From Woody Guthrie to Pete Townshend and more, TRO Essex Music Group turns 75

Fly Me to the Moon,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” “Space Oddity” — the list reads like the top titles in a major music label's catalog.

But it's actually a list of just some of the copyrights in the catalog of quiet independent publishing giant TRO Essex Music Group. Founded in 1949 by Howie Richmond, former press agent for the day's biggest stars such as Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa, who became a pioneering music publisher (and co-founder of the Songwriters Hall of Fame), today's TRO Essex . started as Cromwell Inc. and quickly grew into a collection of 22 publishing companies under the Richmond Organization (TRO) umbrella. He became a titan of indie publishing, particularly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, finding success in jazz with Bill Evans and Alec Wilder, in folk with Pete Seeger, Lud Belly and Woody Guthrie, and in rock with Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath. Marc Bolan of T. Rex, The Who and Pete Townshend.

At 75, TRO Essex is still going strong, managing its formidable catalog of publishing and recorded music interests through its international offices in Hamburg, Germany. London; Paris; and elsewhere. After a couple of decades of taking on a larger catalog management role, TRO Essex is back at the fore, using revenue from previous evergreens to fund new growth.

“For our 75th anniversary, we started thinking about ways we could celebrate our past and move into our next chapter,” says Kathryn “Kathy” Ostien, COO of global music operations. “So we restructured and brought in a whole new A&R team. In 2023, we signed 26 new authors to the publishing list. Then we started a new label called Shamus Records at the end of the year to manage their masters.”

That includes bets on albums to be released this year by newcomers of all genres, including alt-pop talent Sam Louis, indie pop artist Casii Stephan and jazz producer Matt Stevens.

The company is also releasing the latest album in its series Evergreens Reimagined, under Shamus, enlisting her new talent to cover older hits. “It's an exciting time,” says Ostien. “We're rapidly building on our already incredible foundation, but we're also ready for the future.”

You take care of such a rich catalog, which you manage internally. What is your strongest income stream?

I feel like it changes every five years, mostly because of the technology we've seen. Obviously, it used to be CDs, cassettes, LPs. Mechanics were everything. Performance has always been strong, too. Overall, I think the mechanics have always been very solid. Our most iconic catalogs continue to do well with mechanics as well as timing.

When I first came to TRO Essex [in 2000], the synchronization market was not much. We outsourced it. Now it's a huge amount of what we do — talking in studios in Los Angeles, New York. Any type of timing is important to us — commercials, movies, TV shows. The Hollywood strikes didn't help last year.

Has the timing increased now that the strikes are over?

We've certainly seen some nice pickups over the past few months.

Do some items in your catalog sync better than others? I've heard that rock has a special interest in synch.

I don't know that I see it that way. There was a period in the early 2000s where rock was really, really desirable for commercials. Every advertising agency wanted a Pete Townshend song. It ebbs and flows and it all comes from the studios — sometimes they want hard rock, sometimes they want a standard. It depends. During COVID, we did really well with timing, ironic because we have a lot of songs about peace in wartime, hopeful songs. That's what everyone wanted. He did well with commercials and productions during that time.

Your catalog includes some of America's most influential protest anthems, and the last five years or so have seen the rise of many social movements. Do you treat these songs with special care?

We have a lot of protest songs. It's interesting, especially with the political climate we've had in recent years. One of the things we're very proud of is protecting these songs and making sure they're used the way they were originally written — you always want to stay true to that. You want to keep songs like “This Land Is Your Land” within the time and [context] it was important. We also represent “We Shall Overcome”, which is very iconic. This song in particular gets the most editing because it's so special [the Civil Rights] movement.

How has the popularity of sampling, jamming and more affected your catalog over the last few decades?

Sampling really took off with hip-hop and rap in the late 90s, and then Really took off in the mid-2000s. It was great for our back catalog, though, to have new copyrights put in place over songs. A great example is how Joe Cocker's “Woman to Woman” became 2Pac's “California Love.” We work with many hip-hop and rap managers to take some of these iconic songs and bring them to life.

