Guest
Ole Dreyer
Ole Dreyer is Owner at Nordic Music NMS, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Ole Dreyer of Nordic Music NMS explains how publishing, sync licensing and collection societies work, and why AI companies need to pay for training music.
Questions these episodes answer
What does music publisher Ole Dreyer mean by publishing being a penny business?
Dreyer says publishing income rarely comes from one big payday. Instead it builds up from many small payments across countries, platforms and uses, so a fortune in publishing is really the sum of thousands of tiny amounts collected over years rather than a single lucrative deal.
From: Navigating Music Publishing, Sync Deals, and Industry Politics
What percentage of a music publisher's income comes from sync licensing?
Dreyer says synchronization, music paired with pictures in film, TV or advertising, makes up about one third of publishers' income globally. Landing that income depends heavily on personal relationships with the music supervisors who choose which songs actually get placed.
From: Navigating Music Publishing, Sync Deals, and Industry Politics
What is a sub-publisher in the music industry?
Dreyer explains that a sub-publisher is a local publisher in another territory who agrees to look after a publisher's catalog and collect royalties owed there, since one publisher cannot chase every payment in every country itself. He uses sub-publishers abroad to look after his catalog, though he says he does not act as a sub-publisher for other companies in Denmark himself.
From: Navigating Music Publishing, Sync Deals, and Industry Politics
How long did it take the Danish collection society Koda to license YouTube?
Dreyer says it took eight years for Koda to reach a licensing agreement with YouTube, which had effectively been operating as an unlicensed piracy service for Danish songwriters until that deal was finally signed.
From: Navigating Music Publishing, Sync Deals, and Industry Politics
How much do big tech companies spend on lobbying compared to the music industry?
Dreyer says large tech companies spend far more on lobbying in the EU, in Washington and in Beijing than the music and film industries combined could ever match, which is why he treats every public statement from a tech company as a political move rather than a neutral one.
From: Navigating Music Publishing, Sync Deals, and Industry Politics