Nicholas Firth is Chairman and CEO of BMG Music Publishing Worldwide, overseeing both BMG Songs and Zomba Music Publishing. Having been with BMG Music Pub since 1987, this forty year music industry vet hails from a family of music publishers. His grandfather and great uncle, Louis and Max Dreyfus, owned and operated Chappell & Co. and were two groundbreaking leaders of the modern music publishing industry. Firth worked for Chappell during the 60s, PolyGram’s publishing companies during the 70s and 80s, before Bertelsmann hired him. He currently serves on several boards, including ASCAP, the National Music Publishers Association, and the International Music Publisher Association. With new forms of digital technology and digital distribution popping up every few months, operating two of the world’s largest independent publishing companies is no small task. Throw in the recent announcement that the Universal Music Group plans on purchasing BMG Music Publishing, and Firth’s job becomes even more interesting.

The Digital Rights issues continue to be one of the greatest challenges facing music publishers and songwriters currently. Do you believe the industry has made any significant headway in that particular arena and are the problems being solved to the satisfaction of music publishers?
The simple answer is yes, but not completely to everyone’s satisfaction. I don’t think you will ever get a perfect world. There’s been piracy going back through history. At the turn of the century, the pirates used to wait on the docks of Australia for the latest sheet music to come in from England. They would then pirate or counterfeit it. Go back 20-50 years and you would have bootleggers who had pressing plants in backstreets and they would pirate records regularly. I’ve been in this business 40 years and piracy has always existed. In terms of digital piracy, it is just easier to pirate today. You obviously can produce a perfect copy, which was something you couldn’t do before. We didn’t have digital rights management issues 20 or 30 years ago. When the old Napster was around, we absolutely had no control, and now we have some controls. But I don’t think it’s ever going to be perfect.

Like the record side, would you say that the publishing community, too, has experienced a period of downsizing?
The record business clearly still continues to be challenged—especially with the transition from the brick and mortar world to the digital world. That still is a work in progress. For music publishers—thank the Lord—we are not totally dependent on the record industry and can depend upon other earning streams: sheet music, Ringtones, commercials, and not just in the sale of records.

But isn’t your main source of revenue going to come from record sales?
I think that’s a misnomer. Less than fifty percent of our business today comes from the record business. For a broad-based music publisher, the record business could or may be the most single important area of our industry; but we don’t live or die by it. We are somewhat affected by the record industry. If the record industry gets a cold, we at least get a sniffle. However, all during this decline over the last five years, music publishing has continued to grow.

Warner Music Group recently announced a deal with YouTube. In your opinion, can companies like yours make money by doing deals with MySpace and YouTube, especially since there is no way to accurately tabulate mechanicals?
I hope so. My company has not struck a deal with either of them, so I’m a little reluctant to give you a precise answer to that question. My anticipation says sure. Why would we not be able to make money? If I license my music for sale to be used by a product like a beer company, does the person who watches TV pay for viewing that commercial? Do, I get paid, though? I get paid to whoever I license it to. Did Google just pay a lot of money for YouTube? So, there must be some commercial value. Therefore, I assume they are going to be able to pay us. I don’t necessarily know how they are going to pay us, but the fact that someone is willing to pay nearly $2 billion in commercial value then we’ll figure it out. Although I don’t know exactly what the Warner Music Group is being paid, you can be sure that they aren’t licensing their material for nothing.

The fact that money is being lost—I would agree with you, because we don’t live in a perfect world. These new entities will be an add-on. The music publishing business has been in existence for over 500 years—a lot longer than the record business and the broadcasting business. Every once in a while, someone comes up with a new way of selling music; whether it is sheet music, 45 singles, 33 LPs, tapes or 8-track, whatever. Whenever someone comes up with a new way of selling music, that’s good for music publishing and it is good for songwriters. It’s not that the new way necessarily hurts the old way; it’s additional revenue. I don’t know exactly how we’re going to get paid, but we will get paid. And, tomorrow someone will figure out another way to get music, and I promise you we may have to sue the pants off of them, but we will find a way of getting paid.

How does a Chairman like you oversee both Zomba and BMG? Are they completely separate cultures, or has the company been able to successfully merge them as one cohesive operation? Explain
First of all the way you ought to see this is like two record labels. If you asked [Universal Music Group Chairman] Doug Morris, [Warner Music Group Chairman] Edgar Brofman or anybody how they run more than one label, and they would say they find good people to run the labels and let them manage the creative process. And, that’s exactly what we do. Zomba and BMG for us are separate labels with their own separate rosters with their own separate management and they have their own character.

What career advice do you have to those wanting to be an executive in music publishing, and to songwriters looking to sustain longer careers in music?
Good question. As far as songwriters are concerned, my first advice would be, “Take a little longer to write that song.” The greatest songwriters would sometimes agonize over one word in a lyric for weeks. They would work on a melody for weeks. More attention needs to be paid to detail, and working to make something be the best it can be; not always working in a hurry. As far as music publishers, we are a very small business; almost tiny in comparison to other parts of our business when looking at the number of people employed by the major labels. I think a lot of people think that music publishing and the record business are kind of the same thing and they are not. Music publishing is a penny business, and we need people who care about details. We also need people who have vision to sign a young songwriter before he or she has made a record or secured a placement of a song. It takes a great deal of foresight and vision and there are very few people who can spot talent way in advance of them having a big career.

What keeps you in the music business after 40 years and what if anything would you like to see change about it?
What keeps me in the business is what you have been asking me about—and that is the business changes. All of the changes we get over the years are pretty exciting—whether it changes in musical style or whether it changes in delivery or distribution systems and different formats. That’s all exciting because it is challenging to figure out how to get paid, how to structure new deals, whether it’s a Ringtone or a record. The deal making is challenging and is always changing, too. What I would change, is exactly what we’ve been talking about. I’d like to be paid every time our music gets used. I don’t like being ripped off. But if there were a perfect way, I believe strongly that composers, songwriters and artists should be paid for their work, and also music publishers. If I could change one thing, it would be to perfect that.