Downtown (company)

Downtown

Industry	Music Publishing
Founded	2007 (2007)
Founder	Justin Kalifowitz
Headquarters	New York City, United States
Area served	Global
Key people	Justin Kalifowitz (CEO) Andrew Bergman (COO/General Counsel) Alan Goodstadt (CFO)
Services	Music rights management
Divisions	Downtown Music Publishing Downtown Music Studios Songtrust Neighbouring Rights
Website	www.dmpgroup.com

Downtown is a global independent rights management and music services company. Based in New York City, it is composed of four divisions: Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust, Downtown Music Studios, and Neighbouring Rights. In addition to its New York headquarters, Downtown has offices in Nashville, Los Angeles, London, and Amsterdam.^{[1] [2]}

Downtown Music Publishing owns and/or administers works by songwriter-artists including The Beatles, Hans Zimmer, Bruce Springsteen, Motley Crue, and One Direction and represents publishing catalogs such as Cy Coleman's Notable Music Co. Inc. (US), Edizioni Curci (Italy), Kassner Music (UK) and Budde Music (Germany). Through Songtrust, it provides global royalty collection from more than 90 countries and 20,000 unique income sources worldwide. It also operates Downtown Music Studios, a recording facility in Soho, New York.^{[3] [4][5][6]}

History

Downtown was founded as Downtown Music Publishing in 2007 by Justin Kalifowitz in New York. The business model was developed to address the consolidation of the music publishing industry as well as the new technologies which impacted songwriters and copyright holder. Downtown Music Studios opened in 2008.^[2][7][8]In 2011, Downtown formally launched Songtrust as a business unit, extending the company's royalty collection platform capabilities beyond the parent publishing company. Neighboring Rights was established in 2016.^[9]

In 2013, Downtown expanded its offices to Los Angeles.^[10] In early 2014, the company expanded to Nashville and later that year founded Downtown Music Benelux. Based in Amsterdam, Downtown Music Benelux was established in collaboration with Hot Streak Music, a division of Cloud 9 Music. In 2015, following the acquisition of the London-based music publisher Eagle-i Music, Downtown UK was founded.^[11]

Divisions

Downtown Music Publishing

The publishing division, ranked in Billboard's Music Publishing Top 10, is Downtown's primary focus. In addition to administering copyrights, Downtown Music Publishing's services include royalty collection, songwriter development, catalog marketing, neighbouring rights, and financing services. It arranges co-writing opportunities and places its songwriter's compositions in film, television, advertising, and video game productions. Downtown writers have written hit songs for artists including Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Carrie Underwood, Katy Perry, Keith Urban, Rihanna, and Selena Gomez, and, among others, their compositions have been used in the Hunger Games series, Girls, and Grand Theft Auto.^[12] Brands that have featured spots from Downtown writers include the NFL, Coca Cola, Apple Inc, Budweiser and Amazon.^[13]

Downtown has formed partnerships with digital service providers including YouTube, Pandora Radio and LyricFind to directly process data and payments owed to songwriters and publishers. It provides analysis for songwriters, managers, and lawyers, allowing writers to review and export statements, see their account balance, create reports for different periods by income over different territories, and access details of each royalty line.^[14][15]

In 2016, Downtown Music Publishing was nominated for Music Business Worldwide's Publisher of the Year Award. The company appeared on the Billboard 2014 list of the Top 10 Publishers.^[16][17]

Songtrust

Songtrust is a global music rights management software platform. Launched in 2011, it services Downtown’s catalog and provides royalty collection services for global distributors such as CD Baby and The Orchard. The platform enables creators at all levels to recover their royalties directly from over 90 countries and from more than 20,000 unique income sources worldwide.^[18][9][19]

Downtown Music Studios

Downtown Music Studios is a two studio recording facility located in SoHo, Manhattan. Opened in 2008, the studios were designed by Martin Pilchner and are overseen by chief engineer Zach Hancock.

Neighbouring Rights

Through its direct affiliations with sound recording performance rights services, Downtown formally launched a Neighbouring Rights offering globally in 2016. The division enables Downtown to make certain that artists are compensated when the recorded performance of their songs are performed in public on satellite and online radio services such as Pandora.^[4]

Advocacy

Downtown’s executives sit on the board of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the United States, an organization which safeguards and promotes the interests of music publishers and songwriters to government bodies, the music industry, the media, and the public. Additionally, the company recently teamed with the Berklee College of Music's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE) to collaborate on the Open Music Initiative in an effort to achieve fair payment for songwriters through digital licensing.^[20]

Kalifowitz is a co-founder of NY is Music, a coalition of over 200 organizations advancing the importance of music in economic development, culture, and education across the state. NY is Music is credited with the passage of the 2015 New York State Tax Credit for Music production.^[21]

Partial Downtown Music Publishing roster

Further reading

• Justin Kalifowitz Talks Publishing, Big Ideas For 2016
• A Letter to the Downtown Community on Direct Licensing

References

External links

• Downtown Music Publishing

• Songtrust
• Downtown Music Studios