Don’t say it can’t be done. At least, not around Doug Wood. Wood, the president of Port Washington, N.Y.-based Omni Music, recalls a composing assignment he had years ago for Martin’s Home Decorating Center. The client wanted a short jingle to end his spot using the words, "It ain’t just paint." Wood said, "No problem," and agreed to have the jingle in a week.
Seven days came and went, and Wood got sidetracked by other assignments. Suddenly, the due date had arrived and the client was in the outer office. "Oh, my God," Wood thought to himself, "I forgot to do the jingle." Asking the client to wait 10 minutes, the composer sat down, wrote the tune, and then recorded it with his wife and partner, Patti.
"The jingle was a big hit with the client and the campaign was very famous," he recalls. "The funny thing is we sang it in very soft voices, almost whispering, and everyone thought that was a great stylistic choice. But it was really done that way because the client was in the next room. We didn’t want to be overheard."
Pulling a rabbit out of his hat is becoming a regular trick for Doug Wood, the man everyone at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) heard loud and clear earlier this year when he became the first commercial music composer to be elected to the board of directors of the music rights organization.
"It came as a real surprise to me-and, I think, to the ASCAP board," chuckles Wood, who had previously dubbed his possible election as the longest of shots, since there were 36 candidates for 12 seats, with the voting procedures seriously weighted against him. (Votes are based on the number of writing credits a composer has received-jingle writers get .03 of a credit for every jingle, whereas a pop songwriter gets a full credit for every song. The votes that each member can cast depend on the number of credits.)
His election has its roots in a dispute involving ASCAP and its members that began in December ’97 when the organization announced that, in the future, it would earmark only 10 percent of the money received in broadcast fees for commercial and promo work. Although ASCAP insisted that the percentage was consistent with what commercial and promo writers received in general, a number of affected writers saw it differently. "Many of us had an 80 to 90 percent drop in revenues," Michael Levine, president of bicoastal Michael Levine Music, noted at the time.
The action became a flash point. The Association of Music Producers (AMP), an organization of commercial music and sound design houses, was born out of the fracas, while an older group founded by Wood, the Professional Composers of America (PCA), gained new followers. The eight-year-old PCA is a non-profit membership organization of commercial composers who create jingles, film scores, TV and radio themes, industrial soundtracks, multimedia sound design, and library music.
"There was a huge groundswell of dissent in the ranks," observes Dain Blair, AMP West Coast chapter president and creative director/owner of Los Angeles-based Groove Addicts. "We hadn’t been organized before this. This issue solidified our community." AMP and PCA members met with representatives of ASCAP in a series of sometimes heated meetings. Finally, in early October of last year, the ASCAP board of directors voted to abolish the cap (referred to as an "allocation fund" by ASCAP).
Wood was in the forefront of organizing the campaign to eliminate the cap, which he believes helped get him voted onto the board. "I think I was in the right place at the right time," he explains. "There were a number of issues that came up last spring, particularly the 10 percent cap, which gave me visibility in our industry. Some of the mistakes ASCAP made created an opportunity for me to get a higher profile for some of the issues I had been fighting for awhile."
To others, Wood is a natural leader, savvy on the issues and charismatic on the campaign trail. "Doug is so knowledgeable; he understands all the issues and can explain them clearly," notes Jeff Rosner, the owner of New York-based Sacred Noise, and the director of AMP’s ASCAP committee. "ASCAP’s rules are so, so complicated, it takes an MIT graduate to understand them. He was a strong mentor for us [at AMP]. To me, Doug is like a combination of Abe Lincoln and Jimmy Stewart. He’s such an honest and thoughtful guy. There’s no anger there; it’s just a matter of what’s wrong and what’s right. This guy has a vision."
Good Ears
Yet Wood didn’t start out to change his industry. Calling himself "just a composer," the New York-reared Wood was one of four siblings, three of whom had perfect pitch. "I hear music the way you look at colors," he says. "I hear a B flat and know it’s a B flat." He started playing piano when he was four, was given his first guitar when he was six, and then played in rock and roll bands throughout his college years at the Manhattan School of Music. He also was trained in classical musical and played the oboe in the orchestra.
"I loved both sides of it," he explains. "I enjoyed both the classical side and the rock and roll side." He decided he could combine both loves by writing music for film and television.
Out of college, Wood was hired by a small film company to record sound effects and eventually began writing music for their productions, which included corporate training films. "After a while, I found myself with a bookshelf full of tapes of the background music I had recorded," he says. One of his friends said, ‘People will pay you to use that.’ " Thus was born Omni Music, which began selling both library and original compositions for commercials in ’76.
Wood, who had been hurt by the financial practices of ASCAP, started the Professional Composers Association in ’91. "I wanted to educate composers about the commercial music business," he explains. "Among the composers I knew, there was very little understanding of contracts or what ASCAP or BMI [Broadcast Music Incorporated] were about. I wanted to help them avoid getting ripped off." The group currently has 185 members.
"What I respect about Doug is that he is the champion of the individual composer," notes Blair. "He probably knows more about copyright issues than anyone else I’ve ever met, and I consider myself pretty much up on copyrights and worldwide publishing. Doug is the perfect person to represent us on the ASCAP board."
Nonetheless, no one expects Wood to change the music world overnight. "He is one lone voice," Blair admits. "Now that we’ve shown that we can do it, it’s time to get more than one person up there. But I think that Doug is very, very good at communicating our side of it. He will be eloquent and effective in stating inequities of the system. Yet I have grave doubts about whether he can build a consensus. These are people who enjoy the benefits of a lopsided system. I don’t see them rushing to change it. He has his hands full."
Wood hopes he can make some changes at ASCAP, although he is realistic about his chances. "It is a [24-member] board, and, as a board, it moves slowly and makes policy decisions as a group. One person can’t accomplish anything. You need consensus. And to do that, you need to earn the trust of other members of the board. You can’t build trust in 10 minutes, however. Especially when I’ve been perceived by members of the board as a sharp critic of ASCAP. They were a little defensive about their actions. But I hope they will understand that I have a perspective on the business which none of them have. I have lived in a part of the business that none of them have lived in.
"There are fundamental issues of how a performing rights society values the works of its members," he adds. "The thing I’d like to accomplish at ASCAP is to level the playing field, or, at least, make it more level. People on the board sense that there’s something wrong. It’s fair to say ASCAP understands that it’s important to keep everyone in the tent. Our strength comes from our membership. Allowing chunks of the membership to become disillusioned or disenfranchised is a perilous position for ASCAP to get into.
"There’s a lot to be done," Wood continues. "But I think my election has energized a lot of the ASCAP members, many of whom felt that they really couldn’t do anything themselves. There was a perception that it was not possible to change things. My election demonstrated that the membership has the power to start the ball rolling and to make changes. It’s a very positive step."e
