Tim Major and David Ventura are changing the face of Sony Music Publishing, intent on pushing the company ahead of the competition. A year after their big rebrand, the pair meet Music Week to talk A&R, songwriting and their unique approach to making hits...
WORDS: JAMES HANLEY
PHOTOS: ANTONY BEBAWI
It wasn’t just the name that changed when Sony/ATV morphed into Sony Music Publishing this time last year. In dusting off the classic brand after a quarter of a century, it lifted the curtain on a brave new era for the market-leading behemoth.
“Not only was it a rebrand, it was a kind of rebirth,” David Ventura, the publisher’s president and co-MD, tells Music Week over Zoom. “It was the 25th anniversary of Sony Music Publishing [SMP], so it seemed like the universe was synchronised and it was just the perfect moment to make it happen. We had an amazing run when we were Sony/ATV Music Publishing, but it’s different days, different leadership and a different culture. It was not only a rebrand of the company, it was a rebrand in our creative forces as well.”
In earnest, the revolution had begun some 18 months earlier with the appointment of the hugely-respected American exec Jon Platt as chairman/CEO. “Big Jon” succeeded the legendary Martin Bandier in the then Sony/ATV hot-seat in 2019 when he joined from Warner/Chappell – completing a round of publishing musical chairs that had already seen Sony/ATV UK boss Guy Moot make the switch in the opposite direction.
“We feel like the new era started when Jon Platt came in, but the rebrand was a great opportunity for us to build something that was ours,” reflects co-MD Tim Major. “Jon is inspirational. He has brought an incredible energy and focus, and is very intentional about the culture of the company.
“In many respects, he has given us a licence to take the UK company forward how we want to. He’s not forcing things on us; he’s very open to collaborating and for us to build the company how we see it. And we took the energy that he brought and we threw it into what we were trying to do.”
Ventura and Platt’s paths first crossed at the start of the former’s publishing journey at EMI Music Publishing’s London office in 2010.
“Jon is an icon,” beams Ventura. “Jon is a living legend. Jon is an example. Jon is a mentor. But the adjective I would use to define him the most is ‘caring’. Jon cares for songwriters, and that’s the only leadership that works for a publisher because we’re looking after others, that’s our job. We have a duty to be at the service of our songwriters.”
SMP was named publisher of the year at the Music Week Awards in 2020, and its roster boasts superstars such as Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX and more. The company has pressed ahead with a series of laudable schemes including Songwriters Forward, which was unveiled in July 2021. The programme waives existing unrecouped balances to earnings for eligible songwriters signed prior to 2000, who have not received advances since. At the start of this month, it launched Songwriter Assistance, a new counselling and wellness service.
Moreover, SMP’s Cash Out initiative enables songwriters and clients to request some or all of their current royalty balance to be paid immediately and it has upgraded its admin services to offer real-time inter-company processing for all foreign earnings.
“The Songwriter Forward initiatives are just another part of what we’re trying to do to put our songwriters first and I think it shows that we’re very aware of what’s important to them,” says Major. “We’re trying to be progressive and it is the first of many initiatives that will come through that programme.”
“It’s an important example of how close we want to be with our songwriters and how we had the ability to change things for them,” remarks Ventura. “We don’t want to be looking at an old prehistoric industry, which doesn’t evolve, doesn’t change and doesn’t listen. Jon pushed straight away to make it happen and I think it’s an incredible initiative. Again, it’s reflecting on how Sony Music Publishing wants to service the songwriter first. We were not obliged to do it, but it’s been done because it was important for the songwriter community.”
Of the potential ramifications of the DCMS streaming inquiry, Major will only say that SMP intends to “fully engage” in discussions around where songwriters sit in the economics of streaming” and will “advocate for fair compensation on behalf of our songwriters and the greater songwriting community”. Platt, meanwhile, has made SMP’s stance clear ahead of this year’s United States Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) trial to set the mechanical royalty rates paid by DSPs to songwriters and publishers in the US for the next five years. “We are hopeful that the CRB will do the right thing and deliver a much-needed rate increase for songwriters and composers,” he said in a letter to clients.
