ADVERTORIAL:
Africa’s largest independent music publishing company celebrates its 21st anniversary. Sheer Publishing is the home of songs that have travelled the world and represents a myriad of Africa’s most prolific songwriters and composers such as Philip Miller, Brendan Jury, Peter Ngobese, RJ Benjamin and Cedric Samson.
In its two decade journey, Sheer Publishing – a middle-sized African entity – has come to represent a global clientele in the music publishing business, fast-tracking its reputation as the leading African independent music publisher. The company boasts a global catalogue that includes some of the world’s most accomplished songwriters and provides expertise in film and television music clearance supervision, jingle and songwriter representation, international copyright and library/production music management.
From the onset Sheer Publishing’s goal was to create a service-oriented business by partnering with talented songwriters and composers, and collaborating with the broader media, advertising and technology industries.
Over the past few years Sheer Publishing has established a network of offices in East Africa, Central Africa and West Africa, culminating in the company’s crowning as ‘Publisher of the Year’ at the 2014 Wawela Music Awards – which was the last time the award was contested.
Sheer’s production music entity Skumba Music, houses the largest South African music library catalogue available under the blanket license, comprising more than 33 local selections of vibrant libraries.
Skumba Music, powered by Sheer Publishing, boasts a catalogue of more than 365 000 high quality tracks which grows by a minimum of 500 new songs on a monthly basis, making it the third largest music library in South Africa by market share and an exclusive distributor of South Africa’s finest production music.
As a publishing company, Sheer has provided numerous television programmes with music, earning placements on popular shows including Generations, Noot vir Noot, Open Varsity, DTV, Soccer 411, Intersections, Spirit Sundae, Private Practice, Jacob’s Cross, Isibaya, Isithembiso, Getroud met Rugby, Muvhango, Skeem Saam, Rhythm City, and Greed and Desire.
The company has always set out to make life easy for music users by not only supplying library music, but also sourcing composers to produce unique scores for series, film and adverts.
Furthermore, Sheer has successfully supplied music on commercials for various big brands including Castle Light, Vodacom, MTN, Renault, Brutal Fruit, Cape Union Mart, and the South African Cricket promos on SABC.
Always working towards promoting South African music heritage, Sheer continues to broaden its South African catalogue with a variety of musical genres and themes which include film scores, orchestral tension builders, drones, kwaito, house, traditional African drums, afro-jazz, hip hop, urban themes, ambient and ethereal soundscapes, action sequences, trailer tool packs and a unique catalogue of original traditional South African recordings dating back to the 1960s.
Sheer Publishing’s albums are neatly packaged according to genre and theme, and filed under renowned composers and film scorers such as Philip Miller, who composed the score for the Emmy award-winning documentary Miners Shot Down; Brendan Jury, who has scored music for South African films iNumber Number, Nothing for Mahala and Happiness is a Four Letter Word; and Peter Ngobese who composed all the logos and stings for SABC News, and has music placements on a host of top South African television series.
Additionally, Sheer prides itself on simplifying the process for library music end users by not only supplying music to them, but also sourcing composers to write specific scores for series, film and adverts.
Sheer Publishing also represents a range of original publishers including the following international clients for Africa: Kobalt Music Publishing, Bicycle Music Group, Songs Music Publishing, Downtown Music Publishing, Mute Song, Passport Music, Dance Cave & Hitpick Songs, African Hypertext, Fastforward Songs, Tanoca Music, Basement Music, Mushroom Music and Enja Records for licensing purposes.
As the film and music industries continue to evolve through extraordinary transitions, Sheer Publishing is committed to serving the long-term music publishing needs of world-class songs and songwriters.
