Marie Charlotte Götting
Research expert covering audio media
Independent music publishers - statistics & facts
While the global music market is dominated by major players such as Sony and Warner music, independent music publishers also have a long tradition of drawing musicians and artists to them by showing their adaptability to the ever-changing market and by providing niche offerings to artists. Independent music publishers, with publishers being considered “independent” if their market share is lower than five percent of the overall music publishing market, experienced significant growth before the COVID-19 pandemic, making up a market share of about 31 percent of music publishing globally. However, with the income generated from music moving more towards digital formats and the streaming of music and away from physical sales, independent music publishers, also called Indies, still have a long way to catch up with their market-dominating counterparts, who nowadays generate a majority of their revenue via digital formats. This shift towards digital royalties is putting the existence of independent music publishers at risk as they still emphasize physical sales.
Major players are dominating the market
Additionally, the market for Indies has become tougher, with major players on the market merging such as Sony with ATV Music Publishing as well as Universal Music with Warner/ Chappell Music. With those companies merging and buying up smaller Indies, the room for bargaining of the left-over independent music publishers is becoming smaller and smaller. Larger independent music publishers such as TuneCore or Beggar’s group, which own several indie labels such as XL Recording, Matador, 4AD, and Rough Trade, saw a revenue increase before the pandemic. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting smaller businesses especially hard, it is yet to be seen whether the usually quite robust Indies will make it through and continue their market growth post-pandemic. Popular markets have traditionally been North America, making up most of the Indies’ market, followed by Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, while independent music publishers seem less popular in the Latin American and African market. An interesting exception is Brazil, where local musicians and labels are almost exclusively promoted and used.Are music publishers still relevant?
Music publishers generate their income through different royalties, which refer to money generated through other people and distributors using or playing music for which music publishers have the copyright. Royalties include the reproduction and distribution of musical work, the performance, and display of musical work publicly as well as other work being based on the music. This means that signing with a music publisher, who will then further promote the career of a musician or a band as well as negotiate the music rights for songs and albums, is a huge step in the career of an artist and is well sought after. However, in the last years, music publishing has seen a change in the way music is consumed and distributed, with the internet and social media becoming a platform on which artists can self-promote as well as distribute their work. This makes music publishers increasingly superfluous. For this reason, it has led to independent music publishers catering more to the needs of individual songwriters as well as offering cooperation between artists and music publishers in which the power is shared, rather than focused on the label. There are also developments of successful artists signing on more promising musicians, a famous example being Ed Sheeran who has in addition to his own outstanding singer-songwriter career created the label Gingerbread Man Records and has signed successful artists such as Anne-Marie or Maisie Peters. Overall, times are changing for music publishers, and it will be interesting to see how easily they can adapt to survive or even thrive after the pandemic.
