, founder and CEO of Hipgnosis Songs, was the man of the hour — make that the day — Thursday at Canadian Music Week in Toronto, returning to his native country for three separate sessions.
“I realized, as I studied it more, that the real reason why the songwriter isn’t being paid properly is because the three or four — there were four when I started, now there are three [after EMI was acquired by Universal and Sony] — major recorded-music companies own and control the three or four major publishing companies, and they stopped those companies from advocating on behalf of songwriters because on the recorded side of the music business, they’re getting four-fifths of the revenue;...
“So I started to see institutional investors in London. And I would explain to them, ‘Listen, these songs have really predictable and reliable income,’ and I wanted to create a vehicle that isn’t a publishing company but rather a song-management company. I wanted to create a new paradigm that we would bring efficiencies to the collections of these great songs, and the blockchain was also going to change things positively for the future.