Music on Radio: Who needs a publisher? Just find a rep

Since the great Martin Amis auction we all know the book publishing business has a sharp end. We shouldn't expect music publishing any more to be a gentlemanly art of placing dots and lines on paper. In the pop areas that make real money, print never comes into it. The game is as abstract as futures trading. It's about the sale of licences and rights: tangible objects, such as CDs, are somebody else's job.

For Radio 3's Music Machine this made fertile ground. The daily programme fills a young people's slot at 5pm, but its behind-the-scenes detail covers a wider range than radio music magazines for grown-ups. Kit Hesketh-Harvey started with Michael Jackson outbidding Paul McCartney for old Beatles songs. He uncovered a world in which composers don't need publishers at all, in the traditional sense.

They can write straight on to computers in full score, faster than using pencil and paper, and print out high-quality instrumental parts. They can sell or hire out their music themselves and bypass the middlemen. All they want is a rep or an agent to find them performances and commissions for new works and do the clever deals on rights. Some of them are good at that, too.

Surprisingly, the profession of composer's rep has not yet taken off in the UK, but the publishers have certainly responded. They have built up their promotion departments, especially in contemporary music where hesitant performers may be open to persuasion. Many careers owe much to these specialist promoters, who are often personally devoted to their clients. The sight of ambitious young composers sucking up to them at concerts is creepy but understandable. They are tough operators, for all the protective charm. Not all of them are above rubbishing composers who just happen to be in another publisher's eye - though, as we heard from the London Sinfonietta's Paul Meecham, some firms use them effectively, some don't.

There still is life in the score. Music Sales, which took over Chester's, was said to have got big on subtle exploitation of print rights. But most of the way it's negotiation, protection, promotion. Funnily enough, the new strategies haven't made the trade any less conservative. Pop groups were always moulded to fit the market, and in the small world of contemporary classical music the principle is the same, except that the moulding is done by teachers. The publishers need faces that fit their well-defined outlets among orchestras, festivals and broadcasters.

If you are one of those listeners who thinks all new music sounds the same, the reason lies in this cosy process. Creative musicians with more original markets and ways of working are better off without a publisher. It's no accident that Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars grew profitable by their own efforts first, and only then had the publishing offers. This is one area where reps who aren't tied to an established firm ought to be making a bigger niche.

Beethoven had the right attitude: treat 'em rough, unless you are short of an advance. Double dealing, simultaneous offers to different firms in different cites, it was all fair game. The sycophancy he saved for his patrons, and that wasn't always what it seemed. Composer of the Week has been taking a look at his relationships with the people he depended on for support. Being nice to noblemen was not easy for somebody who shared the sentiments of the "Ode to Joy".

Luckily, one of the first and most crucial patrons, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, had a tolerant view of his protege, who liked to go off to eat at the pub instead of dressing for dinner at home. Beethoven called it a love- hate relationship, and they nearly came to blows. The prince's reward was to be the dedicatee of many works, including the first piano trios, of which he covertly subsidised the publication. If the publisher unaided is a force for conservatism, the patron can be a mould-breaker.

Paul Guinery read a script in the old-fashioned way. It wouldn't have done any harm to linger on the characters in the story. Lichnowsky's mother- in-law, the Countess Elisabeth von Thun, briefly appeared as dedicatee of the piano trio with clarinet. Elsewhere she is variously called "eccentric" and "delightful" by contemporaries. Sounds like quite a family for 18th- century Vienna. Instead, we sped on to Prince Lobkowitz, dedicatee of Beethoven's first six string quartets. Even so, the first days of the week brought a fresh perspective to familiar music, no easy task for such a regular occupant of this time-honoured broadcasting niche.