One solid way to deal with promotion in a way that removes some of the stress of promoting yourself is to cross-promote with other composers.

There are a ton of options here. Some possibilities are:

• Linking to one another on your websites
• Mentioning one another in your newsletters
• Recommending each other’s scores to performers you know
• Recommending each other’s recordings to your own fan bases
• Placing score samples of one another’s works in instrumentationally-related scores of your own
• Guest blogging on each other’s websites

The benefits here are more far-reaching than merely getting your name out there a little more. Sure, you’re being exposed to a whole new mailing list or potential fan base. But you’re also sending a lot of subtle yet important signals at the same time.

These explicit endorsements of your colleagues say different things to different groups, all of which can only be good.

By recommending another composer’s work to performers and listeners, you’re showing them that you’re not just out for yourself – you care about that composer and their music in particular, and also about the musical community in general. Community-building isn’t something that we as composers have traditionally been very good at, in large part, I think, because we tend to view our colleagues as competition – competition for jobs, competition for performances, competition for awards – and not always as fellow travelers whose goals we share, and with whom we can work toward mutual success. This sort of community-mindedness is, in my perpetually humble opinion, a very attractive quality in an artist, from the viewpoint of a consumer of art. I, for one, listen much more favorably to a composer’s music when I know that they interact well with performers and other composers.

You’re also breaking through the me-me-me-ism that people probably expect in your newsletters and other promotional materials. Devoting that bit of space or time to someone else who you believe in can be a breath of fresh air. And for those of you reluctant to talk solely about yourselves, this gives you an out – by plugging someone else, too, you’re not just talking about yourself. (Sometimes I think that these little ways of thinking can be very helpful in drawing shy and nervous composers out of their shells – it lets them off the hook in small ways that hopefully make self-promotion more comfortable.)

And we shouldn’t ignore the fact that we live in an age when people are interested not just in what an artist creates, but what inspires her, and what her interests are. So these little endorsements are easy ways to let your followers know a bit more about you as a person and as an artist, as well as introduce them to more art that they’ll hopefully be drawn to.

Another option, for those who are so inclined, is to put promotional materials for other composers in the backs of your scores. I’ve started doing this myself, in a limited way. This is a practice that I appropriated from traditional publishers of decades past. All of the older scores that I’ve purchased have a page in the back listing additional pieces with similar instrumentation published by that company. So, in the score for a song cycle, one page at the back of the publication (sometimes the back cover itself) is dedicated to other songs and song sets by composers of roughly similar style and time period.

Now, likely you aren’t publishing other composers’ works. But there are undoubtedly composers whose works you admire, and which you’d like to introduce people to. I recommend sticking to instrumentally-related scores – it would be a little silly to promote a trumpet piece in the score for a string quartet.

I have my own way of formatting these things, but it’s still a little clunky, and I’m working out the kinks. I like to have the cover of the piece I’m recommending available, along with a sample page. But a simple listing of similar pieces along with the composers’ website URLs would be just as effective – as well as a little easier to pull off.

An upshot of the digital age is that many of us have blogs that we update with varying degrees of frequency. It’s worth considering having guest bloggers on your site. By having other composers or performers or whomever write a short post (probably in some sort of reciprocal exchange) you:

a) give them an additional outlet to post to,
b) introduce them to your audience,
c) offer a change of pace for your own readers, and
d) hopefully gain additional readers and site visitors when your guest mentions their appearance on your site.

Maybe try to set up a blog tour with composers who you’ve created relationships with. Each of you can visit the others’ sites for interviews, articles, video posts, whatever you want to do. There are lots of resources online offering advice and suggestions on how to set up and manage a successful blog tour (mostly for authors, but the advice is almost always pertinent).

Of course, these options don’t need to be quid pro quo arrangements (and I believe that they generally shouldn’t – I prefer being generous with those composers I believe in). I’ve taken it on myself to put samples of other composers’ works in the backs of some of my own scores not expecting anything in return from them. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate anything that they might do to promote me, as well, but my intention is to endorse those composers because I like their work.

Your promotion and endorsement of other composers – as in all things – should be genuine.

These promotional solutions, as well as that of composer collectives, are predicated on the idea that the business of concert music is not a zero sum game. We’re not really competing with one another – we’re in this together. And a rising tide lifts all boats.

I write the Composer’s Guide here, taking time away from my composing to do so. If this post helped you in any way, please leave a tip or a small donation on the way out. If you can’t afford to donate, please pass this chapter along to someone who you think might get some help from it.

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I started this essay last week, but had so much going through my mind on the subject that I got a bit paralyzed. So what I’ve decided to do is to spend this week talking about attitudes and general concepts, then spend the next few weeks on potential solutions.

This is a topic on which my thoughts are still evolving in subtle ways, so I fully expect to contradict what I write here at some point, maybe even contradict myself within the confines of this essay. But it’s something that I feel compelled to write about now, even though some of my thoughts are still working themselves out.

One thing is for sure, though: more often than not, I’m annoyed by people’s attitudes toward promoting their works. Most of us are uncomfortable doing it, sure, but there are some logical, perfectly-ok reasons for that which I think we’re all capable of getting over. What bothers me are the bizarre “philosophical” objections to promotion, as though wanting to introduce people to your own music is some horrible moral failing.

Some of this stems from a basic misunderstanding of the concept of marketing, and a general tendency to conflate the concepts behind different types of promotional efforts.

