Ep. 42: The Future of ArrangeMe (with Scott Harris)

Scott Harris, welcome back to the show.

Long time no see.

Thank you.

Good to be back.

It’s such a long time.

Some of your moments.

For people listening, we’re recording these two episodes back to back.

But last week was the episode about ArrangeMe Pro, and today I wanted to catch up with Scott on more of a big picture level, all of the myriad of things that have been happening at ArrangeMe.

Just to give you a rundown if you haven’t been paying attention.

Since you first came on this show almost two years ago, we’ve had the launch of arrangeme.com, the integration of Sheet Music Direct, Note Flight, and Sheet Music Plus.

We’ve had a redesign of the Sheet Music Plus website.

We’ve added support for selling audio files.

Hal Leonard got bought by Muse Group.

We had the launch of ArrangeMe Pro, bringing titles into physical brick and mortar stores.

We have the inclusion of ArrangeMe titles in Sheet Music Direct, Pass, and MuseScore subscription programs.

If I’m doing my math right, you’ve added about 20,000 users to the site and another million songs available for licensing.

So first question, do you sleep?

That’s good.

Yes, I do.

We have a great team.

Ella Harpsted, our coordinator, is phenomenal.

It’s really her, and she and I, and then Helena helps us with customer service.

But Garrett, we’ve got the entire Hal Leonard team at our disposal.

Developers, the whole Sheet Music Plus team, the whole Sheet Music Direct team.

There’s a lot of folks that contribute to these things that we dream up and execute, and we can’t take all the credit.

So, yeah, man, we work hard and we have been working hard.

But hearing that list has forgot about a lot of that stuff.

I mean, I hope you’ve gotten a raise or two in there.

Well, I hope so, too.

I’ve been too busy working.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot, man.

And I feel like we’re just scratching the surface, buddy.

It’s an exciting time.

So just scratching the surface.

How big do you see this thing getting ultimately?

Sky’s the limit, pal.

Sky’s the limit.

As many folks as are out there writing sheet music, arranging, composing, and putting it into this print music format, fixing a note to a page, the digital page, in fairness.

Yeah, man.

I mentioned the last episode.

I feel like this is still a pretty good kept secret.

I meet people all the time that have never heard of it and that need to.

I ran into an old session player, friend of mine a couple of weeks ago here in Nashville, and he’s done a lot of arranging his career and stuff.

He’s one of these top call guys in Nashville, and I hadn’t seen him in a number of years.

He goes, what are you doing now, man?

I was like, I’m working for Hal Leonard.

I told him about ArrangeMe.

I gave him the 10-second overview, and he instantly got it.

He goes, wait a minute, so you mean all the stuff that I’ve been doing over the years?

He’s like, I can sell the sheet music?

I’m like, yep.

The license he’s taking care of?

Yep.

He’s like, can we get lunch?

I’m like, yep.

Yeah.

Even guys that are doing it at the highest levels, still aren’t really familiar with the program.

That’s why I say this guy’s the limit, man.

There’s a lot of folks that haven’t even signed up yet that we’re really interested in.

So yeah, it’s an exciting time.

So what does ArrangeMe look like in 10 years?

Let’s start wildly speculating.

Wow, man.

I’m so busy with that list you said.

I don’t know that I’ve even thought about 10 years ahead.

I mean, we’re at two or three years ahead for sure.

I don’t know, 10 years, that would almost be detrimental to try to plan that far.

There’s a certain amount about being flexible and adapting to the market.

But honestly, man, making this as good of an experience, the very best experience for self-publishers that possible, where folks don’t even think about another option, that’s really the goal, to be as compelling for any level of arranger or composer out there as possible.

That’s the end game, man, and it’s ever evolving, buddy.

I feel like we’re off to a pretty good start, if your list is any indication.

Continue to keep our pedal on the gas and moving forward as efficiently, and productively, and as quickly as we can, I think it will be to our best interests.

Boy, there’s a whole lot of people that love it, man.

We’ve got a lot of success stories and we plan to continue to share them and find out more.

There’s something really revealing in that answer that you just gave.

I think it was a good answer.

But just the thought that you can’t have a 10-year plan because so much is changing in the industry right now.

