Sheet Music Firm Sees Web as a Way to Keep in Step

Few things could appear more dissimilar than the picture of a family singing together around a piano and that of a solitary user logging on to a computer. The images seem to be from different centuries.

But companies in the traditional business of sheet music publishing are realizing they must adapt or become obsolete in the Information Age. Demonstrating an ability to use high technology in the service of a low-tech enterprise, Milwaukee-based Hal Leonard Corp., the world’s largest print music publisher, has launched a new Web service that allows people to purchase and print out music via the Internet.

Sheet Music Direct (https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com) was unveiled to the music products industry at last month’s National Assn. of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Los Angeles. Hal Leonard is believed to be the only major company currently selling downloadable, copyrighted music in this way in the U.S. It offers 500 songs, from standards like “Auld Lang Syne” to “Naked” performed by the Goo Goo Dolls. By year’s end, the number of songs is expected to be at least 1,000.

The market is nothing to sneeze at. Retail sales of sheet music total an estimated $425 million a year, according to the trade publication the Music Trades. And NAMM figures show that overall, 25% of the U.S. population over the age of 12 is made up of “active music makers,” which means they play instruments or sing.

Larry Morton, executive vice president of Hal Leonard, says the online service has been a natural evolution for his firm. “Three or four years ago, we started marketing ourselves on the Internet,” he said. “We put up a Web site that listed our offerings, but we didn’t sell directly from the site.”

To use the service, consumers must have a PC running Windows 3.1x or higher; a Mac version is promised within a few months. They can search for a song by title or artist, enter their credit card billing information, then print out the music.

In order to protect the copyright holder, the music can be printed only once and cannot be downloaded to a user’s hard drive or copied and sent via e-mail.

Visitors to the site are directed to either the North American or European version; the European site is controlled by another publisher under a partnership agreement with Hal Leonard. (Publishing rights are usually sold on a territory-by-territory basis, so Hal Leonard generally does not have the rights to sell music to copyrighted songs outside North America.)

In launching its Internet venture, Hal Leonard faced two big hurdles: piracy concerns of rights holders, such as Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp., and the fear of undercutting its 10,000 or so U.S. retailers.

To address the piracy concern, Hal Leonard invested more than half a million dollars in development costs to create the proprietary MusicPage software program, Morton said. This program is designed to prevent music from being printed out multiple times or forwarded to others. For big music companies, this is a critical issue.

“The possibilities for distributing copyrighted material over the Internet is a huge issue for all the entertainment companies,” said Jay Cooper, a partner in Manatt Phelps & Philips, a top Los Angeles entertainment law firm that pursues many cases of copyright infringement.

“A legitimate company like Hal Leonard selling sheet music over the Internet doesn’t increase that problem; it’s just a way to reach new customers and increase market share,” Cooper said. “But there are a lot of individuals just putting out other people’s property [on the Internet] for the heck of it.”

Ensuring that it did not cannibalize its own retailers’ sales was equally critical to Hal Leonard. Unlike retailers of recorded music, which have consolidated into mega-chains, sheet music retailers tend to be mom-and-pop operations. Their business is tough enough without worrying about their biggest sheet music supplier undercutting them.

“We have all these retailers that have supported us for years,” Morton said. “So we devised a marketing plan that involves our retailers.”

For the several dozen music sellers with Web sites, a link to Sheet Music Direct gives them added exposure. In addition, retailers that have in-store computers can access Sheet Music Direct to sell music. Either way, the retailer would get a percentage of the sale, just as it would get a markup for selling sheet music off the shelf.

Within a few months, Morton plans to create more links to retailers. Customers who purchase music online will receive “bounce-back” coupons redeemable at their local music retailer, to encourage store traffic.

Meanwhile, Hal Leonard and the music firms are watching to determine whether sales of single songs via the Internet will hurt sales of higher-priced songbooks. The cost of an individual song via Sheet Music Direct is about $4, the same price as at a store.

The company is also exploring technology that would allow users to hear song arrangements via the computer before buying, and allow them to download music onto a floppy disk so they can play it on an electronic keyboard hooked up to their computers.