MI Pro

Widely recognised by music retailers as one of the most profitable lines in the shop, printed music can seem a straightforward enough proposition. You stock as wide a selection of titles as you think might appeal to your customer base, put them in a rack somewhere out the way and leave them to work their magic… There is, of course, more to maximising the profits  from printed music than that and a great deal more that goes into the producing and marketing of it. Take the biggest in the business, Milwaukee-based Hal Leonard, where the complex business of producing a gigantic
catalogue of material is planned.

And complex is indeed the word, as music publishing suffers (though some might say it benefits) from a bewildering array of rights issues. A song may be with publisher A in one territory, but publisher B in another – so how do you produce a globally useful songbook with it included?

This is just one of the battles that has to be fought by Hal Leonard’s Mark Mumford in the UK. Life would be easy if all Hal Leonard UK had to do was take titles from the US parent company and distribute them to UK shops, but it isn’t quite as simple as that, and that is what gives rise to some of the complications retailers can experience when trying to track down a particular item.

“My role is to grow and manage our business in Europe and our business here has always been fairly complex, because it’s based around what rights we have in a certain territory,” Mark Mumford says. “To get around that, in 1996 we set up a joint venture with Music Sales called Hal Leonard Europe and that has grown significantly.
That sounds complex too, with each of us owning 50 per cent of the business, but it isn’t really, because it allows us to create publications that are specific to Europe and it also enables us to distribute all of the catalogue we own outright, such as educational publications, through that business.”

To give you some idea of how big a task that can be, in the US Hal Leonard releases over 3,500 new publications every year (that’s almost ten per day, if you want a more detailed perspective). And that gets awkward, for example, when one of the company’s hugely successful series, like Jazz Play-Along, has a couple of songs included in the US version that are not copyrighted for either Hal Leonard or Music Sales in Europe.

“Because of that we may not be able to use it as it is, so we bring the book into the Hal Leonard Europe editorial camp and replace the songs we don’t control with two that we do and we’ll create a Hal Leonard Europe edition. Music stores can spot this because on the back of the book, the code number, which is usually HL becomes HLE. That’s a good sign for them, because it means the book has already been out there in the marketplace, selling well and because music stores have been asking for it, we’ve created it specifically for the European market, on the back of selling thousands of copies in the US.”

Mumford says that music retailers play a big part in this process, often badgering the company for an edition, which they have seen for sale in the US, but that hasn’t previously been offered here.

He also agrees that, in the age of Amazon, other internet sellers and downloadable online sources, the fine detail of which publisher controls which rights is starting to seem a little unnecessarily arcane. “I’m sure things like this are going to be addressed as we go forward,” he says. “We have good relationships with Music Sales and Faber in terms of licensing, so there is lot of product that does get cleared and it’s not that common a problem, but obviously it’s a big thing for the individual retailer and the customer who wants a particular title.”

A major part of the publisher’s skill is capitalising on events that happen in other media areas – the songbook for a hit musical or film, for example. A recent case in point was Twilight, which has been a huge success.

“We shadow success in other market environments and then we look at our customer base, from children learning to play, to professionals and teachers, a lot of whom may want to buy something to do with Twilight. Then we can exploit the whole range of formats we have, from easy piano to arrangements for concert bands, choirs, play-alongs and CDs and they all benefit. When you have something as successful and high profile as Twilight, then exploiting it is what a publisher like Hal Leonard excels at.

“Because of the market in the US – because there’s a good commercial market for whatever we create – the rest of Europe benefits from a wide range of formats and editions being made available. So sometimes there can be a massive variety of different publications coming out, based around just one film.

“This has really been where the major successes have been for us over the past few years – films like Disney’s High School Musical, which had a massive impact, or Mamma Mia! from last year. These are things that if you put a copy in your window, they are going to bring people into the shop.”

FILMS BRING IN FANS

Mumford makes an important point here. Whatever publicity the music industry might generate for a cultural blockbuster like Mamma Mia!, it is absolutely dwarfed by the fact that the film industry, television, radio, newspapers and magazines are all likely to be generating a mass of free publicity on top of that, which the High Street can hitch a ride on, almost for nothing, by placing a Mamma Mia! songbook in its window.

“Sometimes there’s a problem in that we end up with these books a month or two after the initial impact, because we have to wait for the music to come out before we can start working on the different arrangements, but sometimes it works the other way. For example, there’s a new Disney animated film that came out in the States in May, called Up. It doesn’t open here until October 9th, but we will already have the book in stock because it was out in the States beforehand. It’s a great opportunity to have the book out just as the film is screening.”

As you would expect, Hal Leonard has been exploring digital delivery methods and even online tuition programmes for some time now, but Mumford makes a strong case for the intrinsic value of a book in a music shop.

“Most of our publications are based around ‘I’d like to try this’ ­– where we’ve created something so that a musician who is learning to play the piano at Grade 3, for example, sees that he can also try to play other things, as well. That relies on people going into shops, opening books and seeing what is there. So we really do rely on the point of sale experience in a music store, because although people can do this to some extent on the internet, to make online work, customers really need to know what they want.

THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE

“The other thing to consider is that people who work in print become very knowledgeable about what’s available and there are some great retailers in the UK who are walking encyclopaedias. So if you are a teacher or a professional, being able to go to a music store to talk to one of these people cannot be taken for granted. In choral, orchestral and classical music in particular, it takes a while to build up that knowledge and you’re not going to get it on the web.

“There are retailers out there who have fantastic print departments, but there is a feeling among some that if you don’t have everything, you can’t really have a print business. I’m not sure I go along with that. To me it’s about looking at print as not being an accessory, but something that can bring you profit, in part because you don't have to discount and it will turn over quickly.

“If you want to spend £1,000 and you are trying to decide whether to buy 200 books or an amplifier for your music store, I know which I would choose. I know you have to have amplifiers, but people are afraid of print because they think you need loads of it to sell it. But I think if you hire somebody and give them responsibility for that part of your business, you’ll soon start to build it up – it’ll turn over regularly and bring you a regular, determined profit margin.

“You’ve also got an opportunity to attract so many different customers to your shop. If you’re only selling guitars you might be ‘just a guitar shop’ but if you bring print into your guitar shop, you’re still a guitar shop, but you’ve also got Rock Band or Guitar Hero books in your window, which are on everybody's lips. If I walk past your window and I see Guitar Hero, I might be very tempted to come in, even if I don't actually play the guitar.”

Another trick up the retailer’s sleeve is getting customers into Hal Leonard’s extensive series and drawing them back to the store as that series expands and grows. Used with an active database of customers’ email addresses, it can be a very valuable tool.

“And another thing that I think can help is not to regard books as just belonging in a dedicated print section. We do a lot of technology books and reference books which, to be honest, wouldn’t sell very well in a print department – they need to be near the software section, or the guitar section.”

A case in point is the Backbeat reference book catalogue of over 250 titles, which Hal Leonard purchased a few years ago and which is about to move this month to availability from Music Sales/ Hal Leonard Europe – just in time for the Christmas period.

“One of the big problems retailers have with Hal Leonard is that they don't know where to get a specific book from. They could go to Music Sales, or Studio Music, or Faber, who distribute the EMI titles – so we realise it can get very confusing. Our longer term strategy is about trying to find  a way of simplifying that, but we are so tied by who controls which rights, though we have done things to simplify it over the time – Hal Leonard Europe being a case in point, as is bringing Backbeat under Music Sales distribution. I always say that if you want to buy a Hal Leonard publication you go to Music Sales. There may be the odd occasion when it won’t have it – but we’re getting there.”

Hal Leonard: 01494 730143
Music sales: 01284 702600