Marketing is a broad term that encompasses a number of different activities: advertising, pricing, interacting with consumers, distribution, etc. In a nutshell, it’s all of the ways that you present yourself and your works (or your business and your products) to the world. (Here’s an interesting pictorial that shows some of the differences.) I think we tend to conflate marketing and promotion with advertising, which is much narrower in scope, specifically a (usually paid) non-personal exhortation to buy a particular product: buy this vacuum cleaner, eat at this restaurant, lease this car.

For a composer, marketing (as it currently stands in my mind) really comes down to a handful of things: learning who your “fan base” is, learning how best to communicate with them, and finding ways to reach more people to connect with.

Much of this business (any business, really) is making connections with people. Because we’re artists, we’re capable of connecting on a very different level through our works as well as through our personal interactions, and it’s through making these connections that we’ll find the most successful and rewarding solutions to our promotional squeamishness.

Most of us are fairly squeamish about self-promoting, and that’s perfectly understandable: as David Smooke points out in his excellent essay on the NewMusicBox, we’ve all been trained not to brag about ourselves, and people get bored listening to someone who talks too much about what they’ve accomplished. Because of this squeamishness, and because composers tend to have an innate shyness, we often drop the ball when we’re in situations where we should say a little something about what we’re doing or have done.

Case in point: a few years ago, I attended the premiere of an opera written by my then-teacher. Afterward, I ended up in conversation with the librettist, who’s won just about every major poetry award imaginable, and he kept asking about my own work and accomplishments. The conversation ended up being disappointingly short because my hypertrophied sense of modesty caused me to repeatedly deflect his earnest interest in me, and ask about him instead – he was the one with the major career, after all! At my next lesson, when I related my impressions of the incident to my teacher, he chided me for having repeatedly attempted to steer the conversation back to the poet – he didn’t want to talk about himself because he’d already achieved major status; I, on the other hand, was just starting out, and he found that much more interesting because I still had my career and major accomplishments ahead of me. It was a perspective I hadn’t considered (especially since I was a little star-struck), but it’s made me a little less reticent to talk about projects that I’m working on – especially when someone asks!

It’s a fine line, being able to talk about yourself and your works in a way that’s appropriate to the occasion without dropping the ball or being a bore. And it’s something that we all need to learn how to do. This is something I’d like to talk about a bit more in-depth, and comments are definitely encouraged. I’m currently working through an approach to this issue that I’ll report in on when I’ve had a chance to test it out.

So on to some specific marketing thoughts:

My Music Should Speak for Itself
One cop-out to promotion that I’ve heard a few too many times is the idea that the music should speak for itself, but the plain fact of the matter is that it can’t unless it’s heard. Yes, the merits of a piece should convince an ensemble to perform your music, but that won’t happen unless the ensemble knows about you / your piece.

You’re going to have to advocate for your own music on some level. And you are, indeed, the most qualified person to do it – you know your work better than anyone else, and you already have a strong, built-in connection to it. The challenge here is learning how to speak for and about your music, and to find the people who would be interested.

I’d Rather Be Writing
This one, I hear a lot. And I understand it. We’d much rather be writing music than dealing with businessy things – it’s why we’re composers and not accountants. But.

As I’ve said before: remember that this is in service to your music. You are searching out opportunities for it to be performed, recorded, heard. Finding performers and listeners who are interested in your music shouldn’t be seen as a distraction or a major imposition. You’re looking for people who will connect with your music.

Advertising
One idea that I keep coming back to as I mentally chase my tail on all of this is that advertising just won’t work for individual artists. This likely doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but I think it bears saying. Maybe I’ll change my mind on this one down the road, but I doubt it.

Because advertising is by nature impersonal, and the arts are by nature intensely personal, putting an ad out for this or that score, or sending brochures for your catalog to ensembles, isn’t likely to get you the result you’d like. In fact, you’d probably weird people out if you did it.

But beyond that, advertising just isn’t an effective tool in general. Ads usually don’t convince us to buy anything. At best, they let us know that a product exists, and we do our research from there.

Usually, we make decisions on what concerts to attend, what CDs to buy, what performers or composers to follow based on the recommendations of people whose opinions we trust, and the reputations of the venues, ensembles, and composers themselves.

Knowing Your Market
As a composer, you have essentially two primary “markets”: performers and listeners. (There are others, but these are the biggies.) However, your performer market isn’t comprised of all performers of concert music. My music, which is entirely acoustic, probably wouldn’t be interesting to performers and ensembles that specialize in electronic or electro-acoustic music; nor would it likely be a good fit for ensembles that dig on experimental, avant, or otherwise non-tonal music. And I definitely wouldn’t be a consideration for a group that has no interest in music outside of the standard classical repertoire. Each of us has a broadly specific range of performers and ensembles that we can consider our “target market”, and that target market varies from composer to composer. The same is true, although probably less strictly so, with our target listening market.

Our challenge is to figure out what those ranges are. There are people out there who, if they knew your music, would enjoy it, and would be interested in performing your music or following your career. As a marketer, it’s your job to find them – at least some of them.

How can you know which performers and ensembles might be interested in your works? Well, start with their websites. See what they’ve performed before – if your music could fit in with their repertoire, you’ve made your start. The question then, of course, is what to do with this information. And that will be the focus of the next few weeks.

