In the summer of 2011, Halbe Zijlstra announced harsh cuts in the cultural sector. Donemus was then part of the sector institute MuziekCentrum Nederland (MCN). That too would disappear. I was head of publishing at the time. I was invited by Leo Pot to write a business plan for the Donemus publishing house. After 20 years of providing input for policy plans of a fickle government, a business approach was unfamiliar territory for me.
In the MCN period, Donemus had 4 editors, 3 reproduction staff and quite a bit of man-power within the administration. And then there were the promotion tasks and the library functions with the associated database. How could you reduce such a unit of 15 FTEs so that it could stand on its own feet financially? What would be left of the service? How would our market react? What would the revenues be? How could you keep such a beautiful but fragile catalog available in a niche market?
It was a period of sweeping decisions, of sleepless nights, and of many exploratory conversations. The sheet music rental system was modernized. Over 80 containers of worn-out scores were destroyed. The printing of scores was outsourced. With a substantial investment by MCN, a new database and modern web shop were set up where scores and parts were also made available in PDF format and where the rental of symphonic material was paid for transparently at the front end. The library was transferred to the UVA, the undigitized sound collection went to Sound & Vision.
Thomas van Dalen designed the structure of a Foundation to manage all rights, in addition to an active company that would do the work on behalf of the Foundation. I found Paul Oomens, whom I knew from his Chamber Opera projects, willing to become chairman of the foundation. Other board members had enough confidence in the future of a new Donemus to commit to it. Leo Samama, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Paul Dijkema, Erik Verbugt and Leen Vreeken.
On January 1, 2013, the relaunch took place. My colleague Aleksandra Markovic and I both worked from home. Lean & mean. The first orders followed. The first Buma payments. My spouse did the bookkeeping. After this fresh start, the new Donemus could slowly be expanded. More employees joined, for promotion and for administration, and Donemus moved into a small office in The Hague Tower.
In the years that followed, it remained an exciting adventure. New composers arrived. Young talents and also foreign composers. The network grew. So did the number of activities and projects. New websites, newsletters, social media. Young composers were coached through the Donemus Academy, which led to good ties with the conservatories in Amsterdam and The Hague.
But income could fluctuate greatly. In these years there were 2 moments of crisis. The first was caused by changes in the policy of Buma/Stemra, which suddenly caused that income to drop significantly. And then came the Covid crisis, which had far-reaching consequences for a publishing company that lives primarily from live performances. Precisely at those moments, the Foundation was a reliable partner to fall back on. The construction worked excellently to absorb the blows.
The moments of crisis also led to great initiatives. The dormant Composers’ Voice label was revived. With 500 releases and millions of streams, it has become an important promotional tool for composers, thanks in part to the support of 10K from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund. From Buma/Stemra’s first Investment Fund, the “Forbidden Music Regained” project came about. This was a collaboration with the Leo Smit Foundation and the Netherlands Music Institute, as a result of which 75 special scores have now been published. This project has created tremendous support and is now leading to international collaborations.
With the Investment Fund II, a new portal was set up for the delivery of audio for our labels and of newly to be published compositions. With automatic contract processing, connection to the Donemus database and up-to-date, transparent insights for composers about their royalties, this portal, MyDonemus, reinforces our image as a modern publishing house. We are proud to present this platform at our network meeting in January 2023.
Donemus stands firm in a rapidly changing musical landscape. With the demise of the Belgian CeBeDem, Donemus has welcomed several important Belgian composers. Meanwhile, Donemus has been able to bring in numerous composers outside of Europe as well. And our market has also grown. Both scores and releases reach music lovers in more than 80 countries. Donemus is a welcome partner for presentations at numerous international conferences such as recently in Prague and Helsinki and soon in New York.
In my opinion, two factors have been characteristic of Donemus’ success: 1) finding the right people around us: a very committed board, dedicated staff, good partners, etc. and 2) looking ahead to the right dot on the horizon. In retrospect, we can see that Donemus has set the right strategic course. Committing early to digitization, to our label activities and to new business models around sheet music licensing.
The best moment for me personally was the composition written by Maxim Shalygin as a gift for my 25th wedding anniversary in 2018. The work, Blessing, on a text by I. Newton, for tenor and string quartet, was a personal gift from him to my wife and me. In this, all sorts of lines came together from private circumstances and decades of dedication to Donemus. Meanwhile, the choral version of this work has been performed in both Kiev and the Carnegiehall/NY. And an orchestral version will be on the program of the Müncher Philharmoniker in June. For me the most treasured composition in our catalog.
Because I may also be director of the music publishing industry associations (NMUV and VMN), I am not always available for Donemus. There are meetings for Buma/Stemra, for example, sometimes several times a week. But it is fantastic to see how all colleagues together do an excellent job and how together we can keep all those balls in the air every day.
Thanks to my colleagues Aleksandra, Valeria, Gabrielle, Tobias, Iva and Tomas. And to the entire board of the Donemus Foundation. The old motto remains true: Ab ovo usque ad alaudam curam Donemus. From the egg to the lark, let us care.
All our friends are welcome to celebrate this anniversary on January 27 in The Hague.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention