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State Song May Bring Composer Fame, But Very Little Fortune

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By GRETCHEN PARKER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 17, 2008

Now that state lawmakers have approved a new song to represent Florida - for the first time in 73 years - the issues of art, race, culture and history move over to make room for the $64,000 question.

How much money can be made off this thing?

The answer, say folks familiar with the music publishing industry, is: probably not a lot.

"Florida: Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky" is close to becoming Florida's official state anthem. The Legislature approved it last month, and Gov. Charlie Crist has said he intends to give his OK.

Florida's official state song is still "Old Folks at Home," the tune known as "Swanee River." Lawmakers agreed to adopt a cleaned-up version that wipes out references to slavery and the mock slave dialect.

The new state anthem, crafted by Pompano Beach music teacher Jan Hinton, already is making rounds of music classrooms and school auditoriums in Florida.

As music teachers requested the music for their students, Hinton has gladly handed it over.

So far, she hasn't been charging for it.

She owns the copyright to the tune, which pays homage to Florida's mockingbirds, alligators and orange blossoms. She has registered the song with Broadcast Music Inc., one of the two main companies that collects royalties in the United States, but she hasn't yet signed with a publisher.

Little Money In State Songs
Even when she does, "Sawgrass" probably won't be a winning lottery ticket, experts said.

"A state song is probably not going to be a big moneymaker," said Jerry Bailey, a BMI spokesman. "It may be played constantly for a hundred years, but the ways it's played are probably not going to bring in a lot of revenue."

In general, elementary, middle and high schools don't pay to perform songs. And most colleges and universities have a blanket license with BMI and other royalty groups, so that they don't pay extra to perform any single song.

The song "Rocky Top," for example, is one of Tennessee's state songs and is also used by the University of Tennessee as its unofficial fight song.

Even the repeated performances by the school's music groups make almost no money for the songwriters' heirs, Bailey said.

To put it into context, Bailey points out how much a feature performance on a late-night talk show on network television might bring: about $900. Background music and theme songs for those shows earn less.

Even publishing the new tune in a state songbook or an anthology of state songs likely would earn only a small amount of revenue, experts said.

Movies Create Buzz, Royalties

Still, you never know. If the song were to be used in a movie, the licensing fee likely would earn Hinton money. Sometimes, songwriters are so eager to have their work used in a film that they give it away, Bailey said.

They figure that earning notoriety in a movie could make them more cash later.

And it's always possible a song can take off on its own - like "Swanee River."

When Stephen Foster wrote the song, there was no radio. The phonograph hadn't been invented yet.

There was no such thing as recorded sound. It was 1851.

Yet, the song was a monster hit. Its success was unprecedented.

It was a tribute to family ties, written in the voice of a plantation slave. Foster wrote it to sell to minstrel troupes.

It was also instantly picked up by all kinds of stage performers. Opera singers were using it. Soon, it was known all over the world.

It appealed to people across social classes and even was adopted by American blacks as their own, for a time. Slaves sung it in fields and took it on as a folk song that expressed their emotions.

It spread beyond the stage, according to Deane Root, professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the school's Center for American Music, which runs the Stephen Foster memorial.

He quoted a report in the Albany, N.Y., newspaper that within a year of the song's release, it was being hummed by butchers and street sweepers.

"It was on everybody's lips - was the way they put it," Root said.

In those days, however, there were no royalties for public performances.

Foster earned money only from publishing the sheet music - at most, about $2,000 a year for the first couple of years, which would equal about $30,000 a year today, Root said.

"Swanee River" and another of Foster's songs, "Oh! Susanna," were the first two songs that became familiar to everyone in the United States.

Laws Limited Earnings

With today's legal rights, Foster would be earning tens of millions of dollars a year from "Swanee River," Root estimates.

But in 1851, his earnings were limited. He could have made more money only by becoming his own publisher, but he didn't have the means to buy a printing press or distribute the copies.

It's because of Foster that BMI and other royalty-collecting groups exist, Root said.

On the 50th anniversary of Foster's death, in 1914, two artists founded an organization to monitor public performances and to collect royalties from them.

Irving Berlin, who wrote "God Bless America," and composer Victor Herbert said they wanted to protect songwriters from being short-changed, as Foster was.

"It was the songwriters who came after Foster who really made a lot of money," Root said.

Hinton, writer of "Sawgrass," said she doesn't expect her song to be a gold mine. It's too specific to Florida - by design, she said.

She beat out two other finalists in an Internet vote, after 240 state song hopefuls were submitted to a statewide contest.

Hinton describes herself as a compulsive songwriter ("It's a sickness," she says), and she's penned hundreds of them. When she heard about the state song contest, she couldn't help but write one, she said.

She does hope it will help her sell her other music - programs for school and stage performances.

It's impossible to predict how successful "Sawgrass" might be, Bailey, the BMI spokesman, said.

"You just never know about a song. It's like a symphony or a book or a poem," he said.

"It may not be popular right away, but at some point in the future, it may be."

Keyword: State Song, to see a photo slide show and hear the state's new anthem.

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