Again, here I’m going to ask for input from performers and ensemble members on your perspectives on connecting with composers; and from composers on how you’ve been successful (or have failed) in the past at making these connections.

Making the Connection
You’ll notice I’m not saying that you should just start mailing scores off higgledy-piggledy. There are approaches here that are appropriate, and I think that the key is in a word that I’m using a lot this week: “connection”.

A short aside: It’s a little weird for me to separate the ideas of marketing and networking because I tend to see it all as making connections with another person. Marketing/promotion, obviously, is more result-oriented: you’re attempting to have a piece performed or heard. But I think that your efforts in these areas are more likely to be successful when you’ve made a personal connection, and that’s where my thoughts on networking start to intrude.

I’ll definitely be talking about networking in more detail later on, but briefly, here are my thoughts in a nutshell: in a networking-type situation, my goal has always been to meet people on a human, two-people-who-could-possibly-become-friends level rather than in a hunting-for-someone-who-can-do-something-for-me sort of way.

And to me, the same goes for connecting with your potential markets: there’s a give-and-take, a mutual genuine interest, that goes with all of this.

Next week we’ll start looking at a few possible approaches we can take toward marketing and promoting our works, both in terms of specific scores and our musical output in general.

So tell me: composers, how do you connect with performers? And performers: how do you connect with composers?

I write the Composer’s Guide here, taking time away from my composing to do so. If this post helped you in any way, please leave a tip or a small donation on the way out. If you can’t afford to donate, please pass this chapter along to someone who you think might get some help from it.

Thanks!

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Let’s take a brief break from talk about finances, and discuss something slightly more aesthetic this week, shall we?

One of my major hobby horses is the quality of engraving in a score, which I’ve written about before, and I’ll write about again in more depth in the coming weeks. This week, I’d like to take a slightly wider view, and talk about the quality of a score as a whole.

For those of you who have bravely (and smartly) decided to publish your own works, you’ll do well to view your scores as a whole product comprised of several key elements: the engraved music, the physical materials, the visual design, and the non-score inside matter.

Engraving
The score itself, obviously, should be well-engraved. The purpose of your score is to communicate to performers what you want them to play, and when and how you want them to play it. Proper, clear engraving facilitates that communication, and offers a clarity of expression that a messy or unclear score couldn’t possibly hope to attain.

While some see engraving as drudgery that takes time away from the creation of actual music, I’ve come to view it as a highly artistic part of my process. By making sure that my scores have proper spacing between notes and staves and systems; by avoiding collisions between slurs, accidentals, noteheads, etc; and by making sure that my dynamic and expressive markings are clear and well-placed, I know that I’m allowing the performer to exercise her own artistry much earlier in the rehearsal process, making for a much freer and more intimate and personal performance. She doesn’t have to wonder, “What does he mean here,” or, “How loud should I be,” or “Wait, is that a mistake?” Instead, the score tells her clearly what I want – without being too fussy, of course – so that she can get to the part where she starts interpreting and being expressive much sooner.

My engraving certainly isn’t perfect, but I know from experience that performers appreciate a well-notated score with as few collisions and as much clarity as possible. Cleanliness, as they say, is next to godliness!

For those who still see engraving as drudgery – it’s not just page turns and collision avoidance. Spacement and placing can have a huge psychological impact on a performer. Take, for example, this phrase from one of my pieces, Starfish at Pescadero, which more and more I feel the need to revisit, engraving-wise:

Although I’m fairly clear about tempo, the performance of this particular phrase is always WAAAY too fast because of the notational choices I’ve made. The sixteenth notes (consistent with the rest of the fast-paced movement) and the tight spacing always conspire to make the soprano think that the line should be sung very quickly. When I do finally make the time to correct this page, I’ll at the very least double the note values, and put each measure on its own line to give the notes and text more room to breathe.

As a performer, I’m no stranger to the value of a score whose visual aesthetic matches the musical aesthetic. I, too, have rushed through passages that were too tightly-spaced, been tense and white-knuckled through scores fraught with collisions and poor spacing, and just plain scratched my head at unclear notational choices. In one piece I performed last year, I always – ALWAYS – railroaded through major a tempo change because it happened a) across a page turn (ouch), and b) without a double-bar (sin of sins!). It’s these considerations that allow us to communicate better with our performers, and to flex our visual artistry muscles.

To tie in briefly with last week’s discussion of paper size and the idea that “My dear, it simply isn’t done,” I’d like to say that I have no intention of bucking the entire system. I think that – for traditionally notated music, which mine is – certain traditions and “standards” are there because they work. Engraving is one of those areas where I think that tradition has it (at the very least mostly) right. Engraving standards are standard because they work, and because they communicate effectively within the strange, temporally-notated world that is concert music.

Not everyone works within the standard style of notation, of course. Some modern concert works can’t be notated within the standard tradition of music engraving. In which case, I exhort the composers, still: be clear in what you want. However you notate it, notate it clearly and in a way that (should your music not absolutely necessitate your being a part of it always and for all time) communicates more or less precisely what you want.

OK, we’ll come back to engraving in MUCH more depth later, of that there is little doubt. I have examples and examples and examples of weird engraving that made my brain seize up, melt, and start dribbling out one or both of my ears, as well as a list a mile long of Recommended Reading for those wanting to learn more about the art and craft of engraving.

Materials
Two subtle considerations that can make a HUGE difference in printed scores are paper quality and binding style.

