MUSIC CREATION AND COPYRIGHT IN THE WEB 2.0 ERA. INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL TODD, ASCAP DIRECTOR OF FILM AND TV MUSIC 

Published on June 18, 2014

Cafébabel: Dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion has re­de­fined music in­dus­try to­tally. Mean­while, mu­si­cians vie for suc­cess in an in­creas­ingly com­plex mar­ket. Do you agree, that today's young pro­fes­sional com­posers need to main­tain not only artis­tic sig­nif­i­cance but re­quire mar­ket­ing skills as well?

For those who have al­ready in­vested their time in mu­si­cal train­ing at school, work­shops, or­ga­ni­za­tions, lec­tures, sem­i­nars, etc. I have found it is equally im­por­tant to ed­u­cate one­self about the process and busi­ness of "film music" plus un­der­stand the var­i­ous sources of po­ten­tial in­come. As­pir­ing film music com­posers es­pe­cially need to re­mem­ber that this in­dus­try, as any in­dus­try, is a "peo­ple" dri­ven busi­ness. There­fore, re­la­tion­ships with the "per­son(s) in power" , whether film­mak­ers or stu­dio ex­ec­u­tives, mat­ters most. This means that one needs to be within the prox­im­ity of film pro­duc­tion teams for op­por­tu­ni­ties to hap­pen. also, con­sider that in the cur­rent buyer's mar­ket (in this case the film­maker or pro­duc­tion com­pany), the com­poser has less to no con­trol of their own op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able. It is crit­i­cally im­por­tant to value your work and learn when to say no to a job that is not mu­tu­ally ben­e­fi­cial for both sides. For the com­poser, that means that there needs to be at least a few good rea­sons to ac­cept work in ex­change for a lower wage de­pend­ing on what stage of your ca­reer (for ex­am­ple, a good credit, a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship, a good record­ing for demos or a good ex­pe­ri­ence, etc.). I highly rec­om­mend a book by Richard Bel­lis called "The Emerg­ing Film Com­poser: An In­tro­duc­tion to the Peo­ple, Prob­lems and Psy­chol­ogy of the Film Music Busi­ness", which is full of a lot of great tips for as­pir­ing com­posers.

Cafébabel: As an ac­tive pro­fes­sional ex­ec­u­tive in the Amer­i­can film music in­dus­try and who has also gained ex­pe­ri­ence in the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket, can you sug­gest the fastest way to  be­come suc­cess­ful in the film music in­dus­try in Eu­rope nowa­days?          

Be­come friends with the next big film­maker by spot­ting their tal­ents early and con­nect­ing with them on a cre­ative level. The other op­tion is be­come a suc­cess­ful film­maker or pro­ducer your­self. Com­posers need to build nu­mer­ous re­la­tion­ships with tal­ented film­mak­ers to in­crease their odds – which re­quires bal­ance and pri­or­i­ti­za­tion in per­sonal time man­age­ment. Also, be re­source­ful and build a team of tal­ent with sim­i­lar pas­sions and goals. For most suc­cess­ful com­posers, it takes years of scor­ing a num­ber of pro­jects be­fore a bet­ter op­por­tu­nity arises with fi­nan­cial re­wards that can put a music cre­ator on the map.                                                                                                                

Cafébabel: Do you know of any suc­cess­ful music col­lab­o­ra­tion which started from net­work­ing in In­ter­net through so­cial media?

