By Tabassum Siddiqui
When Emily Stephenson was studying communications at university in Auburn, Alabama, the idea of entering the music business wasn’t even initially on her radar.
“I didn’t really have the understanding of the multitude of professionals required to support the music industry – as a music fan, you don’t always think about what infrastructure is actually supporting what you’re consuming,” explains Stephenson, now President of Publishing for Downtown Music, a global music company headquartered in New York City with 500-plus employees around the world.
“But I had to do an internship, so I decided to go home to Nashville and ended up working at a small artist-management firm, which exposed me to everything from creating a new record to publishing and the label side. In a way, it was like going back to my roots – I love composition and the song.”
Though she admits she’s not particularly musical herself – despite plenty of piano and guitar lessons over the years, she jokes – growing up in Nashville offered a front-row seat to great songwriting.
“My earliest exposure to music really impacted my understanding of songwriting and songwriters,” she notes. “I loved country music because of the storytelling – how it evoked such nostalgia, emotion, and excitement. And that’s where my love of music began.”
When it came time to embark on her professional career, Stephenson decided to work for a small music publishing company in Nashville, which she recalls was one of the earliest independent publishers to form direct affiliations with international publishing associations.
That opportunity to work closely with contacts within the global publishing community – plus a dash of audaciousness – helped land her a role at Downtown.
After finding Downtown online, Stephenson cold-emailed founder Justin Kalifowitz, inviting him for a coffee chat if he was ever in Nashville. He responded, saying he was coming to town in a few weeks – and after the pair met, they kept in touch over the next year, until he offered her a job at the company in 2012.
“I feel like I tell that story all the time – but now I get nervous, because that means I definitely should be responding to unsolicited emails and LinkedIn messages, because they could be the next president of Downtown!” Stephenson says with a laugh.
“I don’t know if Justin responded to every email or if that was an anomaly – but it was definitely impactful and changed the entire course of my life. I’m very thankful that he did.”
Over the past 12 years, Stephenson climbed the ranks at Downtown Music, serving as vice-president of business operations before being promoted to president of publishing for the entire company last year.
She now oversees all publishing efforts, including client acquisition and business development, A&R, rights management, and client services for the group’s publishing companies – Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust, and Sheer. Downtown’s publishing administration services currently have nearly 2 million songwriters and more than 1.5 million copyrights under management, with clients including Ryan Tedder, Big Yellow Dog, and the John Lennon estate.
“I see my role as split between the internal and the external – internally, I feel like I am here to support our teams and make sure that everybody is working collaboratively and has all the resources they need for their teams to perform at the level that we expect,” Stephenson says.
“Then externally, it’s to support our clients and catalogue of songs that we represent, and ensure everything is running smoothly. I work closely with the presidents of our other companies to ensure we’re all thinking about music cohesively, not just within our own division.”
Since becoming president, Stephenson has overseen key signings to Downtown, including art-rock luminary Laurie Anderson and indie-rock veterans The National. Under her tenure, Songtrust – the world’s largest global royalty collection platform – introduced trust and safety measures, which are now being replicated across the music publishing industry.
“We want to empower rights holders, creators, artists and songwriters to own their own copyrights to what they’re making and creating, and also allow them access to professionalized services without having to give up that ownership,” Stephenson says.
“We’ve really hit our stride and are executing on some of these big goals that we set out to achieve several years ago.”
Originally founded as a music publishing company in 2007, at a time when the music industry was still transitioning to streaming, Downtown reimagined itself as a full-service model that leverages technology to support creators and help them get paid fairly for their work.
But while technology has helped guide Downtown’s success, its ever-evolving nature means that’s also the company’s biggest challenge, Stephenson points out.
“I think we’ve done a good job over the years in embracing new technology, and we do use AI and other tools for revenue-generating areas for our clients, whether it’s income-tracking or forecasting. We’re always leaning into how we can collect money faster for our clients, provide them with more data and detail,” she says.
“Being a services-based business means being proactive in the industry for all our clients – and not fighting change but being prepared for it.”
Now representing over 20 million songs across more than 145 countries, Downtown works with millions of creators and rights holders – and with international rights agencies, including CMRRA.
“We’ve spent a lot of time with CMRRA over the last two years, ensuring we’re claiming all the songs that we should claim,” Stephenson says. “We’ve found a lot of success in working together. We have prioritized claiming all of our catalog that is listed on CMRRA’s undocumented list, and the offerings they’re doing with SoundExchange on ISRC discovery and data enrichment on catalogues is very intriguing.
“I feel like CMRRA is uniquely positioned to do that for the industry – I don’t know that there’s any other group that has such robust data on both the recording and publishing sides,” she adds. “Because we are a higher-volume publisher, we want to make sure that all our partners know exactly how we’re verifying all the data that comes in, and we know we can make our society partners’ jobs a lot easier when they’re not having to merge duplicates and sort through many different versions of a song registration.”
Working with publishing peers north of the border also reminds Stephenson of what led her to the music business in the first place.
“I know Canada has a very special country music community and group of songwriters, and since I grew up in Nashville surrounded by that genre, it’s really cool to witness that,” she enthuses. “I don’t know of any other country that has their own country music market as profound as Canada’s is, so that’s something I’ve always been intrigued by.”
As Stephenson continues to build on Downtown’s global success, key to her leadership is ensuring the company’s team and the clients they represent fully understand the intricacies of music publishing.
“What’s been important for us in recent years is to ensure that the left arm is talking to the right arm. Making sure we have various ways for folks to learn about it has become a huge focus for us, including interdepartmental communication and collaboration,” she says.
“On the Songtrust side, we do a lot of work with early-stage creators, and we have many online educational materials, including webinars and a ‘Publishing 101’ document. It’s a really complicated business, and breaking it down in a way that’s simple but not misleading can help songwriters understand how they interact with publishing.”
Stephenson is optimistic about Downtown’s future – and that of the music publishing sector as a whole, despite the many curveballs facing the music industry.
“I feel like we have so much momentum right now – we’re continuing to put a lot of investment into the data work that we do to drive additional revenue and tell us how our catalogue is performing and what areas we should focus on,” she says.
“I feel very confident that we’re a good home for anyone who’s looking for a publishing administration solution, no matter how large the catalogue is or what the desired services are. I think there are hopefully lots of new and exciting deals ahead, as well as continuing to work with our amazing roster that we have now.”
Stephenson says she’s constantly inspired by the sheer scope of Downtown Music Publishing, which services over 360,000 songwriters and manages nearly 5 million copyrights globally. While that makes it impossible to single out any creator or catalogue, one artist immediately comes to mind when she’s asked about roster highlights.
“We signed Colbie Caillat last year, and that was personally so thrilling, as I’m such a fan of hers. I got to spend time with her and even told her that one of her songs was my ringtone in high school,” she adds, laughing.
“To have her sign to a publishing company that I’m running just feels like the biggest brain explosion. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to do what I do, with such amazing talent.”
To learn more about Downtown Music Holdings, visit www.downtownmusic.com.
