Neil Gillis Of Round Hill Music On Daft Punk, Chris Caswell And Electronic Publishing

RRound Hill Music has the honor of being the publishing partner of an amazing creative human being, Chris Caswell. Chris is a multi-creative threat, in that he’s a fine lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, Grammy-nominated songwriter and composer, and one of the best and most versatile arrangers in the business. Round Hill Music partnered with Chris, as he might say, “because we simply get him.” His work spans genres and decades from his long collaboration with legendary Paul Williams to his current work with Daft Punk. For today’s purposes, let’s focus on the work with Daft Punk.

The publishing for the new record is more traditional in scope/approach than what electronic music has evolved into otherwise. The approach here seemed to merge the sort of “sound design” approach of electronic music with more traditional songwriting and arranging. Chris played an integral part of that, due to his talent and the generous creative approach of Daft Punk themselves.

Neil Gillis

Music publishing is a multi-income-stream business. While Chris contributed to the entire project in multitudes of ways, he also has writing and publishing credit on two songs; “TOUCH” and “BEYOND.” So, as a business partner, we help administer those credits, collect and remit earnings that are created by those credits, and then also enhance the creative process by getting the songs out to other media so that they might license the songs for their projects.

For example, when there are downloads or physical sales, Chris and Round Hill Music would make mechanical royalties (pennies per song per unit of sale). Current US rate is .09125 cents. When these songs are licensed into a TV show, film, advert, etc. (media of some kind), a synchronization license is entered into and sync royalties are generated via free market negotiation. When those shows air on TV, or when the songs are played on radio, performance royalties are generated by those actual plays. In this case, ASCAP helps Chris and Round Hill Music for this particular royalty stream. Finally, royalties are earned in almost any usage of the song, and they can range from lyrics on a t-shirt to a chip that plays in a card, and everything in between.

Daft Punk are legends in their field, and they are also brave explorers, as they always continue to strive for something new. The morphing of their form of electronic music with traditional songwriting and arranging, and then having that all enhanced by legendary musicians and artists playing real instruments and adding their voices throughout, created the next step in the evolution of their sound and craft. Chris Caswell and Round Hill Music are privileged to have been a part of this amazing project.

Written for Dotted Music by Neil Gillis, President of Round Hill Music. Neil is the former Managing Director of Alfred Music Publishing, and he was previously President of S1 Songs America and also its predecessor Dimensional Music Publishing. Previously, he was East Coast GM for Concord Music Group after spending 16 years with Warner/Chappell Music, most recently as SVP of Creative Music Solutions. He also spent 6 years as the Head of International for BMI. Neil is a composer, classically trained French horn player and jazz guitarist. He serves on the boards of the BMI Foundation, the Johnny Mercer Foundation and the National Music Publishers Association.