Interview: Michael Lau, COO of Round Hill Music

by Carolyn Heneghan

NYC-based music publishing company Round Hill Music is currently on a roll, signing new publishing deals left and right. The company is constantly adding to its robust back catalog of music and artists, which already includes several Beatles songs, such as “I Saw Her Standing There,” and a variety of music from Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood ,and Cee-Lo Green to Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Frank Sinatra. Round Hill Music also retains exclusive signings with indie bands like American Authors and writers who have written for such big-name artists as ZZ Top, Faith Hill and many more.

This full-service, creative music company is primarily focused on developing a wide-ranging roster of talented writers and music artists, and closely working with them on a daily basis to ensure each and every song becomes as valuable and in-demand as possible. Round Hill Music is dedicated not only to its roster but also to the way the company handles each client—with personalized creative attention that goes above and beyond what can be found at other music publishing houses.

Round Hill Music has recently announced some exciting news that proves their ability to continue increasing their reach in the music publishing industry. It acquired the publishing rights for the entire song catalog of multi-platinum-selling hard rock band Tesla, who Josh Gruss, founder and CEO of Round Hill Music, describes as “one of the most iconic bands from the hard rock era of the late eighties and early nineties.”

The company penned another exclusive music publishing deal in April with songwriter and producer Trey Bruce, an important part of the Nashville songwriting community. He’s written hits for such artists as Shelby Lynn, Randy Travis, Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allen and Reba McEntire. His first venture into television also resulted in an Emmy for Best Song for the track, “Where There’s Hope.” Round Hill Music also recently announced that they have once again boosted their roster with Icelandic quartet Bloodgroup, recipients of the esteemed Kraumar award, with whom they upgraded a sync-rep-only deal to a co-publishing deal.

With more on Round Hill Music, its inner-workings and the state of the music publishing industry as a whole, Michael Lau, COO of Round Hill Music, took the time to let us pick his brain and shared his thoughts on these topics.

SoundCtrl: Based on your experiences with Round Hill Music, where do you find the music publishing industry currently? Is it in a state of flux? Has it stagnated? What are some of the latest industry trends you find your company having to adapt to?

Michael Lau: The music publishing industry is continually adapting to the change in the income model, from mechanical heavy to digital streaming and synch. There is still money being made on single and album sales and that has improved on the digital side recently, but the emphasis has changed, at least for now. The latest trend is to find artists that have very synch friendly songs. We are in a very interesting time as a great synch placement can translate into people buying/downloading the song, leading to growth in mechanical royalties.

What type of technologies do you think have had the most effect on the music publishing industry in the past decade? What effect(s) do you think these technologies have had?

Some technologies and services that I feel have the most effects are:

Streaming music services – caused the transition from the, “buy what’s on the menu,” to the, “all-you-can-eat-pay-one-price” buffet model. Instead of the songwriter(s) making the .0911 per song, they are chasing the micro pennies that are generated by a single stream of their song. The music publishers, PROs and NMPA are fighting to increase the streaming rates. I’m hopeful that in the coming years this will change for the better.

Audio Detection – service such as TuneSat monitor television and can detect plays of music within television shows, commercials, etc. This allows for writers and publishers that have music performed on television to do the following: make sure they are getting paid properly through the PRO’s; to catch any synch license that may be continuing to be used outside of the agreed upon term, to catch infringing uses of their music that have not been licensed, etc.

Shazam – services like Shazam allow for music discovery that can lead to additional streams on Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Radio, Beats, etc. and hopefully purchases of that music.

YouTube – YouTube is one of the largest sources for people to listen and discover new music. But, what it also allows is for any music used that has been properly vetted can be monetized and via ad revenue (i.e. commercials, ad banners, etc.)

How are you using technology at Round Hill Music in your own music publishing efforts? Do you see new technologies in the pipeline that could move Round Hill, or the industry as a whole, forward in publishing operations or strategies?

There are many aspects to how technology can and is used at a publishing company like Round Hill Music. We utilize one of the industry standard IP and royalty systems that allow us to easily send and receive data to and from our foreign sub-publisher, as well as royalty data from sources that pay us. With this, we will soon provide our clients a portal whereby they can download their statements in various formats, as well as provide some really amazing online analysis tools. We also utilize a creative system that I’ve developed over 20 years which our synch and licensing team uses for day-to-day music searches and pitching to clients. I used to license this system to other music publishers a few years ago, but I decided to make it proprietary once I joined Round Hill Music. This system can communicate with all of our other systems, making it a huge time saver.

We do utilize TuneSat for all the reasons I stated in my previous response. We subscribe to Digital Rights and utilize their technology to scrub ISP’s for infringing users of our music. From the YouTube perspective, we also utilize a company that has amazing algorithms that can identify and monetize YouTube user generated content that uses music in our catalog.

A few things off the top of my head that could really push the industry forward, which would also affect the ancillary industries in a positive way would be: a unified rights database (something that they have been trying to get off the ground in Europe); synergy between the many different services that are popping up now, it’s getting a bit fractured now and bringing them all together so you can get unified data would be amazing; further development of audio fingerprinting technologies and monitoring services.

You recently signed on Nashville songwriter Trey Bruce. What types of technologies do you foresee your company applying toward his music publishing career? Are there certain technologies that are better suited for particular artists, such as Trey, than others—such as different technologies for different genres?

We would utilize all the above. There really isn’t anything specific from a publishing administration and creative standpoint. I’m not talking about what he would use for his creative process, just from an A&R and synch pitching perspective.

What about the music publishing process has changed for artists due to the influx of technology? For songwriters? For music publishing companies themselves?

In general, technology has changed the “time to live” aspect of song delivery and accessibility. Thanks to technology and how systems are able to communicate now, you can deliver a catalog with thousands of songs from a particular writer, and it can be ingested into the publishers internal systems, then quickly sent out to the PRO’s, sub-publishers, etc. extremely quickly. This is important as the sooner it’s out there, the sooner you can collect royalties. In addition, the sooner it’s in your systems, the quicker you can be pitching it to artists to get cuts as well as for synch opportunities.

Where do you think the music publishing industry is heading in the future? Do you foresee technology playing a large role in that future? 

Technology will play a tremendous role in the future of music publishing. With the examples of current technology I briefly mentioned here, to new advances that are already in the creative pipeline, the music publishing industry will benefit from the creation of new income streams to better collections processes.

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