。。。Under the City Sky。。。

Internship 2004

Operational Manual on Internship at Music Publishing Company in New York City

I have done my unpaid credited internship at independent publishing company, in New York City for two months, eight hours a day, five days a week. The company was formed in 1995 for the purpose of working with established songwriters and writer/ artists in aggressively administering and actively promoting their songs. Although the company is still young company only with nine years of history and administered by about ten people, the company is now the fastest growing independent music publisher of the last decade, representing hundreds of hits and thousands of titles of well-known major artists in various genres of music from 1940’s to present. Campany's catalog reflects more than 250 charted hit songs. The company has also remarkable achievements in the field of synchronization licensing operations, and creative staff has successfully placed catalog works in thousands of major films, TV programs and national and global advertising campaigns for major companies.

My work duties at the company was cross-sectional from creative operations to administrative, which was, I believe, the ideal place for interns to develop extensive understandings of publishing company’s operations in multiple departments. I was able to be aware of what was going on at the company with close daily communication with each colleague. Therefore, I could be pro-active and positive about what I can do or should do to contribute the company’s daily operations. Since I believed that job tasks should not be given by others but should be dug out and found aggressively by myself, I kept asking each people if there was anything I can do as well as kept reminding them I would be always available anytime when something came up.

The tasks I have done are mainly categorized into two fields: administrative and creative. In administrative field, with preciseness about details, I could thoroughly applied all my acquaintances with music business such as copyrights information and detective skills, using Right Track system and other applications such as Harry Fox Agency’s Poliplus system, which I have acquired from MBMI courses in University of Miami. These systems allow us to identify scores of unlicensed recordings, finding hundreds of thousands of dollars in society and record label suspense accounts and recovering a long list of copyrights which had entered renewal terms but had not been claimed by original writer/ publishers or were wrongly claimed by others.

In creative field, I could put my Japanese skills and knowledge of Japanese music industry, which made me unique and indispensable at the company. I worked mainly with Justin, A&R Senior Director, hand in hand to establish the business relationships with Japanese sub-publishing company, Fuji Pacific Music Inc., several major and independent record labels such as Toshiba EMI /Virgin Records, Universal Music Japan /Def Jam and Ponycanion, and advertisement companies as well as production companies of TV commercials and programs. Since Spirit Music works with great talented Hip-Hop /R&B producers, we have decided to hook them up with Japanese Hip-Hop /R&B artists and let them produce artists’ songs. We selected three producers for Japanese market: DJ Clark Kent, who has crafted tracks for Lil’Kim, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, Digga, who has produced for artists ranging from Jennifer Lopez to Ludacris to Jay-Z to 50-Cent, and D/R Period who has produced Cam’ron’s “Hey Ma” and many tracks for Queen Latifah and MOP.

It is always hard to take a first step. Although the company already have a contact with Fuji Pacific Music and DJ Clark Kent has produced a song for Japanese female artist, Tsubaki, once before, there was no direct business relationships between record labels and other related companies. So first of all, I needed to track down who are popular artists in Japanese Hip-Hop /R&B music by determining whether or not their taste of music, talents and capabilities of selling CDs meet with our expectations, which record labels have deal with them, and who is taking charge of all contacts directly with the artists. With step-by-step hours of online researches, contacts with my several friends who work in Japanese music industry or happen to know personally the President of record label I would like to make a contact, or with exchanging numerous faxes and emails to people and sometimes directly to the artists, I could successfully established direct contacts with artists and people involved in their productions.
Once we got detailed contact information, all I had to do was explaining well who we are and why we would like to work with them. As a second step, we sent a demo CD of songs by three producers with their short biography. If we are lucky enough, we can take this deal to the next step: Fee for producing a song. For overseas, we ask buyouts because it is easier on accounting and tax issues.

