The Tate Music Group facts...

Tate Publishing, the parent company of Tate Music Group, was recently reviewed in a new book from author Mark Levine, who is a book publishing industry expert. Tate Publishing operates in much the same way as Tate Music Group, wherein authors maintain creative control, high royalties, and the rights to their book. Check out what Mr. Levine thought about our company once he had an opportunity to review our contract and see what we do for authors and artists:

I trashed Tate in earlier versions of this book. While I don’t apologize for it based on what I knew then (Tate wasn’t very forthcoming with information and wouldn’t provide a contract for me to look at), my opinion is now completely different.

Tate’s biggest problem is that it does a terrible job of demonstrating that it really does put in substantial money above what the author contributes to the publishing process. However, I wouldn’t have believed it, unless I saw it with my own eyes. Ryan Tate called me after reading this book and said, “You’ve got it all wrong. Come see what we’re doing down here.” I took him up on his offer. What I saw was an energetic staff of at least 60 people, including, 10 full-time editors, 15 illustrators, and 15 graphic designers. When you start adding up included items in every publishing package like complete editing, unlimited cover and interior changes that are available, Tate really is investing money in an author’s book.

Also, if you accept Tate’s numbers that they take 4-6% of 10,000 submissions a year, that’s about 500 books. If each author is paying $4,000 that is only $2,000,000. That amount of money can’t cover even the payroll. So, Tate has to be making money from sales of authors books to the public. It needs the portion of royalties and printing revenues to pay for its existence. The only way to get sales is to invest time and money to promote books. Is Tate putting in $20,000 toward every author’s book? Probably not. On some it might be more and on some it’s probably less. But, Tate is definitely investing money and resources to promote its authors books. It’s making a nice profit on the printing and taking a healthy royalty, but that’s not unlike any traditional publisher. Because the author is investing money up front, the royalty taken by Tate is substantially less than a totally traditional publisher would demand....It sounds ridiculous – you put in $4,000 and the publisher puts in $15,000-$20,000. In reality, those numbers are pretty accurate.

Tate is a solid choice with a great management, staff, and continuing vision. Tate doesn’t need to sell the sizzle. The facts are good enough.

The Little Things, by Producer, Jameson Reynolds...

It's not too often that the rest of our production staff gets to chime in on the Tate Music Group Studios Blog, but today, Jameson Reynolds, one of our producers, will be sharing his thoughts on recording and keys to a successful album.
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Working in the music industry, you get to meet all kinds of interesting people and see all kinds of diverse projects. Here at Tate we have such an eclectic collection of artists on our label and we get to work in all sorts of genres such as country, hip hop, pop, rock, dance, etc. Among the diverse types of music there seem to be a few underlying things. When the little things are done well, it just makes a project so much better.

Many times we come across a particular project with some sort of obstacle that we are trying to overcome. Maybe it is a song that is poorly structured and the arrangement doesn’t make any sense at all. It seems those are the times where one can tend to try and overcompensate for a poor arrangement by having multiple guitar solos or weird breakdowns, etc. Guitar solos are great and an awesome turnaround in song can really take a track to the next level, but if the arrangement is already sub par, then it is only going to drag the song down even more.

This is so true for anything when working on an album, solid arrangements, sound lyrics, a consistent rhythm section, and colorful leads, these are the little things that make an album. When all of these things are present then there is no need to try and overcompensate.

One of the great things about working at Tate is being surrounded by other producers who have learned long ago that it’s the little things that make an album great and that less really is more.

So whether you are writing, recording, or whatever you are doing, always remember that getting the little things done right the first time will go along way in getting you where you want to be.