The term Publishing comes from the print age, and predates the age of recorded music. Over time, the roles and definitions of a what a publisher is and does has changed, and continues to do so. Traditionally, a music publisher's role is to exploit a song (in music commercial terms). The week 9 readings on Copyright, in the context of music in the digital age have led to some very interesting conversations.

Both Ann Harrison and Donald Passman write about publishing in the context of an industrialised Music Industry. A publisher's role, for Passman and Harrison is based on the assignment of song rights and her and the publisher's responsibility is to find ways in which a song can be used. This could be getting a song performed by an artist, or sync'ing the song with a visual image. Today, the opportunities for synchronisation could include not only film, advertisements, TV, but also computer gaming, and in cases where a fan may sync an artist's song with their holiday video on youtube, or as the background to a series of images.

One transformation since the technologies of mp3 compression, peer-to-peer sharing and streaming have become popular, is that most every day now we can find newspaper articles about Copyright in the mainstream press. These sorts of news pieces, and conversations about Copyright simply didn't exist as a topic in the mainstream press before the late '90s. The discourse around Copyright has to a great degree been influenced by the introduction of these technologies, and the as technologies are changing, so do our definitions of what a publisher as and does.

Although both readings are written from the experienced music industry proffessional offering facts and guidance for the musician/songwriter to help him/her navigate The Music Business, they both approach it from a very Wikstromian standpoint. For Harrison and Passman, the music industry is a world of contractual negotiations and rights management and exploitation of catalogue. From this perspective, The Music Industry are a clearly a “Copyright industry” to use Wikstrom's terms, where industry bodies' functions include both the protection and exploitation of the Copyright in inherent in the songs, and composers' work.

Increasingly however, it is argued that for many musicians, there are opportunities to be had through allowing the use of music in a less restricted manner. Through anecdotal evidence and personal experience, the challenge for most writers and performers is less in terms of protecting Copyright, and more about being heard, succinctly, the challenge for producers of content in is not piracy, it's obscurity. In the world of book publishing, author Neil Gaiman found that by making one of his books freely available, it increased sales of not only that book, but the rest of his catalogue too.

It's interesting to contrast the Copyright control, management and exploitation model with that of Creative Commons licensing. Where Copyright's default is “All Rights Reserved” on song works and compositions, a Creative Commons (CC) license automatically grants certain permissions and therefore allows freer/wider use of said compositions and/or recordings. There are different flavours of CC license, ranging from the tighter control of “Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives” (The author of the work must be creditted, permissions must be obtained if the work is to be used for commercial purposes and the work cannot be altered in any way), through to the looser “Attribution” only, which simply means that the permission is already granted for all uses in most any way (remix, sampling, using part of the lyrics or music in another composition, sync'ing with pictures, use in an advertisement or film), providing that the original CC license holder is credited.

The criticisms of the CC license system are that it may erode Copyright and not protect the creators of creative works. Proponents of CC argue however that in many cases, not only does Copyright fail to protect the songs and the writers of musical works, but also that by allowing certain rights (without having to ask rights holders for permissions) a song (or writer) not only increases the chance of a work being heard by new people but also that the CC license is better for culture. The argument goes that without the restrictions of the default “All rights reserved” Copyright, more music (this also applies to other creative works also) is available to more people, which in turn is better for culture, diversity, and is for The Public Good.

This ties in nicely with my interest in the question of where the power lies in the music industries. If the main musicians' organisations and lobbyists (The Musicians' Union, PRS, the RIAA, MCPS for example) are supposed represent their membership, and campaigns for tighter controls and stricter punishments for Copyright infringements may not be in the interest of the majority of musicians, songwriters and artists, then it would be fair to say that (for example) the PRS are acting to the benefit of their Big members, those who have mainstream success (and who are already earning a great deal from their music).