Using regular, 20 lb. bond paper for scores isn’t awful. But using a slightly nicer grade of paper can bespeak a certain level of care and professionalism. So, too, can a nicer style of binding lend a greater air of authority to your works. We all grew up with traditionally published scores, and the paper weight and quality are much higher than what’s used to run off copies at Kinko’s.

In my experience as a performer and as a producer of a concert series, I’ve seen a lot – and I mean a LOT – of scores with comb binding. While I know that a lot of composers swear by comb binding, I’m generally a little…offended by it. It’s noisy to turn pages with, multiple comb-bound scores don’t play nice with one another on a shelf or in a pile, and it’s obviously the cheapest option available at Kinko’s.

If I have to do a fast-and-dirty binding for a last-minute submission to a competition or call for scores (of which I’m never guilty…</sarcasm>), I prefer coil binding, which I know isn’t always available at some print shops (read: my favorite one). It’s just a little more…elegant…than the other cheap options.

Generally, though, I prefer saddle stitch binding for scores that aren’t a billion pages. It conforms nicely to standards for professionally published scores, and is remarkably inexpensive. It does, however, require that the number of pages in your score be divisible by four (think of 11×17 paper folded in half, and you can see why). For large scores, and scores that absolutely must lat flat, saddle stitching isn’t the way to go – a comb or coil really is right for that if you can’t manage the happiest of all binding styles: perfect binding. I’ll be experimenting with perfect binding as soon as I finish enough songs to complete my Songbook project, the cover of which you’ll see below.

Now, using nicer paper and a more elegant binding style can add a bit to the cost of each printed score (one reason not to go crazy with the super nice papers). These aren’t costs that you should eat, if you decide to go this route – instead, the costs should be accounted for in the way you price your scores. Until I re-attack the issue of pricing, see this post from last year on practical pricing: http://dennistobenski.com/news/2011/08/22/pricing-a-practical-approach/

You should also always use the best printer at your disposal. Scores printed on inkjet printers are nowhere near as crisp and neat as laser printed scores. And while those printers at Kinko’s and Staples are laser printers, they’re not always the best-taken-care-of, and can leave streaks and smudges that undermine your efforts at quality. Best to head to a good print shop, where they really know their craft, and can help you find exactly the right materials for your score. The crispness of the printing, while subtle, sends a subtle but clear message that you’re using the right equipment for the job.

These small considerations can make a real difference in the perception of your scores: they show an attention to detail and a thoughtfulness that lend greater authority to your scores, as well as show a higher level of professionalism.

Cover and Visual Design
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” the saying goes, though we all know that’s complete and utter crap.

OF COURSE you judge a book by it’s cover! Why else would it have one?!

Similarly, scores get judged by their covers. Maybe rather less so than books, but that’s probably because the general cover design for published scores leaves quite a lot to be desired.

For good or for bad, legacy published scores have a particular look to them that inform the whole industry. If I say “Boosey & Hawkes”, you can conjure up the few major looks they’ve had in the past few decades: plain, marbled, or solid colors – with a schmancy treble clef. “Universal Edition?” Black and white. “G. Schirmer?” YELLLOOOOOWWW!! (and green).

Each publisher has created a visual brand that we associate with them.

You, too, should consider the idea of a visual brand when creating your scores.

I’m just guessing, but half of you probably just thought “Visual Design?!” and your brains exploded with delight. The other half thought “Visual Design?!” and your brains exploded in fear and dread. For the happy ones, hold on a second – we’ll get to you. For the ones cowering the corner, rocking back and forth in abject terror, take a breath, and remember that you don’t have to do it all yourself. Really.

We all have friends who have skill sets outside of our own, and those friends are probably willing to lend us a hand (especially if we float a bit of cash or a few drinks or a dinner or two in their direction – whatever you workout between yourselves). One composer on the NewMusicShelf has a friend who happens to be a painter, and he licenses photos of various of his friend’s paintings to be the cover art for his scores. They look really nice, and they lend a unique look to his scores that mark them as being from the same person.

For those of you running off in search of pencil and paper to start designing your new look, hang back a second.

Composers, in my experience, generally have a pretty horrible sense of visual aesthetics. Not all, certainly, but a significant number. When I started designing websites, the vast majority of composer sites were a total mess – especially those designed by the composers themselves. Consequently, I always advise…not so much caution as…care…when approaching a visual project like web design (which I’ll obviously be delving into pretty majorly later on) and score design. Care, and a few extra sets of eyes. It’s really easy to get so wrapped up in the giddy-making little details that we forget to take a step back to make sure what we’re doing is actually…good. So showing drafts of the work to someone else – or a few someones else – can be really beneficial.

With score design, as with site design, I always say recommend limiting the number of fonts you use, and limit them to those that are easily readable. I’ve been privy to conversations in which composers obsess over the fonts they want to shoehorn onto the cover of their latest score. “This one’s gonna be goofy, that ones’s gonna be art deco, that one’s gonna be…” horrid – a visual nightmare. For my own scores, I’ve worked to limit the number of fonts I use across the board – I have a small handful that I’ve selected as my pool of basic fonts.

