From the article he's dedicating marketers to synch rather than mechanicals. I quoted the explanation of all three revenue streams for people like myself who don't automatically know which is which.
With Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Mercuriadis bypassed all of them. Songwriters are able to generate revenue from three sources: mechanical royalties (the sale or legal download of a song), performance royalties (paid every time a song is heard in public, whether it’s a live performance, on TV, or in a movie; played in a bar or restaurant; or streamed), and synch fees (song licensing for use in movies, video games, and commercials). Mechanical royalties are the only stream with a set rate; performance and synch royalties are negotiated percentages. Synchs are often more lucrative for the songwriter, since they generally split 50% for the writer and the artist, with the label taking its cut from the artist’s piece of the pie.
Synch is where Hipgnosis Song Fund could make them money, as Mercuriadis explained to the 177 hedge fund and private investors he pitched between 2015 and 2018.
For people curious about synch rates, a friend just licensed the music (not performance) to an unknown song for promos for a major streaming production with A listers for $8000 on a two month license. This was with the assistance of an entertainment lawyer.
On the flipside, we now have Discovery Channel refusing to use music with sync licensing costs (ie licensed through ASCAP, BMI) and demanding composers sign away their royalties if they want their music on the show:
That's quite ironic in a sense, because "the publishing" is the very thing where there's a huge amount of perfectly-serviceable music that's totally in the public domain, with zero "rights" or "royalties" to contend with. And it's not just 'boring', classical pieces, but music in popular styles too. This whole setup is ripe for a "disrupt from below"/"commoditize your complement" play where someone purposely brings those old 19th century (and before!) songs from IMSLP back in style as the perfect troll move.
Heck, the record labels might do it at this point - after all, they'll still have the rights to the actual performed audio ("the master").
