Sales Statement 2012

Every year, the good people at Alfred Publishing send me a report showing how many of each of my pieces have been sold in the past 12 months. It's always exciting to get that kind of quantifiable feedback. When I first started getting them, they were much simpler, but since the advent of digital printing and different combinations of scores and parts became available for sale, the sales reports have become a lot more complicated. So, filtering through the many lines of data, here are my top-selling sets of scores and parts within the U.S. for 2012:

1. Maharaja
2. North Pole Workshop
3. Avatar
4. Gauntlet
5. Agincourt

I submitted Maharaja with little hope of it ever getting published and was shocked that it was accepted. I just thought it was too odd or too technically demanding to be taken seriously. A year later, looking around YouTube, I was shocked to discover that it's popular. And now I'm shocked to learn exactly how popular - nearly twice the sales of my next-best-selling piece! New pieces for tend to make a big splash in their first year, but Maharaja goes beyond expectations.

Gauntlet always makes the top 5 list and I'm excited to see that it remains popular. North Pole Workshop was also a new piece this year and it's great to see that it did so well.  Avatar was the top-seller for the past two years and I credited that to people mistaking it for the theme to James Cameron's movie, but it still has a strong showing, so I think it's safe to start attributing success on its own terms. Agincourt is one of my personal favorites, so I'm thrilled that it remains popular. Gargoyles usually makes the top five list but this year it was edged out by just one sale. Another newer piece, Shadows of Venice, would have taken the #7 spot.

Looking at the data for foreign sales of scores and parts is a different story:

1. Maharaja & Shadows of Venice (tie)
3. Agincourt & Sneaking Suspicion (tie)
5. Mambo Incognito & Star of Valor (tie)

There's a different system for music education abroad, which often doesn't involve classroom music ensembles, so foreign sales are far lower than in the U.S. But still, this year's numbers show an increased interest in some of the newer selections. If I was shocked to see that Maharaja is popular among American orchestras, I'm floored to learn that it's popular in other parts of the world. Major-key novelty pieces tend to dominate this list, but it's wonderful to see music like Agincourt and Shadows of Venice catching on.

Here's one more list - domestic sales of scores:

1. Gauntlet
2. Gargoyles
3. Avatar
4. Agincourt
5. Las Mariposas Exoticas

This list is important because orchestras need to buy extra scores to give the judges when they go to state Solo & Ensemble contests and high sales mean a piece is popular at contests. It takes several years for a piece to build enough credibility to be included on contest lists, so big sellers here are usually older pieces, but it's good to see Agincourt surging ahead.

There are a lot more ways to break down the data - digital scores and parts, print licensing, MP3 downloads – but that's enough for now. If you bought one of my pieces in 2012 (in any format) I want to thank you for a great year!

Doug Spata's Olympic Dream

The Olympics begin this week and it's always an exciting time for the world. I love watching the opening and closing ceremonies and the Parade of Nations, though I don't have a specific sport that I follow. The first Olympics I was aware of was the 1984 games in Los Angeles and I remember that for a long time all anyone could talk about was the U.S. gymnastics team.

TV coverage does a good job of highlighting the dramatic stories that drive the competitors and led the athletes to the games. They all have that "Olympic dream," to achieve at the highest level in front of the whole world.

Even though I'm not an athlete, I have an Olympic dream of my own: it would be an epic thrill to hear one of my compositions used in during Olympic competition. I'm not talking about the opening and closing ceremonies – that's way too much to ask. But it would be amazing to hear one of my pieces accompany a gymnastics floor exercise, a synchronized swimming routine, or, at the Winter Olympics, figure skating or ice dancing.

As a kid, I especially enjoyed hearing the music used in the gymnastic competitions because it's so full of color, energy, and emotion. I think some of my pieces would be suitable. Need something with a dark energy? Try Avatar, Elementals, or Storm Trail. Something more rhythmic and angular? There's Agincourt. Need a bright explosion of sound? Quicksilver or Star of Valor. For something more lyrical, have a listen to A Hero's Welcome. And if you need something fun and sassy, I recommend Violet's Tango, Samba Del Sol, Lemon Twist, or Mambo Incognito. Of course, Gauntlet is good for any occasion.