I can't point to any spe­cific sto­ries, but peo­ple within the in­dus­try are now more ac­ces­si­ble by link­age with friends or strangers in the busi­ness (Linked In or Face­book). Al­though I pre­fer not to be ad­dressed by strangers via Face­book for work. I rarely set aside time for any­one with­out some kind of con­nec­tion or re­fer­ral from some­one I know. In those cases when I do meet or speak with some­one who has no con­nec­tion, it is be­cause some­how I came across hear­ing the music and found it in­ter­est­ing enough to take the time. Nowa­days artists in­deed can ef­fi­ciently use on­line net­work­ing plat­forms to col­lab­o­rate with other artists and seek new pro­jects.. One op­por­tu­nity I can rec­om­mend is re­view­ing the web­site http://​score­as­core.​com/​ de­vel­oped by en­tre­pre­neur Jor­dan Pass­man whose mis­sion is to con­nect com­posers with pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies look­ing for qual­ity music. Sep­a­rately, com­poser Bear Mc­Creary has de­vel­oped a great skill in tak­ing ad­van­tage of so­cial media to ef­fec­tively in­crease his in­dus­try pro­file. This may not point to a col­lab­o­ra­tion that started from net­work­ing on the in­ter­net, but it proves to be a valu­able tool that has sup­ported the rapid growth of his ca­reer. I should also men­tion that he is in­cred­i­bly tal­ented in the other nec­es­sary mu­si­cal and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills cou­pled with his drive and pas­sion to suc­ceed.

Cafébabel: How can mu­si­cians, who ex­pose their work on­line, pre­serve in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty when they want to pro­mote them ex­ten­sively through so­cial media plat­forms?

Copy­right laws may slightly dif­fer de­pend­ing on your coun­try of res­i­dence. In un­der­stand­ing that this is a music busi­ness, a com­poser must value their work as an asset to their busi­ness. These as­sets can only gain value if they are not given away for free and are legally pro­tected by a spe­cial team of pro­fes­sion­als. Al­though some­times as­sets (even a piece of a song) can be shared or given away for free to stim­u­late new busi­ness. but, that needs to be lim­ited the same way a com­poser would limit his/her work for free. Sec­ondly, it is very im­por­tant to learn the laws and var­i­ous streams of in­come that orig­i­nate in one's coun­try of res­i­dence as well as any other coun­try where one's music will be heard (aka streamed) or sold. In the U.S., ASCAP ne­go­ti­ates li­censes with all major broad­cast media then mon­i­tors those pub­lic per­for­mances to dis­trib­ute "per­for­mance roy­al­ties" to its song­writer/com­poser and pub­lisher mem­bers. Also, ASCAP has rec­i­p­ro­cal re­la­tion­ships with all other in­ter­na­tional per­form­ing rights or­ga­ni­za­tions as we'll. in most coun­tries, an or­ga­ni­za­tion called Fin­tage Music col­lects for neigh­bor­ing rights on be­half if it's artists and record label mem­bers in­clud­ing a num­ber of other ser­vices as well.

ASCAP Se­nior Di­rec­tor of Film & TV Music, Michael Todd, has 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the Hol­ly­wood music in­dus­try and is a leader in the film & tele­vi­sion com­poser com­mu­nity. Todd is a board mem­ber of the World Sound­track Acad­emy, which pro­duces the World Sound­track Awards at the Ghent In­ter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val. He is also a con­sul­tant to the Krakow Film Music Fes­ti­val in Poland, the Fes­ti­val In­ter­na­tional de Music de Cine in Córdoba, Spain, and Fimucité Tener­ife In­ter­na­tional Film Music Fes­ti­val in the Ca­nary Is­lands. He has con­ducted in­ter­views with major com­posers in­ter­na­tion­ally, and given lec­tures on ca­reer build­ing for as­pir­ing com­posers. For the past 14 years, Todd has led and pro­duced the ac­claimed ASCAP Tele­vi­sion & Film Scor­ing Work­shop with Richard Bel­lis. This four-week in­ten­sive “boot camp” is de­signed to cul­ti­vate the next gen­er­a­tion of film com­posers from around the world and pro­vide ac­cess to Hol­ly­wood’s top re­sources. Alumni have gone on to build suc­cess­ful ca­reers, gar­ner­ing major awards and nom­i­na­tions (Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, G.A.N.G. awards, in­ter­na­tional film fes­ti­vals).

2010 ASCAP Tele­vi­sion and Film Scor­ing Work­shop with Richard Bel­lis