As far as the best promotion is concerned, a TV air play is much important than to get a radio play in Japan since pure radio hits are not as common as in the West. For example, Japanese pop-artists are eager in the tie-up commercials; they try to sell their image with cosmetics, audio equipments or beverages with their new song as a BGM. Another way is getting a position for a main theme song of a soap opera drama.
Even though I have made successful steps and removed boundaries created by difficulties of communication with different languages and time differences, several problems have remained in front of us when it comes to have our songs used in TV programs and commercials, and these problems tend to keep Japanese companies away from us and make us much more difficult getting into Japanese market. For example, we can require synchronization fees whenever songs are used in TV commercials in the U.S. On the other hand, in Japan, Japanese new released song is exempt from synchronization fee, whereas, Western music is not. As a result, companies are unwilling to use unknown Western songs with expensive fee in addition to a performance fee. To have our songs used, we have to be flexible with synchronization fee and even accept lower fee than we expected since I know so many examples of Western songs which made a huge hit after having used in TV commercial. In addition, we are required to react quickly to their requests and provide suggested song samplers in a form of MP3 audio file to send via email by one day.

As for songs for TV programs, although this is the hardest field for overseas publishers to get into since almost all the time a producer of the program has already made a connection with agency of Japanese popular artist, I got a request from Fuji Pacific Music that they are looking for Latin song for opening theme of one hour new TV program aired on Fuji TV on every Sunday. It would be a huge deal for us since the program will continue more than one year, during which the opening theme will not be replaced and will be heavily used. Another way to approach to these fields would be making contact to major or independent production companies for CM and TV program. But the more company big the more difficult to get a right person for contact since usually there are so many productions going on at the company and they don’t have certain department which deals with all song for each project all together because divisions are formed on production basis and each producer of the production usually decide what song they would like to use. While small or medium independent production companies have less production going on and relatively easy to reach the right person.

The most important thing to get tie ups is to establish good relationships with Japanese major publishers. Developing these relationships tends to take longer than in the west, and it can be frustrating when things do not move faster. However, it is vital to spend the time to get to understand the market, and the potential partner. The largest independent Japanese music publishers are subsidiaries of domestic TV broadcasters. Fuji Pacific Music that we keep in touch as our sub-publisher is one of them. These companies enjoy the advantage of having a direct connection with the major national networks. Thus it makes sense to work directly with one of the domestic music publishers.

In 2003, Japan has the second largest music market in the world that generates the annual copyright collection of over 100 billion Yen. However, the share of international repertoire in the Japanese music market has been stagnant at the level of around 20% over the past years. This could be an indication that, regardless of its size, the market may not necessarily be an easy one to break for the U.S. companies. The reality is even foreign-affiliated retail stores such as Tower Record, Virgin, HMV, and satellite music channels, MTV has been cutting back the spending on promotion for International sales, and continuing to downsize their International repertoire operations.
Although the average sprit share of market is 70/30, Japanese market is still healthy and has a great deal of potentiality and business opportunities for international record companies. People in Japan are studious and knowledgeable about music and at the same time, they are great music lovers and certainly know how to appreciate and enjoy good music. Also, Japanese people are known for their curiosity and adventurousness. They have their eyes wide open on new musical styles and trends. Above all in spite of the strong competition and popularity of non-musical products from video game business and mobile phones squeezing teenagers’ limited financial resources, Japanese teenagers and young adults still have a great deal of disposal income and 30 % of disposal income are spend on items and products related with music and entertainment. Presented in a right and timely manner, they will not hesitate to absorb anything which is new and of quality.

The initial market entry is not always easy and can be a challenge since the market is negative towards International repertoire now. However it is also true that one of surveys found that 51% of Japanese consumers are not satisfied with the domestic hit music. Also according to the demographic research, the population between the age of ten and twenty-nine was 53.6 % and 43.0% in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and it is expected to decline by 20 % in 2010 and thirty percent in 2025. On the other hand, the population of middle age has increased by 31% of all market shares in 2003. This statistics give us a good guess how music trends are going to shift in Japanese market in future, which means the U.S. companies are required to have not only immediate action but a long term perspectives to get into the market.
Doing effective promotion such as tie ups with local publishers, making tailor-made products, and creating a strong fan base is important for U.S companies to take advantage of Japanese perceptivity and can be quite rewarding after all.

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