For prospective students interested in music, the paths may seem limited to performance or music supervision. But CAMD, which was named as of one of the top music business schools by Billboard for the second year in a row, is helping students interested in joining a changing industry with classes focused on music industry and business. We chatted with Zachary Richmond, Class of 2021, who completed several co-ops in an oft-overlooked, but critical, part of the industry: music copyright. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Your first co-op was at HFA [The Harry Fox Agency]. What were the classes that you took at CAMD that helped to prepare you for that?

During my Intro to Music Industry course, we did a focused unit on music licensing and the music rights world. It piqued my interest. And then I also took a music supervision course [my] second semester. I took my copyright law class as well with Professor Herlihy and that was my intro into the music rights landscape. I applied for the HFA co-op and that was my first step into the world of the music rights, professionally speaking.

What drew you to the music supervision and music copyright side of things?

My dad’s a lawyer and I’m a musician. So I’ve always [tried] to combine those things in the back of my head. I mentioned the music supervision class because most people take that to become music supervisors; I was interested more in the the licensing side of the music supervision world… And then I took other music licensing coursework with [Professor Herlihy] that helped focus what I wanted to do within that.

My first co-op was very administrative focused: processing licenses, matching songs and writers and publishers to each other. [It] gave me a good foundation for what is the backbone of that world landscape and music licensing.

When you returned from HFA, what were some of the things that you were able to apply to life at CAMD?

My first HFA co-op gave me a very in-the-weeds [experience]. [I learned] this is how the music licensing and publishing administrative world works, of how songs get registered and how publishers process licenses and get payment for distributions… I went from HFA back to Northeastern and was like, “Okay, how do I build upon this?”

And that’s when I applied for the Universal Pictures internship, which is at the film studio… that team operated and control[led] the studios music catalog… So I got to see a day-to-day [of] “what is it like actually working for a music publisher and with in the music publishing landscape?”

When seeing how licenses are processed for TV or commercial requests, and then taking that knowledge back to school, [I was] like, “Okay, now I’ve worked with actual licensing instead of just processing and matching songs. Now I’ve seen how quoting works and seen how a cue sheet flows from a theatrical production through to the pros” […] It gave me a more full circle picture of the music rights landscape as a whole.

I was then able to apply [that] to licensing classes, and then with some of my higher-level music rights stuff at Northeastern being like, “Okay, well, here’s how licensing negotiations play out. And what are the considerations that we should be thinking of with music licensing reform, and should writers get paid directly, or should everything have intermediaries?” These are all things that Professor Herlihy would spur us on with in our classes to think about the bigger picture of the music rights world.

Having that knowledge from my internship at Universal Pictures was very valuable, so that when we start talking about the bigger picture licensing framework of the music industry as a whole, you actually see how that has been implemented in the day to day.

So it’s kind of everything, kind of like built upon itself to the point where, through my co-op experience, through the class work I took, I got a very strong foundation in music licensing and music rights at Northeastern that then when I got my full time job at Universal Pictures as to where I am now back in the same department that I got that I had my internship with.