Promoting Ventura and Major to lead the company’s British arm was Platt’s first major move in his new parish. The pair had risen up the Sony ranks together, Ventura having moved to Sony/ATV following its 2012 acquisition of EMI’s publishing operation. In 2015, he became head of A&R, UK, also taking on the role of SVP, international.
“Do you want the real truth? I had a totally wrong view about publishing,” admits Ventura, who was creative director at French radio station NRJ Music in his former life. “For me, publishers were people wearing [suit] jackets and not really doing anything. But then I started to really look into it and it was a revelation, because publishers are at the centre of everything. From the outside, it’s probably not as sexy as record labels, but it is the most innovative, powerful and creative job ever. In 11 years, I can tell you very loud and clear that I’ve been learning every day – and I’m still learning.”
Major started his career as an in-house lawyer at the BPI in 2007 before moving on to Universal Records in 2011 as legal & business affairs manager for commercial media partnerships & globe.
“I suppose my journey was slightly different to David’s because, like so many people in the industry, I started as a musician,” he reveals. “I went to LIPA, having already done a law degree. And when I was at music college, I started to realise there was this whole business around music. I was never going to be a rock star, I was going to have to get a ‘proper’ job, and I decided that I could use my law degree to get into the industry.”
Joining Sony/ATV UK in 2013 as legal & business affairs manager, Major was promoted to director of legal & business affairs in 2014 and general counsel/VP, legal & business affairs three years later.
“I moved across to publishing for a couple of reasons,” he says. “One, I honestly realised it was where the most creativity happened. As somebody who was obsessed with music and songs, it was the part of the business that I felt way more comfortable in. Also, I felt like I had an opportunity to not be in a box, so I could actually develop and expand from being a lawyer into a wider role in the business, which is obviously where I’ve ended up. It’s just such a creative part of the business to be around songwriters and songs. Without the songs, we don’t have music.”
At the time of their appointments, Platt praised Ventura’s “rare gift for A&R that brings out the best in our songwriters”, along with Major’s “incisive legal skills and business acumen”. As a partnership, it sounds close to perfect.
“I suppose our roles were split [between] creative and operational when we came together, but there is way more synergy in what we do,” explains Major. “We share a viewpoint and a direction for the company. There are times when we come together to make things happen, and there are times when we work individually to make things happen. That’s our biggest strength, but we’re always working for each other. It’s worked brilliantly so far, and I only see it working that way in the future.”
“I was just trying to think about a moment where we had a disagreement,” ponders Ventura. “I love Tim’s wiseness, and the fact that he’s always very calm, whereas I’m just a ball of crazy energies. It’s probably my French DNA! But we complement each other very well.”
Ventura says that, now, the pair are ready to tell the world what they’ve been doing.
“We’ve been very discreet for the last few years, but when we look at the incredible roster and the incredible results we’ve been getting, we are extremely happy and excited,” he says. “We feel this is just the first phase, and now we’re going to get into the second phase. The first phase was rebuilding; the second phase is prosperity.
“We have very exciting releases coming, with some incredible people coming back: Ellie Goulding, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Tom Grennan, Aitch, Ella Henderson, James Bay… 2022 will be very rich.”
Although the London-based duo have kept deliberately low profiles since taking the wheel, their accomplishments to date speak volumes.
The two initiated a root and branch overhaul of SMP UK’s A&R department, with a number of significant arrivals and promotions. Rinse FM founder and former EMI A&R manager Sarah Lockhart came on board as VP, A&R in March 2020 and quickly signed the likes of Aitch, Young T & Bugsey, D-Block Europe and Shaybo. She was upped to head of the division eight months later.
Additional appointments included Chimene Mantori, formerly of Island Records, Atlantic Records and Imagem, and Daniel Seal, previously of Black Butter and Songs Publishing, while there were promotions for Felix Canetty-Clarke, Sarah Gabrielli and Lily Beau Conway. More recently, Sony Music Publishing announced Second Songs, a new joint venture with former Universal Music Publishing Group A&R execs Caroline Elleray and Mark Gale, while Ari Gelaw joined the US office as VP, creative.