Here are a few examples of my covers:

All of my score covers are based on these layouts, and generally use these fonts. As I continue to refine my visual brand, I expect to move more to this design, and similar even-more-consolidated looks:

And for inside matter – program notes, texts, instrumentation – I use a mix of standard fonts and those fonts I use on the covers. Compare these texts pages to the cover from echoes, where they’re from:

Note the continued use of the typewriter font as a highlight for small pieces of important information. The poems, for the sake of readability, are clear, reasonably common fonts – this information needs to be straight-forward and absolutely readable, not cute or clever or particularly visually interesting.

(A small design note, but one I’m kind of proud of: compare the two-word lineation of the poem “perfect” to the description of the cycle on the cover and the dedication.)

I really recommend using a consistent look or set of looks across all your scores. In other words, start to create a visual brand. My earliest visual branding, as seen in the covers for Elegy and My True Love hath My Heart, emphasized clarity over all else, and is, frankly, a little boring, which is why I’m in the process of moving toward the look of the Songbook – it incorporates the color scheme of my website, which creates an added layer of recognizability, and uses the typewriter font that is increasingly among my favorites.

Inside Matter
The non-score inside matter is just as important to a performer or ensemble as the music itself – it’s where you put your texts, list full instrumentation, map your percussion instruments (I’ve been yelled at a few times for leaving this one out), put your table of contents for collections of pieces, or give notes on whatever nit-picky notational devices that composers are known for using.

In addition to texts, instrumentation, and percussion mapping (where appropriate), I like to have a page for premiere and commissioner information – it’s a nice way to acknowledge the people who helped usher the piece into the world. Credit where credit is due. And loving appreciation.

Also, because of the divisible-by-four requirement of saddle-stitched scores, I often have an extra few pages at the end of a score that I feel weird about leaving blank, so I’ve taken to filling those pages with advertising for other scores. At the back of my Duo for Violin and Piano, I had two leftover pages facing one another, so I turned the left-hand page into “Additional Works by Dennis Tobenski” that are instrumentally related to the Duo, and the right-hand page advertises scores by other composers. (This latter bit is something I want to expand on when I get to marketing your works, so take note of it now, and think on how it benefits you, your colleagues, and the field of new music in general.)

The inside matter is a great opportunity to draw performers deeper into your music. If you have the room, put in a detailed program note that talks about the genesis of the piece, what musical and extra-musical ideas inspired it, or any particular points in the piece that you find interesting or noteworthy. Having these insights into the piece – and into you – can be a selling point for the score, or can trigger a connection with performers (and listeners, if these notes are available in the program at performances) that draws them further into your work. And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Connecting?

What have I missed? What have I short-changed? What interesting things do you put in your scores?

I write the Composer’s Guide here, taking time away from my composing to do so. If this post helped you in any way, please leave a tip or a small donation on the way out. If you can’t afford to donate, please pass this chapter along to someone who you think might get some help from it.

Thanks!

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My apologies for my absence last week – an unexpected health issue kept me from making use of my regularly-scheduled Composer’s Guide writing time last week (I set aside every Wednesday evening from 6:00 until 1:30am to write this, though I try not to take that long!), and the rest of my time was already spoken for until today. Such is my life!

So this week I want to finish off (at least for now) our copyright discussion with one of the most controversial topics surrounding intellectual property law: the cutely-named “copyleft” movement, and its impact on how copyright law is perceived.

First, though, a brief note and a few links on copyright infringement again. One of my earlier posts on the importance of registering your works, and it was noted in the comments that wholesale theft of concert music almost never happens. However rarely it happens, though, it still does.

Take as an example the Messe de requiem by Alfred Desenclos. The Messe was composed in 1963, and published by Durand et Fils in 1967. Then in 1999, almost 30 years after the death of Desenclos, it was presented as an original work by the young composer Tristan Foison. The story is sordid and sickening. And a wonderful cautionary tale. You can read about it here and here. So who doesn’t want to register their works now?

OK. Copyleft.

The copyleft movement started in the software world: software engineers wanted certain of their programs to be freely available while still limiting certain uses of them: particularly commercial use. In other words, they wanted people to be able to use and build upon their code, but didn’t want corporations to swoop in, modify the code slightly (derivative works, anyone?), and release the minorly-edited version commercially, thereby making potentially millions of dollars on a product that they neither created nor funded the creation of. The fruits of this movement are quite robust and active still in the tech community in the form of Open Source. WordPress, OpenOffice, VideoLAN, Wikipedia, Apache, Android, Mozilla: these are all companies and products centered around the Open Source Initiative, which has its roots in copyleft. Each of them may be used and disseminated freely, and users may modify or add to them so long as they don’t offer the modified version for sale, and in most cases maintain the notice of original authorship.

Most of what we make use of on the internet is thanks to the Open Source Initiative, the GNU License, etc. This blog is powered by WordPress. Some of the cooler bits of coding on this site are my own adaptations of various codes available on sites like Dynamic Drive. If you care to, view the source of this page and see the authorship notices embedded in the site’s header material. You can bet your sweet bippy that I’m thankful for open source software.

However!

This is all tech crap I’m talking about. It’s not music.

So where does music enter into the equation?

With the advent of sampling and sound libraries, there came a wider call for freely-available sounds and sampling materials. Just as with the proliferation of powerful image editing software, there grew a need for non-copyrighted stock images. Of course, when I say a “call” or a “need”, I mean: people wanted to use things that other people made, but not pay for it.

Enough people had gotten in trouble for using copyrighted images or sounds without permission that some of them started making their own and offering them for others to use without having to pay licensing fees. Many of these are available thanks to the proliferation of the Creative Commons license.

