If you don’t know, now you know Trevor Gale is the Senior Vice President of Writer Publisher Relations for SESAC. Gale oversees all of SESAC’s Writer/Publisher related activity and is responsible for signing and developing songwriters and publishers. With approximately 18 years under his belt at SESAC, Gale has seen it all and is directly responsible for SESAC’s rapid expansion in the fields of R&B and hip-hop.
Like many of us in the business, Trevor Gale started out on the creative side of music as a producer, songwriter, and drummer but as he suggested and as many of us learn, music is a beautiful creative outlet that inspires millions but the business of music is a billion dollar industry that benefits those that understand it and embrace the business as much as the music. We had the honor of chatting with the VP about his journey, SESAC, the evolution of the music industry, and what it takes to make it in this “here today gone tomorrow” business. Day 26, Brian Michael Cox, Greg Curtis, Trevor Gale.
RF: What do you think sets SESAC apart from the other performance rights organizations. Trevor Gale: ASCAP, BMI, etc. – we all do a good job but the one thing that stands out about SESAC is that we are smaller. ASCAP and BMI are great but their rosters are huge with maybe over 600,000 writers under them.
We have about 30,000 or more – because of that we are able to have a bit of closer or more intimate relationship with many of our writers. Because of our lower numbers we also pay out royalties a little faster because that is obviously less paper and trying to figure out what everyone is owed. We all pay out what we are supposed to but we just do it a little faster.
From left: SESAC President/COO, Pat Collins; SESAC Chairman of the Board/CEO, Stephen Swid; SESAC Senior VP, Writer/Publisher Relations, Trevor Gale; Music Executive, Sylvia Rhode; Rico Love; Melanie Fiona. (Photo: Shawn Ehlers)RF: All the of the major performance rights organizations have made their presence and opinion known on Capitol Hill in regard to the compensation of songwriters in this new industry. If you could personally change one thing about the way songwriters and publishers are compensated, what would you change? Trevor Gale: The landscape is changing a little bit.
Obviously has thrown a big wrench and a big chocolate cream pie into the middle of the old entertainment world. I paint those two pictures because it one way it has changed what we have known for years and years. You used to put out a vinyl record, then it became a cassette, or cd and you got your royalties from it playing on the radio, TV, or from selling that record in the stores.
Now there isn’t that many stores and it’s all being downloaded on the internet. People are even hearing music a lot more so than on brick and mortar radio stations. That digital change has changed the way songwriters and publishers get compensated.
If I had my way, there are a lot of things I would do to enable songwriters and publishers to get paid adequately no matter if it’s online or physical store that is still their intellectual property. My vote would be for when you pay your cable month; your cable bill is $75 a month and my thing would be your cable bill would become $79. That extra $4 would go to the music industry so that songwriters and publishers whose music and content is being utilized would get compensated off the top.
They don’t want to do that so they are fighting with the actual fighting with the entities that are being transmitted through the cable. Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, blah, blah, blah… Right?
If you don’t have cable you don’t get none of them. My thought and it’s not so unique, but the cable companies are like don’t even mess with us. To me that is how the music is being transmitted so I say put a small tax or a tariff that doesn’t hurt the consumer.
If every person that has cable paid an extra $3 that would be a lot of money. That is one of the ideas. In the end, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC have been fighting to make sure songwriters and publishers get paid fairly and I think that fight is going to go on for a little while because everyone wants to make their money.
At the end of the day I’m hoping it shakes out more fairly. Back in the day I would get artist royalties if my record when Gold but I would also get songwriter royalties. Nowadays, we don’t buy records.
We pay for the premium Spotify or Pandora and now we can take the song or record everywhere without really buying it.