I don’t think that’s a dodge, I think that’s the truth.

I think from conversations I’ve had with other publishers, I get the same sense.

Well, 10 years ago, ArrangeMe launched in the form of Sheet Music SMP Press.

It was about 10 years ago, it was nine years ago.

That’s right.

I think it was 2014 because I had just graduated.

Sheet Music Plus, an independent company at the time, approached Hal Leonard and said, Hey, what if we do this copyrighted titles sub-licensing with you all?

Will you give us a thousand songs to make available for anybody to do any kind of arrangement they want?

And Hal Leonard was like, Sure, let’s try it out.

And that was about 10 years ago.

And so if you would have asked whoever had that idea SMP back then, Sheet Music Plus back then, what they saw.

They got to raise too.

I don’t even know if they’re around still, but I think it would be impossible to ask them what they thought it would look like in 10 years.

I mean, maybe you get close, but yeah, I can’t imagine what this might look like in 10 years.

And I want to be able to be open and flexible to deliver what might be in front of us and what opportunities we might get that we didn’t have any clue about.

You know, at this point in time, maybe a year, 18 months, five years from now, you know, so it’s exciting, man.

I think you’re right.

I think it’s it might be a disservice to try to play that far because nobody’s got a crystal ball that continues to change and evolve.

With that in mind, could you comment on how Hal Leonard or I guess Muse now?

I don’t think that’s right.

We’ll workshop that.

How Leonard and Muse Company.

I think that’s the official line.

So how does how Leonard and Muse Company look at ArrangeMe?

Is it an experiment?

Is it the future?

Is it just another product in their large family of products?

It is one program among many, but it is one of the most exciting, I would say, internally.

We get a lot of love, man.

Internally, I know the Muse folks are excited about it.

There’s some really, really interesting conversations happening right now.

There’s a lot of nuts and bolts conversations happening right now, too.

We’re still, gosh, we’re only months into this, right?

So still trying to navigate the merging of these two juggernaut companies, really, and trying to figure out how all this works to move forward.

There’s been a lot of great things happen already.

As time moves on, the fruits of that labor are going to become more and more evident.

I’m personally excited about it.

I’m excited about ArrangeMe.

It’s still not going anywhere.

We’re pressing forward and I think there’s real genuine excitement moving forward for the program as a whole.

How has the Muse acquisition affected your department?

Has the day-to-day changed at all?

Is there a new, I mean, what’s that been like from your perspective?

From my seat, it’s not been too disrupting.

We did add the catalog to subscription services back in the spring, and so I think that’s probably the biggest thing that’s happened since the merger.

But the day-to-day hasn’t really changed much.

We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got planned, a lot of features to add, a lot of interesting things to get into.

Of course, we’re constantly trying to figure out how to gain new quality users and get the very best copyrighted material that we can to offer.

And it’s a lot to do.

So we’re just going to keep going at it until they tell us to quit, man, which I don’t see happening like ever, really.

But certainly not anytime soon.

Let’s dig in a little bit to the subscription services that have recently been added.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this generally, some of which I have shared with you.

But I do think right off the bat, it’s important to say that y’all have been going about doing it the right way, I think.

Appreciate that.

And what I mean by that, you give people the option to not participate if they don’t feel like it.

And I also think, and this is the big thing, you actually say what the royalty split is, right?

I think that’s one of the issues with Spotify and streaming audio, is that there’s all of this sort of murky, behind closed doors, like calculations of the payouts.

And at least from what I’m able to tell, there’s a much more transparent sort of accounting method behind it.

As you kind of alluded to, I think it’s fair to say it’s sort of in the experimental phase.

But what are your thoughts on the reasoning behind it?

What are the hopes?

I mean, if it’s an experiment, like what does success look like?

A great question.

Well, first of all, the big publishers have been doing this for years.

Sheet Music Direct Pass has been a program that’s been around a number of years.

Kind of, you know, I like to say the word streaming, but a sheet music subscription service in SMTPass, Sheet Music Direct Pass, has been around for a long time.

And Sony, Universal, BMG, you know, all these companies have been really great with having sheet music of their copyrights available through a subscription service for folks to have access to, just like Spotify Premium or Apple Music, you know.