I get a lot of questions about Creative Commons and how it compares to copyright. (There’s nothing to actually compare, but we’ll get to that.) In fact, it was an email conversation I had with a fellow composer about Creative Commons that sparked me to write my first essay on copyright, which I’ve plundered liberally for this series.

This composer argued in favor of abandoning copyright in favor of licensing under Creative Commons and similar entities. (I say “entity” because Creative Commons is a non-profit corporation. FYI.) And it was this argument that made me finally realize how little composers and other artists understand about what Creative Commons actually is, and how it stands in relation to copyright.

A lot of composers and artists I talk to seem to think that Creative Commons and similar types of licenses are an alternative to copyright. That somehow CC’s ShareAlike and NoDerivs licenses replace the need for copyright protections. CC is, in fact, a type of extension of copyright that allows creators to forfeit various and sundry of their rights so that other people can have more stuff for free.

You can see that I’m not the hugest fan.

Now, I’m not completely opposed to CC licenses, but I think that composers should be careful about using these licenses with their works.

The most successful uses of CC licenses that I’ve seen used with creative works have been with photos, sound samples, and webcomics. All of these are small individual works that help to give a creator exposure and experience while also allowing them to generate revenues in other areas.

For example, photographers can make a handful of their photos available with a CC Attribution-NonCommercial license as teasers for the rest of their work – individuals and companies that want to use other of their images can pay a licensing fee, or hire them for individually-tailored shoots. Audio engineers offering sound samples can create a tiered service: the basic set of samples are made available gratis, and the “premiere” set can be purchased for a fee.

Webcomics make ingenious use of CC licenses. The individual comics themselves, because they’re posted to sites that are accessible by anyone, and because no image online is safe for long, are all licensed under CC. It’s merchandising that earns the artists their income. Jeffrey Roland’s TopatoCo is a prime example of this, as is Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic and store. Roland’s comics Wigu and Overcompensating, you’ll notice, like Munroe’s xkcd (all three of which I adore – I have a whole folder of webcomic feeds that I subscribe to in Google Reader. If you want me to dork out some time, ask me about it.) are available via CC licenses. And fans who want to have the comics collected in book form, or want T-Rex of Qwantz fame on a t-shirt , or want a print of Cornelius Snarlington, Business Deer, can shell out cash for the comic artist’s merch.

Concert music, in my opinion, differs greatly from these media. Enough so that I find CC licenses to be ill-advised for concert music composers. I’m always willing to listen to arguments to the contrary, but for the moment, I can’t see CC (say that ten times fast!) as being beneficial to our financial or artistic well-being.

Let me explain as best I can.

Our works are highly-individualized, labor-intensive, time-consuming things that have very specific types of secondary income: score sales and print/recording/broadcast/etc royalties. By appending a CC license to any of our works, we forfeit our claim to those sources of income. And unless we write many, many works with the same instrumentation, we aren’t likely to be able to use a limited number of CC-licensed works as gateway works to the rest of our catalog. Even then, a composer with a significant number of works for solo piano would be – in my opinion – ill-advised to offer one or two pieces under CC licenses hoping to attract interest in the rest of his catalog. A photographer offers a limited number of photos under CC because she knows that those few she offers for free won’t be appropriate for every project that others may need images for. An audio engineer can offer a limited number of quality samples because he knows that while some users will be content with the free product, more users will want the full complement of samples because of a) their quality, b) their range and scope, and c) again their quality.

The concert music composer who offers a CC-licensed piano piece is offering a stand-alone work that is presumably of considerably high quality. (Why offer a work that is not your best?) That work is likely to be played more often than those that require the performer to pay for the score and performance licenses. People will, of course, buy the others, but probably rather less often.

One argument I’ve heard in favor of CC licenses is that they allow others to make use of your music to create more art.

That’s nice and all, but they can still do that without you renouncing whole swaths of your rights.

Remember the last chapter from two weeks ago when I told my little story about the visual artist who used one of my scores in her work? (I completely failed to mention, by the way, that her name is Yu-Wen Wu, and he’s fabulous. You can see the body of work inspired by my score here.) Well, I gave her permission to use my score, and I didn’t ask her for a fee or anything. She’s a friend, and I was happy to have my piece repurposed for the sake of her art, so I just said, “Yes.”

You can do that, too!

I’ve also had my works remixed by pop artists, and arranged by fellow composers. All I asked of them was that I get credit as the original author. That may sound like a CC Attribution license, but the big difference is that I retain my rights to those works for all other uses.

It’s not that I’m stingy, it’s that I don’t feel the need to renounce significant portions of my rights altogether.

If you want people to remix your work, or make use of it in some new and unusual way, you don’t have to give up your rights.

A simple solution? Put something on your website saying that you welcome collaborations with other artists, and all they have to do is email you at youremailaddress@yourdomain.com. Done!

Problems with Perception
There are a few reasons, I think, why people tend to rebel against copyright, and lean toward the copyleft movement (which I recently heard referred to as “copywrong” – I don’t disagree with that assessment), and I think it has to do with public perception of how copyright can be…misused…? I hesitate to use the term, although I think that it is what I really mean to say.

Copyright duration tends to be a big issue for some people, and I can’t say that I completely disagree with them. I fully believe that a creator should have complete control over his/her works for the entirety of their lives, including the right to assign those rights to others (publishers, etc). I even think that the creator’s heirs should get some benefit from royalties, etc. So, I definitely advocate for a life-plus-___ duration.

