“In your dreams…”
Do you make a good living from your songwriting? Do your biannual BMI or ASCAP checks cover more than a nice dinner at a good restaurant?
These are valid questions for any professional songwriter. The answers are important, not just to pros, but to people considering a career in song writing.
How about a compromise US national law, endorsed by songwriters’ associations, music publishers, streaming services, and PROs (performing rights organizations) like ASCAP and BMI, passed unanimously by both houses of Congress, and signed into US law by President Donald Trump?
Another case of “In your dreams?”
Not this time.
On October 11, 2018, the president signed into law the Music Modernization Act, which finally nudges US law (and hopefully industry practices) into the 21st century.
What does it do? What Is It?
Here’s a good description by attorney Jordan Bromley, writing a guest column in the Feb 23, 2018 Billboard: “The Music Modernization act, or ‘MMA’ creates a formalized body, run by publishers, that administers the mechanical licensing of compositions streamed on services like Spotify and Apple Music (we call them DSPs, [digital service providers].) It changes the procedure by which millions of songs are made available for streaming on these services and limits the liability a service can incur if it adheres to the new process. It funds the creation of a comprehensive database with buy in from all the major publishers and digital service providers. This would be the first of its kind that has active participation from the major publishers, representing a vast majority of musical works. It also creates a new evidentiary standard by which the performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI can argue better rates for the performance of musical works on DSPs.”
This is ground-breaking, to understate. Big legislation like copyright law has nearly always been dictated by the powerful and wealthy stake holders like Disney, Time-Warner, etc., while songwriters stare in sad disbelief. That the large and powerful publishers, the streaming industry players, songwriters, and many ancillary interest groups could agree on an agenda and forge an outcome that benefits all of them is an historic accomplishment.
Accolades for the MMA from powerful industry leaders applaud the magnitude of this achievement. For example, National Music Publishers Assn. president and CEO David Israelite said, ”Songwriters have for too long labored without seeing fair rates and receiving all that they deserve, and for the first time in history, the music industry has partnered with the tech industry to fix these systemic problems.”
RIAA president Mitch Glazier said “The Music Modernization Act is now the law of the land, and thousands of songwriters and artists are better for it. The result is a music market better founded on fair competition and fair pay. The enactment of this law demonstrates what music creators and digital services can do when we work together collaboratively to advance a mutually beneficial agenda. It’s a great day for music.”
Similarly positive communiques came from the executives of ASCAP, BMI, NARAS (the Grammys), and more. So how will all this affect you and the money you earn when Dave Adkins, Del McCoury, Sister Sadie, or Claybank put one of your tunes on their album and it gets lots of play?
Your income from terrestrial radio will remain unchanged; i.e., you won’t get anything for spins of a tune you wrote when traditional AM or FM plays your tune. This may change in the future as radio struggles to remain relevant in the constantly changing world of music distribution — but for now, radio continues to remain exempt from paying you for your music. (Radio’s long-repeated claim is that spins will drive consumers to the market, where they’ll buy your record, or your CD or your cassette… Wait! Buy your what? —and at what market?
What about your income from streaming?
This is where you can make some good money — if you write for the masses. Since payout rates are set so low, the only songwriters who will derive decent income from streaming are writers whose music appeals to wide mainstream audiences. Niche music will continue to receive just a tiny sliver of the low payout, so for many songwriters in the bluegrass music field, their biannual checks from BMI or ASCAP will continue to cover the odd dinner out at a favorite restaurant, but probably not be enough to cover six months of payments for health insurance or six months of a mortgage, or even a car payment.
Payments from streaming will be standardized, though, and ASCAP and BMI and other interested groups can negotiate over time for higher rates for their writers. Since this monumental new law was created in full recognition of the current state of music distribution, rather than being an attempt to tweak the obsolete physical product-based system that we’ve been using for decades, there is reasonable hope for its success.
Does anybody win? How about players and producers!
For the first time, under the MMA, US law now recognizes that there is a right of compensation for performance on a recording. That means that Sound Exchange will now collect money from streamers and other music sellers and distribute it to the performers of the music — not just to the composers/song writers. Remember the “Wrecking Crew” in LA, the “Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section” and the small cadre of musicians who played many of the Motown hits? These performers often earned no more from their enormously defining contributions to pop culture than simple hourly session pay. Producers can now also get a piece of the pie, as the MMA recognizes the importance they can bring to the sound of a recording.
Archivists and librarians
Universities and Libraries can now act with due diligence to preserve America’s cultural treasures that lie decomposing in their archives and vaults, without being exposed to massive ($) legal liabilities for copyright infringement just for making “preservation” copies. This is another major win. Countless early films have already been badly and irreparably damaged by the passage of time, even when kept in expensive climate controlled vaults, as the very celluloid of the film and the attached photographic emulsion have disintegrated while archivists were prohibited from copying them just to save them.
I’ll revisit the complex MMA and its effects on us as it rolls out and is interpreted by the music and legal industries. For at least a short while, I suspect lawyers for all sides will begin referring to it as the “2018 Music Attorneys’ Full Employment” codicil.
Copyright © 2018 by Joe Weed
Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. Another of Joe’s productions with British guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson was heard in “The Mayo Clinic,” a film by Ken Burns, which just premiered nationally on PBS. Joe recently produced and released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots. Reach Joe by email at joe@joeweed.com, or by visiting joeweed.com.