So it’s certainly not taking sales away from PDFs, you know, downloads or whatever on the whole.

As far as I know, it’s truly a revenue ad situation.

It’s a different way to consume that copyright and that piece of sheet music for folks that are willing to, again, pay into the service to be able to have access to it.

So beyond that, man, it’s another way to get your stuff in front of people.

And you can’t download it, you can’t print it, and, you know, why would you want to?

That’s not what it’s about.

You know, you and I have discussed, you know, if I’m a choral director, I’m not going to try to get to work at a system where I’m like passing around my iPad, you know, that has the one copy or whatever.

It’s like, if I’m a choral director, I’m going to use Sheet Music Direct Pass or Sheet Music subscription service as a way to preview a chart where I can see the whole thing and make a more informed buying decision.

You know, same with like the concert band chart or whatever.

Until there are iPads in every single rehearsal room, you know, for every single singer or player, that mode of delivery for players on an ensemble level doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

That’s, you know, it’s really more for individuals or, you know, maybe like a quartet where everybody’s got their own subscription or they’re playing off their iPad.

So that’s a roundabout way of saying it’s value add.

You know, it’s a new way to get your music in front of eyeballs that will pay for the privilege to see it, play it, consume it.

I have been impressed, surprised, excited by the expansion to a variety of different platforms.

That has been, I think, unexpected.

Just in my experience working with the program, especially how fast it’s come on.

I mean, there’s already what?

SMD, SMP, NoteFlight, in-store, the Muse website, SMD Pass.

I mean, that’s six right there.

I’m probably missing some.

I do think every time a new thing is added, there’s sort of this freakout that happens by users.

That’s natural.

It’s different.

Change is hard.

But I also think if you’re somebody that’s serious about publishing, you have to jump on board with this stuff.

Because if you look at what all of the other publishers are doing, they are blanketing the Internet with their music.

I mean, they’re putting it on every kind of website, physically known to man, probably some that are unknown to men.

I do wonder though, is there a certain point where the amount of music out there just makes it all untenable?

I mean, this is deep philosophical, big picture industry stuff.

But we’re talking about millions and millions of songs, and if all of the songs are available everywhere, at what point does that become counterproductive?

Well, man, I tend to view this as, again, the cream rises to the top.

If you’re doing really great work, if you’re focusing on the main thing, which is writing great charts, putting your artistry into those charts, carving out your voice, and you’re doing some work to market it, making connections, trying to get your stuff played in front of people, I truly believe that’s going to be rewarded in sales, exposure, views, whatever.

You can’t put up 10 charts and leave them and expect to make a ton of sales and commissions.

You just can’t do that.

You’ve got to work at it, just like anything.

There’s no get rich quick schemes, not that anyone’s ever getting rich as a sheet music arranger or publisher.

But you know what I mean.

There’s a passion about this that if you’re focused on the right stuff, you’re going to find success.

Success is, I mean, honestly, whatever you’re looking to get out of it, but if you’re looking for sustained sales over a period of time, that takes work and commitment too.

And it starts with your virtual pen on paper and doing good quality creative work.

That’s going to rise above folks that are just kind of phoning it in or not caring about how the sheet music looks or whatever.

So we’ve had that conversation before of you can have a great chart, but if it doesn’t look good or if it’s illegible, it’s not going to sell.

And vice versa.

If you’ve got a beautiful chart that looks amazing and it’s just not good, it’s not well written, you’ve got parallel fifths everywhere, all these arranging faux pods, then they might buy it once, but they’re not going to buy anything else.

You’ve just offended the parallel fifth community.

They’ve all unsubscribed.

Thank you for that.

I love parallel fifths, man.

If it sounds good to you, do it.

I’m not an acquirer though.

Do you have any insight into the world of AI and how that’s going to come into play within sheet music?

That’s a great question.

I think it’s an incredibly powerful tool.

At the end of the day, it’s not creating.

It’s only as good as what is out there already.

That makes sense, right?

Humans create.

We create things and we find new ways to do it.

AI has gotten really good at doing a lot of the things that some people do.

But at the end of the day, man, there’s that sort of spark that we have as human beings that I don’t know that AI can ever really recreate.

So I try not to worry about it too much.