I certainly don’t have an answer as to how long I think copyright should extend beyond the life of the creator. But it should for some reasonable period.

I’ve heard a lot of people lately saying that life plus 70 years is too long, and they’re not unreasonable in saying so.

And it’s the reason why life-plus-70 exists that has skewed much of the public’s perception of copyright. The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was lobbied for extensively by the Walt Disney Company and the Gershwin Estate. Both had a lot on the line – the copyright terms for Mickey Mouse and Rhapsody in Blue were both nearing their end; and because the CTEA was passed, both of these continue to be significant sources of revenue for each organization, respectively. Thus, the perception of copyright as benefiting only corporations was born.

Because of this sore point, it’s easy to overlook how greatly copyright benefits individual creators. As I’ve said many times already, all opportunities we have for income generated from our works are because of copyright.

I feel really strongly about composers holding onto their rights. So I urge those of you considering using Creative Commons and similar licenses to think carefully before you do. It’s a bell that can’t be unrung – once you put a piece out there with a CC license on it, those copies can circulate and undermine any attempt you may make later on to generate income from the same work, should you reconsider your earlier decision to go the copyleft route.

Before I close the door on our copyright discussion, I would be remiss if I didn’t make note of termination rights. For those of you who have pieces that were published during or after the late 1970s, you have a unique opportunity coming up: you can reclaim rights that you’ve assigned to your publishers. This right comes available 35 years after first publication, and is available only for a window of 5 years. There are hoops that must be jumped through, and some really specific timing issues involved, but some of you may find it to your benefit (though don’t expect your publisher to be happy with you).

There’s a good blog post by an Intellectual Properties lawyer on the subject here, and the Copyright Office’s official language here.

That does it for now for copyright, so I’ll see you all back here next week for the next exciting episode chapter of The Composer’s Guide!

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I write the Composer’s Guide here once a week, taking time away from my composing to do so. If this post helped you in any way, please leave a tip or a small donation on the way out. If you can’t afford to donate, please pass this chapter along to someone who you think might get some help from it.

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Welcome to part three of our discussion of copyright. This week I’d like to cover the topics of public domain, the doctrine of first sale, and at least get a start on fair use.

First, however, I’d like to make an addendum to last week’s chapter on the benefits of copyright registration. It was pointed out in an excellent comment that I had overlooked an important point, which I’d like to address here.

What I overlooked last week was the fact that the most common type of infringement that a concert music composer today will have to face (any file sharing aside) is an unauthorized use of a recording of the composer’s work by a dance company or non-profit organization, or an unlicensed live performance. Small-potatoes-style infringement.

The most effective way to deal with such a situation – in my opinion – is merely an email or letter from you stating the issue and offering a solution. These types of situations are born out of an appreciation for your work, and most likely an ignorance of the company’s/organization’s obligations when it comes to using copyrighted material. The commenter suggests – and I wholeheartedly agree – that you request a retroactive licensing fee.

Your letter should be polite, yet clear. Explain why you’re writing, be direct, but don’t be an ass. If you keep in mind that these people liked your music enough to use it – quite the compliment! – and that they should be treated with respect as your artistic colleagues (and just as people), you’ll do yourself a service.

Lawyering up in this instance is not only overkill, but likely to earn you a poor reputation in the community. Nobody wants to be known as That Composer Who Sued The Small Dance Company Because They Used His Music Once And Didn’t Make Any Money Anyway.

Unlicensed performances are also best handled by your Performing Rights Organization. Each PRO has a reporting system in place for performances so that there’s a greater likelihood that they will be properly licensed, even after the fact.

Always, always, always act in good faith.

Public Domain
So what happens to works when their copyright term is up? Provided that their term isn’t extended by changes in the law (another discussion for another day), they go into the public domain. The expiration of copyright is – like the existence of copyright itself – intended to “promote the Progress” of the arts. If copyright were indefinite, we wouldn’t have nearly the access to works and scientific writings and findings that we do now. Our artistic and scientific advancement would be seriously curtailed.

It’s public domain that allows us to use poems by Shakespeare or Whitman or Dickinson in our vocal and choral works without having to pay licensing fees or royalties. Because the copyright term on those works has expired, other artists are free to make use of them without compensating the artist (most likely long dead) or his/her estate.

Personally, I prefer working with living poets when I set a text, but there are projects for which I feel that it’s more appropriate – or just plain easier – to use a text in the public domain. All of my choral works use public domain texts, but the bulk of my art songs are on poems by living poets. I have both artistic and financial reasons for this dichotomy. For one in-progress, temporarily-stalled project, I’ve chosen to set 24 public domain texts and collect them into a single album of songs; by setting only public domain texts, I remove any question of what portion of royalties are due to this poet or that out of the sale of the collection. However, I find great artistic satisfaction in setting texts by poets I know, as well as bringing their poetry to a wider audience. Plus, I just really like the idea of helping my friends to earn additional royalties from their works. Big warm fuzzy.