Professional recordings of all these and more are available at alfred-music.com.

So if you're an Olympic-level gymnast, synchronized swimmer, figure skater, or ice dancer... you're probably training really hard and don't have time for music classes, so you've never heard of me. But if you're someone who knows an Olympic-level athlete, maybe suggest one of my pieces and help make my dream come true!

 

New Videos

Well, Oscar Season is over and I can re-focus this blog on music.  Before I tell you about some of the thing I've been up to in the past six weeks, here are some new videos.

First up is a performance of Mambo Incognito in Plano, Texas:

Now, I've seen and have participated in plenty of concerts in school gyms.  It's just a fact of school scheduling and resources and, to be honest, the acoustics are often more flattering than in auditoriums.  I have not, however, seen an audience in the bleachers and the orchestras filling the floor.  Look at all those orchestra students!  Looks like those teachers are doing something right.  The performance is really good too.  Great job, kids!

Up next is Gauntlet, performed at Hanahan High school for an unnamed All-County concert.

Excellent tempo.  As I've written before, one of the biggest problems I hear with Gauntlet is the tempo.  It requires a fast tempo, but faster is not better.  Take note - this is how it should be done.  I don't know who the conductor is here, but she got it just right.  Also, great style on the middle section.  Way to go!

Next is a performance of Elementals as a quintet performed by the Naomi Hasan violin studio in Madison, WI.

Orchestras and classes come in all sizes, so it's not uncommon to hear the same piece played by a band of sixty or a chamber ensemble.  Admittedly, some pieces work better than others when reduced down and I think Elementals is one of them (though a bass added to the mix wouldn't have hurt).  This appears to be a group of adult students and I think that, for the most part, they did a fine job.  I don't mean to sound disparaging, but the 'cello was off.  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt - maybe his pegs got knocked out of tune before going on stage or he was sight reading (I've done some sight reading in performances before).

Finally, let's hear Las Mariposas Exoticas, performed by the Lanier Middle School Philharmonia:

Fantastic.  The orchestra did such a great job here and I'd like to point out the excellent use of the harp.  There's no harp part in the original version and the part they came up with was very tasteful. I love the harp and wish I could write more for them, but harps in school ensembles are rare and it's not cost-effective to write for them most of the time.  And in my experience, harpists can't stand playing piano parts - they're such idiomatically different instruments that it's hard to play one on the other.

Royalty Statement 2009 (Part 2)

The listings for foreign sales are shrouded in mystery. Though I've heard of a few performances in Austrailia, have found an online German sheet music vendor that sells my music, and got word of a performance in Canada, I'm not exactly sure who it is outside the U.S. that's buying my music. I would hope that it would sell in Japan, home of the Suzuki Method, and in Europe. From what I understand, other countries don't have school music programs analagous to ours and wouldn't need school-level string orchestra music. Here are my top-selling sets of scores and parts in foreign markets:

1. Agincourt & Mambo Incognito (tie)
3. Hot Potato
4. Gargoyles
5. Violet's Tango

As you can see, there's a marked difference from the top five sellers in the U.S. I should note, though, that foreign sales make up a tiny fraction of a percentage of my total sales. Also, the printout that I received shows that several of these pieces sold at different rates - probably in euros, Canadian and Austrialian dollars, and yen.

Last year I got a sheet showing sales of digital downloads from alfred-music.com. This year, there's no record of sales of MP3 files - maybe bacuase they're so few that it will be rolled into next year's statement.

Finally, I did get a notice about liscensing. When orchestras record their concerts, they're supposed to get permission from the publisher and pay a small licensing fee. A few honest souls actually did that this year and I thank them. Liscensing also includes a few listings from "Make Music," a program where directors can access notes from the composer with tips on how to rehearse and perform their music more effectively. I wrote a few of these two years ago and think that I might want to do some more in the future.