Focus on the main stuff.

Do good work and finding your voice and practicing and writing as much as you can to get as good as you can.

AI will take care of itself.

But I imagine there’s tools that will come about that will help us to that end.

I mean, I’ve heard some of the AI Voices stuff where they’re selling different voices like Garrett or Kyle or Brittany or Jessica, and you can buy the voice just like a plug-in.

You throw it into your DAW, and you can spin up a pretty convincing demo of a choral chart that a live singer never even touched.

You can program it.

And that’s pretty amazing.

But Henry Ford invented the manufacturing line, right?

So that changed the industry, too.

And here we are.

We figure it out.

We figure out new interesting ways to contribute to the landscape.

So yeah, try to be positive about it.

That’s what I’m trying to say.

What is the name of the Muse Hal Leonard AI bot?

I didn’t know there was one.

Are you breaking news again on this podcast?

I mean, I don’t want to get you fired.

Well, OK.

So the AI thing is interesting to me.

And I promise this has a point.

I think my first reaction was, oh, they’re going to just write us all out of business, right?

That’s a major reaction.

But we’ve already hit critical mass in music, right?

I mean, there’s already millions and millions of titles and arrangements out there.

But the interesting thing that I’ve been thinking about is just how AI is getting more involved in the search processes for Google and social media and those aggregate sites.

If AI is how people are going to be finding their music or shopping for their music, then that puts a whole different spin on it that I’m not sure we’re quite ready for as an industry.

And kind of piggybacking on that, in the last couple of years when the ArrangeMe website got launched and the new S&P website got launched, both times that happened, the search engines went haywire.

I mean, sales plummeted, everything fell apart.

In fairness to them, once it recovered, sales were higher than they were before.

But it was clear that something happened when the websites got refreshed or reloaded or whatever the technical term is, like the engines forgot their own name.

I mean, I don’t know if you have a more technical explanation of what happened.

I don’t, man.

I don’t.

That’s all like way over my head.

I’m a publisher.

I’m not a ones and zeros guy.

I do know that, you know, as far as the Sheet Music Plus Refresh, a re-platform, I suppose, technically, was what it was.

It was building a new foundation to make it better than what it ever could have been before on some outdated technology.

So, again, things change, things evolve, man.

You know, there’s an end of life for some things.

You’ve got to evolve and adapt and do the best you can.

And hopefully, you make it better in the long run.

So, you know, there’s some pickups along the way, and that’s going to happen.

Nothing’s perfect, buddy.

You know, nothing’s perfect.

So, that’s the one thing I’ve taken away from really this role is nothing is ever as easy as it seems and exponentially more difficult than you could possibly imagine.

And then there’s room for error.

And sometimes things don’t go the way you plan, and you’ve got to be able to pivot and adapt.

And, yeah, just be patient and trust the process.

Well, and like I said, once everything got finally reset, like sales went up, but there was that transition period where things kind of tanked.

It just sort of…

And it just made it clear to me how dependent we are on those tools, how dependent we are on search engines and websites and all of that.

I mean, it’s just interesting to think about.

And I don’t know if you have thoughts on this, but I feel like the need to sort of keep an eye on your own titles after they’re launched has become more important than it has been.

Or I don’t know, but I guess I’ve in the past assumed that once something was uploaded, that I could kind of stop thinking about it.

And then I’ll stumble across a piece months later that’s missing an element that I thought I had added or not displaying the way that I thought.

And so I guess what I’m getting at is, do you have advice on how to maintain the existing catalog while continuing to add new stuff to it?

Yeah, that’s a great question.

So it’s all part of being an engaged self-publisher.

The set it and forget it mindset is a choice.

But the most successful folks at this are not obsessing, but they are checking it.

So I’ve got a pretty small catalog myself.

And by and large, things look fine.

They’re always fine.

But I’m not obsessing over my personal catalog because I’m too busy helping everybody else’s.

So I just trust that if something happens, it’s going to get fixed.

And every now and again, I will look at my…

Well, really, when I add a new title, that’s when I kind of spot check my stuff.

And I know probably better than anybody what the nuances are.

And I’m just not worried about it because we’ve got great teams at the retail sites.