As I mentioned last week, it’s not always easy to know when a work is in the public domain. As a rule, it’s usually – though not always – safe to assume that something written before 1923 is in the public domain. After that point, things start to get more complicated depending on where it was published, whether it was published with or without a copyright notice, and if it complies with various and sundry U.S. Copyright formalities (this last one applies mostly to older works published outside of the U.S.). Here’s an interesting resource from Cornell University’s Copyright Information Center that makes things a little clearer: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

So what happens if you think something is in the public domain, use it, then subsequently learn that it isn’t? Surprisingly, I’m actually dealing with such a situation at this very moment!

A few years ago, I wrote a choral piece believing that the text was completely in the public domain. It turns out that the version of the poem I used was an adaptation of the original by another (living) composer for one of his operas. I hadn’t registered the work either with the Copyright Office or ASCAP, so I haven’t earned any royalties on the piece, and have no registrations to amend. The change from the original is very, very minor (substituting one proper name for another). I could conceivably change the name back to the original, but I rather hate the original. Or, I could find another name to substitute. (Tried it – really hard after becoming so accustomed to it. And I chose the poem partly because I liked the name so much!)

I’ve opted for a third route: I’ve emailed the composer, asking his permission to use the text as I currently have it in the score. And when I say “I’ve emailed the composer,” I mean that I’ve only just emailed him, so I haven’t yet had the chance to receive a response. I’ll be sure to keep you all informed of the progress of the situation, hoping, of course, that this will be an excellent example of the power of writing a friendly, straightforward message that addresses the issue and offers an equitable solution.

Doctrine of First Sale
There are a number of names for the doctrine of first sale: “first sale rule”, “exhaustion rule”, “right of first sale”. So what is it, and how does it affect you?

The first sale rule allows the purchaser of a CD or score (or other individual copy of a copyrighted work) to either sell or lend that copy to another person. So, if you buy the score of a string quartet, you can then resell it. You can also lend it to another person.

You can’t, however, make a copy of it to sell, or to keep when you sell the original. Any copy you may make is, of course, an illegal copy.

It also, in the case of scores/parts (although not CDs or other “phonorecords“), allows the original purchaser to rent his copy to others.

So.

I buy a copy of the score to your most popular piano piece. A pianist I know wants to perform it, but can’t afford to buy it. So (because in this example I’m a bit of a dick), I rent it to him at a lower cost than if he were to buy it. I’ve just – legally – made a profit off of your copyrighted work. I’ve probably not made much, but it’s profit that you’re not legally entitled to. Not a huge deal in the long run, but there are instances when the first sale rule can start to chafe for some. (I’m not entirely sure that I mind this whole thing, but it’s absolutely worth knowing about.)

For example, Choir X buys 60 copies of one of your choral pieces so that they can perform it. A month later, Choir Y wants to perform it as well, so, rather than pay to buy it from you or your publisher, they rent it from Choir X instead. Choir X can rent your piece out to choir after choir, keeping you out of the income loop, and it’s completely within their right to do so. This is a fairly common occurrence, although it seems that more choirs are attempting to buy scores rather than rent them (I’d love to get some statistics on this, or at least feedback from choral staff). It’s also not unheard of in the concert band world. Orchestras do it less because they tend to rent their scores and parts directly from the publisher, and usually don’t buy.

And there’s the interesting point in all of this.

If you fear that copies of your scores will be rented out, and that your sales will suffer for it, your recourse is simply to not sell your scores/parts, but to rent them. Then, the terms of your rental agreement can prohibit the renter from sub-renting to other ensembles. Should you forget that particular provision, then be content in the knowledge that the renter would most likely have to sub-rent the piece at a higher rate than you are charging in order to make the whole thing worth their while, at which point it’s no longer worth the while of the sub-renter, because they can get it cheaper directly from you.

Also a possibility, is the idea of “permanent loan”, which I’ll cover in subsequent chapters on rental agreements.

In terms of practicality, I find the doctrine of first sale to be more academic than useful. But I know that there are composers who do worry about it. There are a lot of factors involved here in the sell vs. rent argument, and, like I said, I’ll cover it in later chapters.

Fair Use
Here’s a biggie. And I surely won’t be able to cover everything in this chapter. So: a quick overview.

Fair use was implemented in order to allow for discussion of copyrighted works, and to further – here’s that phrase again – “promote the Progress” yadda yadda yadda. How is science to further itself if one scientist refuting another’s published claim can’t quote the original in his own paper? How can a book or play be criticized, studied, reviewed, if the original text can’t be quoted? Imagine a TV news story reporting on a concert or musical or gallery opening that couldn’t display any portion of the event in the report – what would be the point?

There are also a LOT of misconceptions about what constitutes the fair use of a copyrighted work: educational use is always fair use; the 15-second limit; the 300-word limit; use by non-profits; the use is non-commercial; etc. There are a lot of instances when the use of some portion of a work is fair use. There are even more that are fuzzy.

My own personal opinion is: when in doubt, ask permission.

That said: it’s late, I’m nearing my 2000 word limit, and I have a mysteriously limping kitten that needs some love.

So let’s meet back here next week to talk in much greater detail on fair use. The week after, we’ll wrap up copyright with a discussion of Copyleft, and then we’ll move on to new territory.

So: what are your thoughts on using public domain texts, tunes, etc in y our work as opposed to more contemporary stuff? Do you have a preference? Let me know in the comments!

I write the Composer’s Guide here once a week, taking time away from my composing to do so. If this post helped you in any way, please leave a tip or a small donation on the way out. If you can’t afford to donate, please pass this chapter along to someone who you think might get some help from it.

Thanks!

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