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The Business of Composing, Part 1 - Commissions & Publishing
engines, Facebook groups, and YouTube videos have help you spend less time on the business aspect and
enabled conductors to find music much more easily more time on your compositional craft. Remember:
and broadly. However, retailers with a broad and well- your art is of great value and should be treated that
organized selection of repertoire can be a vital asset way. When all composers are paid appropriately for
for conductors. They provide a “one-stop shop” with their work, it benefits everyone involved: composers,
all represented publishers, which some conductors conductors, performers, and audiences alike.
may find more efficient than browsing and purchasing
from multiple sources. Also, some schools have vendor
accounts set up with specific companies and so they NOTES
can only purchase music from those companies (with-
out the need to create a new vendor account, which 1 Matt Parish. Choral Director website, “Dale Warland,” Jan-
can be an arduous process). On the other hand, some uary 21, 2013.
customers prefer to shop directly with the publishers, 2 Abbie Betinis, email message to author, August 22, 2022.
which in some cases can provide faster delivery, and/ 3 https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/commissioning-fees-
or may provide more financial support to the compos- calculator/
ers and editors who are creating the music. 4 U.S. Copyright Office website, “Copyright in General,” ac-
There are both large and small retailers for choral cessed August 18, 2022.
music. Larger retailers offer a wider variety of scores, 5 “ACDA Financial Policies and Procedures for State,
but smaller retailers can provide more of a personal- Region, and National Officers.” https://acda.org/
ized experience on a local scale. Many of these retail- about-us/leadership-tools. Accessed August 26, 2022.
ers advertise scores at regional and national confer- 6 All information regarding royalties was established via the
ences while maintaining email lists and other forms of retailer’s website or direct email communication with
advertising to their constituency on behalf of publish- the company. Information is accurate as of November
ers. 11, 2022. For example, Beckenhorst Press pays a 30%
royalty to composers on sales of digital products.
Conclusion
With so many publishing options, it can seem over-
whelming to choose the right path for one’s music.
Our best advice is to have conversations with other
composers to see what has worked for them, assess
your own comfort level with all of the benefits and
drawbacks involved in the various methods, and put
your music out there to see what “sticks.”
There are many details we weren’t able to cover
here, such as keeping business accounts separate from
personal accounts (and the usefulness of simple ac-
counting software), when it makes sense to incorporate
versus staying self-employed (at a certain income level,
corporate taxes and expenses will cost you less than
self-employment taxes!), when it’s time to hire a CPA,
and much more. We can’t offer professional tax advice,
but we recommend talking to someone who can!
Our hope is that by sharing this information, it can
32 CHORAL JOURNAL March/April 2023 Volume 63 Number 7