I hate jargon, technical terms used only by insiders. Jargon is, by its very nature, exclusionary. If you don’t know the language, the codes and the usage rules, you are locked out of the discussion and denied any meaningful analysis and input.
Following the machinations of the music business means inevitably running into words and phrases that seem important but are vague at best and impenetrable at worst. You could ask, but then you risk admitting that you’re an unordained, unenlightened outsider lacking in the necessary sacred knowledge. And who wants to be condescendingly taunted? So you keep it to yourself and hope that you figure everything out one day.
But that’s not right. Music should be for everyone, and anyone who wants to know how the music industry works should be welcomed. Let’s demystify some words, terms and phrases.
A&R
This stands for “artists and repertoire,” which is another term for “talent scout.” This is the department of a record label tasked with finding new artists and new songs. Once they find a promising artist, it’s their job to sign them to a contract, help them sort through their material, and then guide them through the entire recording process.
A&R used to require spending long, late nights in dingy clubs looking for the Next Big Thing and struggling through endless piles of demos. That’s still part of the job, but increasingly it involves groups of people in front of computers searching through YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Instagram and TikTok.
Whatever the method, A&R work can be mind-numbing, highly competitive and extremely hit-or-miss. If an A&R person has a dry spell, it can be career-ending. But when that singer or that singer comes along, it’s worth it.
Advance
When an A&R person finds a promising artist, chances are they’re pretty skint and may not even be able to afford proper instruments. The label then arranges an advance, which is basically a payday loan. The artist is given an amount of money for everything they need to take their career to the next step. That money will start being recouped — paid back — the moment any money starts coming in. The artist won’t see any profit until the advance has been repaid.
For the artist, it’s a lifesaver. For the label, it’s a big bet because it’s acting as a bank offering a loan to a dodgy client. The majority of signings will never be able to repay their advance, meaning that the record label writes it off as a bad investment. But if just one or two acts out of 25-30 signings hit it big (and five or six at least break even), the profits to the label are enough to cover all the losses.
Catalogue
This is a label’s older material, usually defined as music that is at least two years old. It covers material by artists who are no longer active and music that’s no longer being actively being promoted as new and current. However, catalogue is a huge profit generator because this is music that’s long been paid for. Any revenue that comes from catalogue is pure gravy for the label and (hopefully) the artist. For example, before the collapse of album sales in the early 2000s, a group like the Doors could expect their albums to sell around a million copies a year. The Beastie Boys cashed a lot of big cheques for 1986’s Licensed to Ill over many years.
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Catalogue departments are also behind reissues and box sets, which can come with very high margins. The profits can be extraordinary.
ISRC
This is an opaque one. It stands for International Standard Recording Code, a unique identifier for each and every recording that gets released. It’s the equivalent of an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) that is generated for every book published. It’s usually displayed somewhere on the cover.
The ISRC numbering initiative was born in 1986. The 12-character alphanumeric ID begins with a two-character code for the country that issued the recording. The second group of letters stands for the rights holder who registered the recording. It’s followed by a series of numbers that indicate the year the number was assigned, followed by the song’s unique designation code.
Easy, right? Well, no. Each recording needs its own ISRC. That means every recording, every remix and every version in every territory where it is released gets its own ISRC. And this not only applies to music, but any audio, from audiobooks to officially released interviews. Getting ISRC data right is essential not only for identifying every song in the universe, but for making sure everyone gets paid: the artist, the label, the publisher, the remixer, the composer — everyone associated with that exact individual musical work.
Metadata
A simple definition is “data about data.” This is information that describes all the important information about a digital recording. If you rip a song using, say, iTunes, you can open a window that displays a number of fields for song title, artist, composer, genre, length, album, year of release and a variety of other essential information. Other types of metadata include the performance rights organization with which the song is registered, its ISRC and the UPC (Universal Product Code).
Metadata is essential when it comes to establishing the uniqueness and pedigree of a song. The more metadata that’s included, the greater the likelihood of the song being properly identified so the right people can get paid. A big problem in the music industry today is artists/labels that don’t encode all the necessary metadata with their releases. Not only do they risk not getting paid properly, but the algorithms that run recommendations on streaming music services use metadata to serve up the right songs to the right people.
Performing rights organization
Virtually every country in the world has a PRO or two. These are organizations that collect money on behalf of artists and copyright holders for public performances of songs. Canada, for example, has SOCAN, while in the U.S., there’s ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The U.K. has PRS, it’s GEMA for Germany, SACEM in France, and APRA in Australia.
Each PRO has the legal right to grant licences to anything and anyone that plays music in public. That includes radio stations, TV, clubs, venues, stores, businesses, offices and so on. The cost of an annual licence depends on a number of factors. For example, a business’s licence may be determined by square footage. This probably explains why Costco stores never play music for shoppers. The cost of a PRO licence would be expensive, which would cut into their ability to keep prices low.
Publishing
The music business started almost 200 years ago. Back then, a songwriter would take a song to a company that would then print it as sheet music. That company would then send out representatives to music stores to convince them to stock that sheet music. Others would hit up talent agencies to try and convince managers to get their artists to perform these songs. If that happened, then the likelihood of people of people buying the sheet music went up. Some reps would even hire singers to belt out the song in public in hopes that someone would stop and say, “Hey, that’s a pretty fine tune. What’s it called? And where can I buy the sheet music?”
When player pianos came along — automatic pianos that used big rolls of perforated paper to activate the keys — music publishers handled the distribution of those piano rolls.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and we finally get to the modern definition of music publishing. A publisher signs a deal with a songwriter/artist who assigns the copyright — literally the “right to copy” — of the song to the publisher. From there, the music publisher tries to get the songwriter’s music into as many places as possible: covers by other artists, movies, TV shows, commercials, and so on.
The publisher also protects the artist from being ripped off by policing the use of its assigned songs. If any unauthorized use is detected (for example, a sample that wasn’t cleared), the publisher goes after the offender. Finally, the publisher collects royalties based on what they’ve managed to do and then pays the songwriter. The split is usually 50-50 between the songwriter and the publisher.
Sync
This is short of “synchronization” and involves combining music with something else. When you hear a song in a commercial, a TV show or a movie, that’s known as a “sync.” This can only be done with permission and paying for the privilege. Publishers are very involved in sync rights. Artists love them, too, because it can mean a huge payday. Sync deals have become increasingly important in an era when no one is making money selling physical music. That explains why you hear so many popular songs in TV commercials, doesn’t it?
If you need some music industry jargon translated into proper English, drop me a line at alan.cross@corusent.com.
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