At this year's Women In Music Awards, we celebrated the achievements of 13 game-changing executives and artists as the industry came together to honour their work. Music Week has spoken to all 13 winners to tell their stories.
Words: Karen Bliss
Alison Hook, Sony Music Publishing’s SVP, sampling and copyright infringement, UK and international, has won the Special Recognition Award at the Music Week Women In Music Awards 2024.
Widely renowned as a music publishing legend, Hook has spent 28 years at Sony Music Publishing, having began her career at independent music publisher Complete Music before working in artist management, royalty auditing and at record companies.
After setting up Ministry Of Sound’s first publishing venture, working at Perfect Songs and BMG Music Publishing, she joined EMI Music Publishing in 1996 to head up its sampling & copyright Infringement department, at a time when no other UK publisher had an equivalent department.
Of course, sampling has since become a staple of modern-day songwriting and the phenomenon is growing. When a sample use has not been licensed it becomes a matter of copyright infringement, and Hook strives passionately to protect the rights of writers. Alongside this, her team educates Sony Music Publishing’s newly signed songwriters, highlighting the importance of not infringing a third party’s rights and assisting them in the clearance process.
Hook has also worked to strengthen relationships in the UK and internationally to ensure efficient royalty and credit processing.
“I've always stuck up for the songwriter,” she tells Music Week. “Without the songwriter, there is no song, and without the song there is no music industry. Not all artists are the songwriter; a lot of songwriters are unsung, and they deserve that respect, and they deserve a publisher with a safe pair of hands. So, if somebody wants to sample a song, we will, wherever we possibly can, consult that songwriter because [sampling] changes it and it changes the integrity. It's very important for me that the original songwriter has that voice.”
Here, we meet Alison Hook to delve deeper into the seismic impact her work has made on both music publishing and the wider industry beyond…
What does it mean to you to win this award?
“It's absolutely amazing. I've been in the industry almost 40 years now, in my current place 28 years, and seeing how sampling has developed over the years, organically, but also how we keep up with the times in terms of how people are using sampling, it's been a journey, and it will continue to be.”
Does the music industry value songwriters enough?
“I don't think that the songwriter is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds when they're thinking about the record they want to make and put out. We are, to this day, left to the last minute, and we are fundamentally the rights that you need to clear. Because if you can't clear those rights, you don't have a track to put out.”
Even though some people do so regardless…
“Oh, yes. And that's where a sample becomes an infringement.”
Whose responsibility is sample clearance?
“It's not uncommon for a producer to put a sample in and not declare it. So the artist, the record company, management, or any mixture of those people, need to be really tight on their producer agreements. It happens quite frequently that we will find out about a sample and we will go to the record company, or that person's publisher, and they'll say they don't know anything about it.”
You've been in the industry almost 40 years, in an area of publishing which can be difficult to navigate. How did you end up making that your career?
“Ever since I started in the music industry, I've been involved in copyright. In 1988, I saw the UK 1988 Copyright Act come in. So, at 22 years old, I was extremely interested to find out what the changes are and why. I went to visit various lawyers and they said, ‘Don't really know; didn't write that part.’ So, there are still some unknowns in that Act.
“I was always interested in the rights of the writers and protecting their integrity. I worked for many years in the music industry where it was vinyl and cassette. Sampling wasn't really a thing, or it was very much underground. In the mid-’90s, certainly in the UK, it became more of a thing. In 1996, I was the copyright manager at BMG Music Publishing, and Sneaker Pimps came to me and wanted to sample a piece of music from a John Barry song [Golden Girl], owned by EMI. At that time, Maria Forte at EMI dealt with all sorts of commercial affairs and was really the only one that knew anything about sampling. So, I went to her, and I said, ‘You own this song, I need to clear it.’ We had a conversation about the terms she was going to set and I asked how she arrived at that, and it got cleared. The song comes out [6 Underground]; it's a hit. I just thought, what a fascinating area to use a song artistically.