“When Tim and I took over, I think we had two people left in the A&R department, so it was a total revamp and we had to start from scratch,” says Ventura. “These days, it’s a mix of old-fashioned A&R and data analysis. I much prefer discovering a song and thinking, ‘I love it’, but you have to admit that data takes a big space. And I think the symbiosis between true, old school A&R and data has been the reason we are having a great run. You can’t fake A&R. It’s either running in your blood, or not, and I think our team is really breathing it.”
New signings PinkPantheress, Pa Salieu, Tems, Lola Young, Mimi Webb and Arlo Parks (with Young Music Publishing) have all made their mark. Parks snared the Mercury Prize and the breakthrough act award at the BRITs and Pa Salieu won BBC’s Sound Of 2021 gong, while PinkPantheress, Tems, Young and Webb made the Sound Of 2022 longlist. Other recent additions include KSI, Danger Mouse, Declan McKenna, Arrdee, Thomas Headon, James Bay and GuiltyBeatz, as well as extensions with Skepta, Tom Grennan, James Vincent McMorrow, Burns and James Arthur, among others.
“A&R is you putting your belief in someone,” asserts Ventura, who has signed or worked with the likes of Clean Bandit, Martin Solveig, Passenger, Kygo, Jorja Smith, Sigrid, JP Cooper and Becky Hill. “You believe a songwriter; you believe what they write; you believe their story. A&R is super-subjective; it’s about taste, it’s about emotion, and it’s been very comforting and reassuring for us to see that our early A&R signings have become [successful].”
TikTok, they say, is an essential part of the conversation these days.
“The new generation is talking and we have to listen to them,” says Ventura. “The young people are always right; this is how they consume music these days and we have to adapt. I mean, it’s probably not the most intensive A&R process, I have to say, but this is the market and TikTok is giving a great opportunity for [older] songs to come back. It’s an incredible medium of communication, the biggest on the planet at the moment. So yes, TikTok is in our A&R meetings.”
Last year, of course, saw the triumphant return of one of SMP’s prize assets – the hitmaking juggernaut that is Ed Sheeran, who embraced the platform and became TikTok’s most-viewed British artist account for the UK. Sheeran’s = album remains a fixture in the upper echelons of the albums chart. Major hails the record as a “masterpiece”.
“He’s simply the master of his craft,” says Major. “My first live show of last year was his Shepherd’s Bush gig in September celebrating 10 years of + and it was truly one of the best live performances I have ever seen. We are extremely blessed to be Ed’s publisher.”
“Ed is not only writing music that the whole planet loves, but he continues to write history,” adds Ventura. “I remember we could not stop playing the album over and over again here with this uncontrollable love and pride of being part of his team. He is certainly one of the most complete songwriters and artists, he is a true living genius.”
Bad Habits (written with Johnny McDaid and Fred Gibson) and Shivers (a co-write with McDaid and Kal Lavelle) were two of 2021’s biggest hits, helping SMP to a UK market share of over a third of the year’s Top 100 songs. SMP writers had shares of four out of five of the biggest singles of 2021, while their signing Greg Kurstin co-wrote and produced Adele’s Easy On Me, which finished at No.12.
Ventura and Major are proud of the company’s results, but their ultimate job satisfaction is derived from beyond the bottom line.
“We had more than a third of the market share in the UK for 2021 and we are extremely proud of that, but this is not why we’re doing this job, it’s just maths, just a number,” he insists. “We’re doing this job to see Arlo Parks win the Mercury Prize. We are winning when we hear one of our songwriters getting played on Radio 1, KISS or Capital, or when we see a song that we absolutely love from the studio being released – that is where I find the joy in this job.”
