlash, but did it change anything economically? no, because... Yeah. I mean, you know, the estate is the estate. It didn't change any of the economics. It was really about recognition. You know, we did not... The week after the ceremony,

the NMPA annual meeting, you know, this was really, I think, a story that took off and had, you know, several hundred pieces of press. every publication under the sun, as you could imagine. And it was all along the lines of what we had hoped for, right,

which is credit where credit is due. And I was really, really proud that that was something we were able to pull off because I, you know, had known that story for a long time. And I heard that interview that John did on the BBC, where he said that she was a writer. And I always wondered why. And when we sort of started to work with the estate a little bit, where closely we were able to, you know, actually make that, you know, honor their decision to make, uh,

I, I guess I don't remember why was he, why was she not added as a songwriter from the beginning? The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the lines of that he worked, um, with, um, with, yokeo, um, you know, had, had, uh, published, um, set of poems called grapefruit. And it was, um, the, the, the lines for imagine are directly from there. And his, um, quote was something along the way that like you know just like he had worked with so many other co-writers he had worked with yoko on that song and it was um i think he said he was being a bit macho at the time to to just have himself i think was the actual quote that they gave but it was along those lines and you know i gave the quote it was 10 years later that that that happened um and

you know i think to everyone sort of close to the creativity and creation that song a lot of has been documented about it, felt that that was appropriate. And I think that's why there wasn't really any backlash, you know, is that if you actually know the history of how it all came about, there's hardly anything to have any backlash about. And I think it's a great moment. What is SongTrust? SongTrust is a royalty collection platform that enables any songwriter around the world, regardless of, you know, the level of success they've had to register their songs in a single place and collect 100% of all their publishing royalties. We enable people to collect for one song, for your whole catalog, for one year, forever.

It's a basic $100 sign-up fee, and it's a 15% administration fee. You know, it's used by about 300,000 writers around the world. It manages about just under 4 million song copyrights today. It's also the technology platform that we use to manage what is now Downtown Music Services publishing. catalog the Lenin, et cetera, those works from that side of our business. And, you know, several hundred independent publishing companies around the world use it as a back end to collect their royalties. And a business that, you know, really came to be in 2010 when we said, can we scale royalty collection, right? Can we solve this? Like, you know, there's four million

artists on MySpace music, but there's only at the time about 600,000 artists between ASCAP and where are all these songs being registered? Who's collecting these songs? And you realize that it's songwriters and publishers where publishers were focusing only on the top end of the market and the volume of songwriters was growing and growing and growing. And how can we solve that question? How can we offer something simple and easy to enable people to collect their royalties? Do you, so have you found that, you know, we're talking about parts of the publishing industry that are scalable? said that services are hard to scale not creative services

are hard to scale do you think that that could be scalable to match the I mean I ask people and I don't want to say that I don't want to compare you know music publishers to other things

I think that the role they play is unique right but like if you were to talk to anyone who's sort of like in the person services business, right, whether or not it's like a lawyer, right? Or if you think even like in the medical side, if you were to think about like a therapist, right, or if you think about like other things, like there's only sort of so much time. You have to learn to get to understand. Are there tools that can be built to help enhance and this and that?

Sure. But I still think that the human relationship and that connection, right, the translation of art into commerce, which I think is often a misunderstood role of the publisher, is something that, you know, is a very, very extraordinary, difficult thing to do at scale. Are there platforms that enable people to upload music and then those platforms go out and license those music, that music, and you see that in like royalty-free world

and stuff like that? But if you stop for a second and believe that a song is a unique art form, right? That is something that songwriters do and with the help of publishers bring to market, however that means, whatever that means to people, then that's kind of unique than this like, you know, managing millions of pieces of data, frankly,

and matching them with other data and, you know, licensing them. That's all the business. That's all the after, right? And I think the notion that like this activity of, you know, translating art into commerce, you know, you kind of are like, I don't want to say cheapening what art means, I guess. in a way, if you were to say, well, we can scale that too. I mean, maybe you can.

I haven't seen anything interesting that does that. Are all admin companies the same? Of course not. No. I think that, you know, it's not as bad as it used to be. I think a lot of admin companies, you know, they would have admin in like one country and then they would farm out the admin to everybody else and not tell you that, right? Or not tell you how much they were paying for that service. but I think that one of the challenges that admin companies have today,

if you just do admin and you're not doing it on a scale basis, is that it's really hard to be competitive, collecting money directly from, you know, dozens of countries around the world and dozens of digital services. They're not inclined to do direct deals with smaller companies, right? I mean, most YouTube is class. wanting to reduce the number of suppliers. A lot of countries around the world,

the societies make it extremely difficult to become a direct member. So I think in this world where scale helps, we've certainly seen that be the case, right, in the scale of our business, both on a quality level and the scale in the number level, and frankly, the fact that we employ so many people on the technology side.

Technology is by far the largest division of the business. is what enables us to engage directly with the collection societies and digital services in a way that I think is unique in the market. We're going to go to this next segment, our final segment, five for five. I'm going to just lift five things. Tell me what comes off the top of your head. And we're going to do something that I think is appropriate just for this particular interview. Let's start with the publishing industry.

Growing. What about the National Music Publishers Association? increasingly one of the most important tools that songwriters and publishers have to advocate for them in what is a very fast-changing market an extremely frustrating process to get songwriters paid it's probably one of the most frustrating things that we have to deal with that we can't negotiate our rights in a free market Performance rights organizations Hopefully continuing to innovate The future of downtown The best is yet to come

I hope that's true Justin, thank you so much for doing this I think if people maybe people pick up on it or not but we've sat down before and our conversations are not a whole lot different from this. You're, you know, you're very smart.

I can ask any question and you have a response that constantly educates me and the community. It's why, you know, you're such a valuable asset to the, to the whole community. And, you know, it's fun to be a writer and, you know, an executive and to understand that there are people who have dedicated their lives to the business the way that I feel like I have and I just I love listening to your journey and you know you have you've such a strong you're such a strong force in the future of what we're doing you're I mean generally speaking when you're on the NMPA board your point of view being younger is really important in that room.

So, you know, I can't wait to see, you know, you in Irwin's shoes and you've been there for another, you know, when you're there for another 40 years and we get to see, you know, all the things that you've accomplished in the music business. I just can't wait. It's so fun to watch your career. So thank you for doing this podcast. Of course. Thanks, Ross. Thanks for having me. There you go. This episode is produced by Joe London, Hypnosis, Mega House Management, and myself. Shout out Paige McDonald, Kelly Fox, Casey Robinson, David Silberstein, Tim Kirch, and Zach Weinstein.

See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan, signing off.