They're Playing Our Songs
Warner/Chappell Finds Music for the New World
by Susan Houriet

(This article first appeared in Time Warner's i.e.-information entertainment- May 1996 issue)

Dale Bobo has pressing business this morning, including readying a dozen songs to play for one of Trisha Yearwood's producers, due to arrive any minute at Warner/Chappell's Nashville office. But first he has to feed the duck. It's a little black duck who appeared in the small, brick-walled courtyard the previous day and seems unable to fly out. VP of creative Bobo, clad in traditional Nashville garb of black jeans and cowboy boots, steps out of his office on the first floor of the homey, two-story building on Music Row with a bowl of fresh water and the remains of a breakfast biscuit. "You do real hard-nosed business sometimes with record companies, and the next moment a songwriter walks in your office and says, 'how about this line, and what about this change, and do you love me, and do you love my songs?'" says executive VP/general manager Tim Wipperman, looking out the window at Bobo. "We specialize in the care and feeding of songwriters. And ducks, of course."

Across the country in the Los Angeles headquarters of the world's largest music publishing company, a group of 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings, casually dressed in black and de rigeur lug-soled shoes, banters while the newest songs by Cracker and naughty by nature play full blast. The group flings DATs and CDs across the broad table to creative director of production Jeff Conroy, who acts as DJ. One haunting song, "Happiness" by Blue Nile, inspires VP of film & television Brad Rosenberger. "This song cries out 'movie.' We've got to find a movie for this," he says as he scribbles on a yellow legal pad. Warner/Chappell chairman and CEO Les Bider and president Rick Shoemaker tap out the rhythm and know all the words to Cracker's newest single. Later that night, Shoemaker and half a dozen of the people in the room will be found standing in the cigarette smoke at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard, watching as the new U.K. band Gigantic takes the stage for its Stateside debut.

This is not the world of music publishing your grandfather knew. Since the 1960s and '70s, when the importance of the pure songwriter declined (as more artists wrote their own material), publishing has sometimes been looked at as the back-office of the music business, there simply to collect revenues. But the visitor to Warner/Chappell -- which is signing fresh artists, expanding into new markets such as Southeast Asia and Latin America and operating more efficiently by circulating copyright and royalty information around the world electronically -- sings a different tune. Instead of passively signing songwriters or record company acts, Warner/Chappell is scouring the countryside to find virtually unknown musicians, both in the U.S. and abroad, and is playing a key role in nurturing their careers. They did it with Sheryl Crow (who signed a record deal with A&M, but whose songs -- along with a percentage of their royalties -- are controlled by Warner/Chappell). And that Blue Nile song? The chorus is sung by a gospel choir found by senior director of creative services Denise Weathersby.

Why is Warner/Chappell cool? For one thing, the company is remarkably healthy -- double-digit growth in 1995 -- and very efficient: today 20 employees process 35 times as much royalty revenue as 23 processed in 1982, an indication of how the company's business has improved since Bider guided the merger of Warner Bros. Music and the Chappell and Intersong Music Group in 1987. (There are currently 1,100 employees worldwide -- 450 of those in the Worldwide Print division, the world's largest publisher of sheet and printed music.) For another, Warner/Chappell is truly global. While there are four domestic offices (the newest, in Miami, opened this Spring), two-thirds of its business is overseas, with 21 offices and a presence in 36 countries. And for a third, despite being the oldest of Time Warner's businesses (born in 1811 and boasting a letter of recommendation rom Beethoven to a fellow musician), it is as third-wave and unauthoritarian as any silicon Valley start-up. Not only is Warner/Chappell's stock-in-trade pure intellectual property, the coin of the realm in the Information Age, but it runs one of the loosest, least hierarchical shops around. When asked for an organizational chart, Bider laughs and draws on a sheet of paper. "We make decisions without bureaucracy," says Ira Pianko, COO and CFO since 1988. Making that possible, the management of Warner/Chappell has remained remarkably stable -- many of the executives have been with the company for more than a decade. The result? Warner/Chappell is an interesting hybrid: on the one hand, a highly routinized revenue-producing operation; and on the other, a dynamic music business that functions much like the A&R arm of one of its sister labels.