The catalog market has been hot for the last five or so years. Does TRO Essex ever try to get more listings?

We don't do acquisitions — never had to. We want to grow our company following our own story, which has always been about discovering new, incredible songs that don't have a home and seeing what we can do with them.

Was there a period when you completely stopped signing front line acts? Or was it just a slowdown until Shamus Records was founded?

I don't know if I'd say it stopped completely, but [it slowed in] in the 80s to the 90s. This is a large directory for independent management. We are now trying to restart this signature process.

Is there a certain identity you're trying to create with the Shamus signers?

It's still so new, and our team here is still so young. Mostly, we're just trying to do what [founder] Howie [Richmond] did — find songs and acts we like and see what we can do with them. I don't know if we really have a brand in mind with our roster, but we were thinking that we wanted to bring newer sounds to the catalog.

What is one of the most important things you can offer an act looking to sign to Shamus Records/TRO Essex?

It's an interesting time right now because metadata is everything. We think metadata management takes away the creativity that writers and artists could have if they didn't have to sit there and go through all these different portals to try to get their money. This is something we excel at.

Having accurate and complete metadata — such as the names of all songwriters, performing rights organizations and publishers they use — is important to keep track of as a publishing manager. Do you think it's more important than ever to closely manage your metadata to ensure you and your talent get paid?

Yes exactly. We had to bring in new staff just to handle metadata management. This applies to all publishers. It was incredible what happened [the Music Modernization Act] and its creation [Mechanical Licensing Collective]. MLC has created this portal that makes it so easy for you to match and claim rights to your songs. It really has made it so much easier. There was nothing there before. It has made it much more universal and cleaner.

Internal management with the caliber of catalog that TRO Essex has must be a lot of work. How do you keep up with that as an indie gamer?

It's one of the hard things about staying independent because as the revenue goes up, so do the administrative costs if you do it right.

I'm sure someone would be interested in buying or managing this directory for TRO Essex. Why was it important to make sure you were always independent, always doing your own thing despite the challenges that come with it?

I'm not the right person to talk about why we never sold, but the motivation was never there for us. We are proud of what we do. We are strong. We are very healthy financially. We don't think anyone else knows these copyrights as well as we do, and we're good at what we do.

There are many emerging revenue streams in music, particularly in social media licensing. TikTok made headlines this year for its tense negotiations with Universal Music Group. Are these sources of income good and profitable for your list?

I haven't seen this [TikTok payments] makes a huge [boost] to us financially, but any way you can find a catalog out there is important, especially with a vintage catalog. It is a new way of introducing it. We just need to be paid appropriately. We follow his instructions [National Music Publishers’ Association].

Another emerging area of ​​the music business is artificial intelligence, which could offer both risks and benefits to catalog owners. Some even use artificial intelligence to market their listings. Do you have any estates interested in leaning into AI for this purpose?

There is so much more to understand about artificial intelligence. At this point, I don't think it affects us as much as it probably does some of the current recording artists, mainly because of the copying of voices and imitations. For us, our copyright is a much more secure foundation. It will be interesting to see how AI develops and what the real impact is on copyright. We haven't had anyone really troubling in terms of property or authorship. As I said earlier though, every five years there seems to be a sea change. We are watching it.

Since you have such a strong back catalog, it would be easy to say, “This is it.” You will just continue to manage and not push for new deeds to be signed. Frontline is so dangerous. Why was it important to keep signing new talent?

It's a lot of work to manage a catalog like this and it presents different, evolving challenges around the world, so that's what we've been doing for a long time. However, looking at the 75th anniversary, we decided we wanted to breathe new life into it. We wanted to create these new arrangements, explore a new sound and see what we could do to revitalize it. While we were at it, we just thought, “Okay, let's see what else we can sign.” It is an exciting time to celebrate this incredible history of the past 75 years and then look to the next 75 years with such hope and excitement.

This story originally appeared in the June 22, 2024 issue of Advertising sign.