Robert Ott was just 19 yeras old when he started his own music publishing company and recording studio — with the otherworldly name of Lunar Music — in his native Canada. The big guys in the business took notice and soon came calling. Ott wound up with a job at BMG Music Publishing Canada and eventually rose to become vp/GM of that company.
But the entrepreneurial streak that led Ott into the music business as a teenager couldn’t be denied. In 2004, he and business partner Tim Laing founded ole, a music publishing company in Toronto.
Ott today, at 50, is chairman/CEO of ole, which this year marks its 10th anniversary as one of the top 10 largest music publishing companies in the world. And in the world of managing intellectual property rights, ole is playing an increasingly significant role.
During the past decade, ole has spent some $300 million putting together a portfolio that includes more than 45,000 songs and 60,000 hours of TV and film music across all genres. (Ole, and its publishing assets, are largely owned by its major investor, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.)
It has signed top writers like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith; Jim Vallance, longtime collaborator with Bryan Adams; and writer-producer Timbaland, a hitmaker for Rihanna, Justin Timberlake and others.
Ole remains an independent company, but it plays in the big leagues, using the phrase “majorly indie” as its calling card. And that exclamatory company name? It has nothing to do with Latin music or bullfighting; it’s simply an acronym for Ott Laing Enterprises (Laing stepped down from ole in 2009 and died in 2013.)
Ott learned a lesson early from his former boss Nicholas Firth, one-time chairman/CEO of BMG Music Publishing. Remember, Firth would say, “it’s important to show up with results, not excuses.”
Ole shows results. With operations in Toronto, Nashville and Los Angeles, and a staff of 60, the company produces a net publisher’s share approaching $40 million annually, representing royalty income after payments to writers and other rights holders. Ott and Laing envisioned ole from the start as “a full-service publisher” but were up against formidable competition.
“Initially, we decided to focus on positioning ourselves as an administrator for film and television music because we felt it was an underserviced segment,” he says. “We also focused on country, where the multiples [of earnings] that catalogs traded at were lower than other genres.”
That strategy became the cornerstone for the first three or four years of the company’s growth, before it moved into other areas like production music, audiovisual secondary rights and, more recently, a deal with YouTube to collect for recorded and audiovisual masters as well as traditional publishing rights.
Half of ole’s income still comes from film and TV music, with 25 percent from audiovisual transmission rights and the balance from pop, urban, country, production music and digital licensing.
Key staffers include COO Lou Ragagnin, GM of Nashville creative John Ozier, GM of Los Angeles creative Leo Williams and senior vp digital Jim Selby.
During the past decade, ole has struck varied catalog deals with MGM, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Nu Image and Millennium Films, and the MusicBox production music company. Its also made co-ownership deals with TV production companies Cineflix and Nelvana. And it has acquired the catalogs of Rush and Jody Williams, who has writing credits on six Taylor Swift singles. Ole has signed some 90 songwriters in the past decade. In addition to Rush and Tyler (with whom the company has an administration deal), ole’s pop/rock roster includes Haley Reinhart, a contender on season 10 of American Idol. With Timbaland, ole created a joint venture that has concentrated on R&B, hip-hop and gospel signings.
In country music, ole has taken an innovative approach to nurturing its writers with a tour bus it describes as “a writer’s room on wheels.” Says Ott: “It gives the touring artist a quiet place to go.” Those who have taken advantage of the vehicle include Brett Jones and Eric Church, who co-wrote his hit “Springsteen” on the bus with Jeff Hyde and Ryan Tyndell.
Clearly, songwriters feel a personal connection to ole.
“The music business is a personal business,” says Ott. “If you focus on business as being personal, it’s hard to go wrong. We want to be nice guys, but we also want to show up with the goods.”
Now that ole has defined its turf, Ott is looking for new areas to conquer.
He notes the company’s infrastructure, systems and tools can be applied to other intellectual property assets. So look for ole to evolve and diversify from a music publishing company to a rights management organization, he says. “I feel that we have finally arrived at a place,” says Ott, “that will allow us to do amazing things.”