That’s typically where things break, is at the retail level, where something’s not connecting properly with ArrangeMe source of truth, for lack of a better term.

So it’s complicated, man.

It’s got to go to space.

You know, it’s one to zero.

Okay, two questions.

How many pieces are we up to so far with ArrangeMe?

And number two, how many satellites does it take to get those launched?

The number of titles you can check out any time if you go to Sheet Music Direct and type in the word ArrangeMe.

And I think we’re up to, it’s over 800,000 different assets right now.

And the satellite question, I have no idea.

I mean, you know, like we’re going to space and back just right now.

So I don’t know, extrapolate that.

Everything’s in space.

That’s right.

I’d like to get better insight into the Sheet Music Plus, Sheet Music Direct relationship.

And you know, because they market music differently, they display the music differently.

You know, there’s things that I’ll see in one website, search results that I don’t see in another and vice versa.

And going back to this idea of managing the catalog, like what do you think is the best way to approach that?

That’s a good question.

Well, let me first start just with some general stats, man.

So just from a program standpoint, ArrangeMe revenue has grown 50% over the last two years.

That growth, Sheet Music Direct has seen exponential growth just from that channel because we added all that stuff from the S&P Press Program.

We did the migration a number of years ago.

We’re flirting with 70,000 active members.

And like you just said, there’s over 800,000 separate assets titles that have been uploaded that are part of the program.

So pretty big.

All of that is at both Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus, like you said, for now we have to distinguish pay per download PDF files or audio if you’re doing audio files.

But yeah, it’s by and large a PDF sheet music business, right?

The differences between the two sites are not massive.

I mean, at the end of the day, they’re both sheet music retailers, but the approach is the angle is coming from a different angle.

Sheet Music Direct was, I think it was the, no, I know, it was the very first digital sheet music retailer in the world.

I think they launched in 1998 by Hal Leonard.

It’s a Hal Leonard company, always has been, always will be.

And so it’s digital only.

That’s it.

There’s no physical product.

It’s a digital arm of Hal Leonard publications, which now includes all the arrangement titles, which are also digital only.

Sheet Music Plus started as a physical print company, print music company.

So I think early on they built themselves as the Amazon of sheet music.

So they’ve got deals with everybody around the world, distributing physical sheet music, everything from Roger Emerson’s latest choral title in physical print, and also digital now, but to like some obscure German music theory textbook that’s only available in Berlin or something.

They have access to all that stuff.

And the Ragy program started at Sheet Music Plus, as we know, and for the longest time, that was the only digital music available through sheetmusicplus.com.

So they’re more of a physical print, traditionally focused with a lot of different vendors, and Hal Leonard is just one vendor through sheetmusicplus.com, whereas Sheet Music Direct, Hal Leonard is the only vendor because it’s their own website.

So that’s the best way I can explain the difference.

Now, as an ArrangeMe self-publisher, how do I fit in both of those ecosystems, right?

Both of those websites.

So at the end of the day, it’s very, very similar.

I’m a Sheet Music customer.

I’m looking for X title in this format, and I want to make sure that I can be able to buy it easily and quickly and be able to play it tonight or whatever.

And both sites will serve that purpose for sure.

It’s just a different way to get there.

Another difference is Sheet Music Direct Pass.

That’s what Sheet Music Direct offers that Sheet Music Plus doesn’t.

Because it’s a digital site, Sheet Music Direct has this pass subscription program where you can sign up, pay your yearly fee or monthly fee, and you can have access to all the sheet music that’s available through Sheet Music Direct for just that fee and be able to consume as much of it as you want with your iPad.

Great for a piano bar, karaoke player, just playing from an iPad, getting requests.

That’s over 2 million songs I think they have now.

And nearly half of that is ArrangeMe titles, right?

So there’s a real compelling reason to have your stuff at Sheet Music Direct in addition to Sheet Music Plus, because again, it’s just a different customer type.

How America-centric is this?

Like, are most of the users in the United States, are most of the sales in the United States?

Yeah, man, the US populates the majority of ArrangeMe users.

I will say it is truly a global program.

I mean, a significant percentage of folks are in Europe, Australia, Japan, Asia, South America.

It truly, ArrangeMe is everywhere, everywhere across the globe.

Anywhere the sun is shining, right now, this second, there’s an ArrangeMe member that is an active user.

So, that’s pretty cool, pretty exciting.

Are all of the retailers available overseas as well?

Or is there like a European counterpart to SMD?

You know, sometimes they’re separate.

Sheet Music Direct, Sheet Music Plus, both worldwide, global reach.

There’s a site called musicroom.com in Europe, UK, that Hal Leonard owns as well.

That’s just a Europe site, but ArrangeMe stuff is not available through that channel.

Yeah, SMD, SMP, which I was just saying, Sheet Music Direct, Sheet Music Plus, both worldwide, global digital retailers.

You can buy it from anywhere.

Well, and even just looking at my royalty statements, there’s a lot of sales from various countries all over the place.

It’s really cool to see.

Somebody posted about getting a sale from Croatia recently.

That’s really exciting when you get sales from different parts of the world.

It’s a shot in the arm, man.

To circle back and wrap things up, now that you’ve been in the job for two years.

Almost three, Garrett.

Almost three.

Three years, yeah.

What about that?

You made me feel old.

You.

You’ve been in the job almost three years now.

What has been the thing that’s surprised you the most about it?

Has the advice that you would give to aspiring composers changed at all during that time, as you’ve gone through all of these developments and experienced so many different interactions with composers?

Has your perspective changed at all?

I don’t think so.

Garrett, I’ve been in this business, gosh, 25 years now, almost.

I say this a lot.

At the end of the day, you’ve got to create good work.

You’ve got to be a good writer to have success, to move copies.

Focusing on that craft is always going to be important.

The most important.

The job after that is marketing and getting the word out and carving out your niche, which is informed by the work you’re doing.

But I came into this job with that perspective and that wholehearted belief, and it just remains true.

I’ve seen it proved out over and over and over again.

The folks that are the most successful are taking it seriously, but not focusing on nickels and dimes or anything.

They’re taking their work seriously.

I’ve got an idea for an arrangement.

I’m going to do it.

I’m going to do it as well as I can.

I’m going to publish it, and I’m going to tell people about it.

It’s kind of that simple, and then let the rest take care of itself, because then you focus on moving on to the next good chart and telling people about that good chart.

Something that surprised me, I think it has to do with getting the word out.

It’s a real interesting dichotomy between we’ve grown like crazy since I started almost three years ago.

Like I said, we’ve grown 50%, and we’ve more than doubled our users that are active since I’ve come on.

That’s honestly, to me, it’s a testament to the program and how good it is and how appealing it is.

I think the thing that surprised me is that it’s still a secret to a lot of people in the business.

There’s people that can really take advantage of this to just have no idea about it.

I’ve tried lots of ways.

We’ve tried lots of ways to get the word out and found some success here in some certain ways.

At the end of the day, man, it’s a word of mouth.

That’s what I found is the very best way to grow it.

If you love the program, listener, gang, please tell a friend.

Tell somebody that you know as a gift in this area.

We always want additional quality arrangers and composers.

We could spend money on ads and stuff, and we can get a bunch of fake signups that mean nothing.

I don’t care about that number.

I care about active, quality participants, sellers, self-publishers that are willing to do good work.

When you’re successful, we’re successful.

It’s as simple as that.

Well, thank you for coming on the show, and thank you for all the work that you do to support composers and arrangers.

I’ve said this before, but I think the ArrangeMe family and the ArrangeMe program is a model for a lot of other publishers and distributors to look at and to learn from.

I appreciate the work that you’re doing in that field, and excited to see what you come up with in the next two years.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, I think you said it well.

ArrangeMe family, we think of it as a community, for sure.

We work really hard to cultivate the ArrangeMe community and be conversational and provide as much support and help as possible to be successful.

Thanks for noticing.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Thanks for your personal contribution and this podcast, man.

I’m thrilled for you.

This is a great piece of media that I personally consume on the reg.

Yeah, if you have any interest in sheet music or selling sheet music, hey, there’s a title.

You’re doing great work, brother.

So I appreciate the support, man.

Clip that, go viral.

It’s an unpaid ad.

Thanks, Garrett.

Sky’s the limit.

Take care.

Talk to you soon.

Thanks.