“Market share is an indicator, but it’s not what drives us,” agrees Major. “Many of our songwriters have different goals, and not all of them are fighting to get in the chart. For us, it’s really about trying to help a songwriter build their career. And that could be having a massive hit in the charts, but it doesn’t have to be. We try to support our songwriters in lots of different areas of the business. Having our songwriters saying that we are doing a great job for them is the biggest accolade; that is something that we really want to see.
“It sounds really cheesy, and I probably stole this from someone, but one of the reasons that you haven’t seen so much of us in Music Week [until now] is that it’s not really about us. We’re not trying to be held up as the best leaders in music publishing, we want to be leading the best team in music publishing. All of these results are really down to the team.”
Two of Ventura and Major’s three years in charge, lest we forget, have taken place during a pandemic. The pair have been both surprised and delighted by how well their workforce have adapted to the stark change in circumstances, and tip some new practices to outlive Covid-19.
“What’s exciting for us, having spent nearly two years of three years running the company in a pandemic, is what we bring out of it,” suggests Major. “How do we bring the things we’ve learned during that period into our work going forward? And what will that look like? That’s actually really exciting.”
“Remote songwriting has become the norm,” adds Ventura. “When we go back to a normal world, hopefully remote songwriting is going to still be operating and open up even more opportunities for songwriters.”
SMP UK, which is upping sticks from Kensington to King’s Cross in 2023, publishes Russ Millions’ share on Body, the first ever drill track to reach No.1 in the UK. The publisher also represents Olivia Rodrigo, although you won’t hear Ventura taking any credit for Drivers License et al.
“She’s been mainly A&R-d and driven by the US teams, we haven’t really been involved in the UK,” he explains. “But what I can say is Dan Nigro, who is her main co-writer, was developed by one of our A&Rs in the US, Thomas Krottinger, for many years. So the signing of Olivia [for publishing] was probably the result of that relationship, and that is something which is extremely important.”
Outside of A&R, Ventura and Major remodelled the firm’s sync operations, promoting Sarah ‘Pixie’ Pickering – who joined the Music Week Women In Music Roll Of Honour in 2020 – to VP of creative, and Chris Jones to VP of licensing. SMP also hired Naomi Asher from Wixen Music to head its burgeoning neighbouring rights department.
“Naomi Asher co-founded IAFAR. She is a fountain of knowledge in the area and we’ve seen some fantastic results since she came in,” explains Major. “We’ve also revamped our catalogue team – we’re going to announce that soon – and we’ve expanded the marketing and communications teams.
“We’ve been trying to set up a company with a forward-thinking, songwriter-focused culture. We have reorganised the team so that we’re able to implement that and we feel like the results are starting to show. Our industry is always evolving and we have to evolve with it, so we’re always trying to set our teams up for success.”
In recent years, traditional publishers have faced disruption from aggressive new players buying up publishing rights and songwriters’ shares, while there has been some recent debate in the sector regarding the relationships between major publishers and their label counterparts. Today, Ventura and Major make their stance on the matter very clear.
“We are absolutely independent in our moves, in our actions, in our negotiations,” says Ventura. “We have absolutely no influence whatsoever from the label and we are operating as a sole company, only aiming to get the best deal for our songwriters.”
SMP is no stranger to blockbuster acquisitions itself, of course, a recent example being its milestone deal to snap up Paul Simon’s song catalogue last year. The firm represents other classic catalogues including The Beatles, Queen, Motown, Carole King, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, and The Rolling Stones.
“It’s becoming sexier to own music and catalogue,” observes Ventura. “Obviously, new entrants have entered into the market and prices have risen, but we’ve been purchasing catalogues for a very long time. For us, this is not new business.”
“Listen, it hasn’t changed our focus on our emerging songwriters, we’re still providing every opportunity we can for them,” stresses Major. “As David said, this is not a new area of business, it’s just there has been a huge influx of money into the industry and a lot of focus on it, and it has [therefore] become a very competitive environment. But if it’s an opportunity for songwriters, then it’s a good thing.
“We focus on our own business,” he concludes. “I’m a runner, and sometimes I race. And one of the things that I’m always very aware of is, if you pay too much attention to the people that are running around you, you don’t see what’s coming.”
