Eric Jensen

On Tues­day evening the Cal­i­for­nia Copy­right Con­fer­ence (CCC) hosted a lively panel of inde­pen­dent music pub­lish­ers dis­cussing the cur­rent state of their indus­try; what’s work­ing, the chal­lenges ahead and oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tion. The panel was mod­er­ated by Eric Polin, Sr. VP, Music Pub­lish­ing, Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, and Jonathan Ros­ner, Pres­i­dent of the CCC and co-President of Bicy­cle Music. The panel: David Hir­sh­land — Pres­i­dent, Bug MusicKathy Span­berger — peer­mu­sic, Pres­i­dent, Anglo Amer­i­can RegionKenny MacPher­son – Pres­i­dent, Chrysalis Music GroupRan­dall Wixen — Pres­i­dent and Founder, Wixen Music Pub­lish­ingRon Sobel — Pres­i­dent of North Star Media; Part­ner at Winogradsky/Sobel; and Chair/Music Busi­ness Divi­sion, McNally Smith Col­lege of Music The com­pa­nies rep­re­sented range in size and man­age a mix of estab­lished and inde­pen­dent artists. Most are grounded in tra­di­tional cat­a­log admin­is­tra­tion, but North Star Media in par­tic­u­lar part­ners with unknown artists with­out mechan­i­cal or per­for­mance roy­al­ties and is pri­mar­ily focused on artist devel­op­ment and lever­ag­ing inno­v­a­tive rev­enue streams and new media oppor­tu­ni­ties. The panel felt that this was gen­er­ally a good time to be an inde­pen­dent pub­lisher. David Hir­sh­land dis­cussed the dan­gers of com­pla­cency and the need to repur­pose cat­a­logs and encour­age writ­ers to work in new, cre­ative ways. Ran­dall Wixen said that his com­pany is being approached by many new artists who are look­ing for more atten­tion from pub­lish­ing part­ners due to shrink­ing or non-existent advances from record labels. All the pan­elists empha­sized the impor­tance of qual­ity and focus­ing on great music. David Hir­sh­land: “It’s still about being moved by what you hear…” Kathy Span­berger dis­cussed the impor­tance of partnering…