MusicFirst Coalition Pens Open Letter to Congress
Music industry advocacy group MusicFirst has sent an open letter to Congress setting out their legislative priorities. Members of the coalition include the Recording Academy, the RIAA and the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).
Broadcast radio, copyright law and statutory rates are all covered in an open letter to Congress from the MusicFirst industry coalition. Some highlights:
"musicFIRST pursues one goal – that market-based principles drive compensation for all artists and creators whenever and however their music is played."
On Radio: "Big Radio is again this Congress asking Members to sign a House Resolution, supported by old facts and crony capitalist logic, stating that big corporate radio should never pay for its only input – music. We strongly urge you not to cosponsor this controversial resolution, the so called “Local Radio Freedom Act.” It is seeking to tie the hands of the House Judiciary committee which has been working very hard to find consensus market-based solutions to this issue for several years."
On Pre-'72 Music: "Older artists have been forced to chase large, profitable music services across multiple state courts in lengthy and expensive litigation to pursue basic compensation for their valuable catalogs. Nearly every music service in the U.S. has discovered that this anomaly in U.S. law allows them to not pay for pre-72 music, so they don’t. Simple legislation will address this."
On A Standard Rate For All Music Services: "we seek a simple and market-based rate standard for all music services. Digital services like Pandora use a market-based rate, satellite services like SiriusXM use a grandfathered below-market rate and, again, terrestrial radio plays music for free. We want every business that delivers music to consumers to thrive and grow, but they all should pay a market-based rate to the artists and creators that they depend on."
Read the full letter here.
Next step is to ”STOP” illegal downloads or rerecording copyrighted music!
I am sure there is a way to prevent sharing music with everyone on the planet! Without the artist seeing a penny. Pay to Play or the music business is doomed.
All good and fine, but the letter fails to mention the elephant in the room, without which musicians and everyone else involved in the chain of music creation cannot get a fair deal: PIRACY.
Oddly the letter mentions “strong U.S. law”, but U.S. law is very weak regarding piracy. All we have is DMCA, which is woefully ineffective at stopping piracy.
Meanwhile YouTube is loaded with illegal uploads, income is lost to piracy sites, stream-rippers, and other forms of “sharing” (≠caring, in this case).
Contrary to bizarre popular misconception (fueled undoubtedly by the excesses of the 0.0001% of musicians who are actually millionaires, or the rather more who pretend to be in their music videos), most musicians are closer to starving artists than to middle class, much less bling-class.