On the Film & TV side, do you focus primarily on placing songs from the catalog, or does BMG actively sign instrumental composers and compositions also?
I find that the instrumental side is not very exploitable for us, especially in Film & TV. When the film supervisors need an instrumental cue, they can go to a music library, or they can hire it out as a work-for-hire. For us as a publisher, the whole definition of a song is melody and lyric, so we typically don’t look for instrumental composers. However, someone like Jim Brickman, who is a great artist on Windham Hill Records and who we publish, is an instrumental piano player. We have enjoyed a great deal of success with him. However, his successes are also due to co-writing with other lyricists for radio singles which comprise 20% of his album. When your writers bring you a song, do you work with them on making it the best song possible? For example, will they bring you a rough demo before they make a complete demo and ask your opinion and get critiques from you? Yes and no. There are some writers that will call me on the phone, and we’ll listen to it together, and I’ll make comment