"It was Maria Forte at EMI, who decided that she was going to leave EMI and when we did this Sneaker Pimps one, she phoned me and said, ‘Do you want to take over?’"
I don't think the songwriter is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds when they're thinking about the record they want to make and put out
Alison Hook, Sony Music Publishing
Was she a role model for you?
“Maria has always been a role model. We're still in touch to this day. She is a powerhouse of a woman. If you look at the sampling industry in the UK, it is predominantly female and it does make you wonder why. I think one of the answers to that has to be that you need a certain set of talents to do this job and remain calm and pragmatic and fair and do it in a timely manner and I think that's women. Multi-taskers! [Laughs].”
When you established the first sampling and copyright infringement department at EMI Music Publishing, what were the challenges?
“On the one hand, it was simpler because there were less sample clearances, probably about 200 a year and now we're dealing with well over a thousand, and that number is escalating year-on-year. Back then, there was not the volume, but also there weren't the resources. When we listened to a sample request and had to send it to all of the writers for their permission, we used to have to record it onto a cassette, or later CD, and send it through regular mail. So, everything happened a lot more slowly. But now, with everything being sent electronically, people want an answer yesterday.”
You were also the first to establish an online clearance guide. Has that changed since the ’90s or is that the blueprint?
“That's the blueprint that artist-producers need to look at. It hasn't changed. Essentially, don't use a song without getting permission from everyone involved in that song. Back then, when I wrote it, probably ’96, we put that up because we got so many phone calls from people asking the same questions. So we put it up online. And, this is still the case. [Like] there are urban myths that you can sample X number of bars or X number of notes or X number of seconds before you need clearance. Totally not true.”
What would make your job easier?
“As soon as you think that you want to use a song, tell your publisher. Tell your record company. Tell whoever you need to tell so that they can find out whether that's even possible because if it's not possible, you can't keep it in your song. If it gets denied they're going to have to take it out. So give us time.”
Do you have a favourite clearance story?
“There is one that, not to sound stupid, satisfied my soul. It's One Dance by Drake. It's an example of a pretty much unknown song, Do You Mind by DJ Paleface and Kyla Reid. We were involved with Drake at the time. I found out that one of the songwriters, he had signed his share of the song to us years ago on a one-off song assignment. So, I found him. It turns out that he's related to the other two writers of the song. Drake was on an absolute time limit and where it satisfied my soul is that I said, ‘Drake wants to sample your song. I'm going to play it to you. Is it a yes or a no? Can we work out terms?’ And, his family were on the cusp of a very difficult decision in terms of their lives and in clearing this within 24 hours, it changed their lives. A lovely young family, and their lives have now changed forever because Drake sampled them.”
Do you have a favourite song that uses a sample?
“This is one of my favourites because I was involved all the way along the line. There was a song in 2004, by Mario Winans called I Don't Wanna Know and that sampled Boadicea by Enya. I dealt with that clearance. And then in December 2003, Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and 21 Savage put out Creepin, which sampled I Don't Wanna Know. So if you look at the list of songwriters in there, you've got the whole Mario Winans camp, you've got the whole Metro Boomin camp, and you've got the whole Enya camp. It just shows how sampled songs are now getting sampled. And in instances like that, you've got so many rights holders that you've got to go to. It only takes one of them to say no, or to not answer, you can't use it.”
How is AI impacting what you do?
“Fortunately for me, it's too soon to tell. It's very early days for AI. It doesn't really come onto my radar in my day-to-day life and if it ever does, it will mean that there is a problem and time will tell how those problems are going to get resolved.”
What are your future career plans?
“To remain at the forefront. We've set the stage for how clearances are dealt with in the UK and that is moving abroad in certain territories as well, things like electronic clearance documentation. It's much faster than waiting for everybody to sign something. I do find that clearance terms and conditions that all the publishers set are on a similar stage because we're always either asking or giving permission. So ,I feel fired up to maintain that. Also, to streamline things even more than we have done, if that's at all possible, just so that the process becomes quicker, clearer, cleaner.”
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