Are Songwriters Better Off: The Changing Music Industry Landscape [Chris Castle]
Are songwriters better off compared to five years ago? Discover how songwriters’ lives have been transformed and the surprising changes in the music industry that can make or break a songwriter’s career…
Are songwriters better off compared to 5 years ago?
by CHRIS CASTLE of Music Tech Policy
The Trichordist has been running an important feature series titled “Are You Better off Today than You Were Five Years Ago” focused on the redesignation of the MLC with insightful excerpts from public comments in the Copyright Office MLC rulemaking. What is also an implied question of that series is are you better off today under the Music Modernization Act, the corresponding negotiations at the Copyright Royalty Board and the related litigation.
Despite all the hoorah and overselling of Title I of the sainted Music Modernization Act (the part of the legislation that created the MLC) in my experience nothing has changed for songwriters. Except spending an enormous amount of free time spent updating the MLC’s database for them. Successful songwriters are still successful, and, rough justice, the other 95% or so are still broke. This isn’t the fault of any one songwriter, but in the first instance it is the fault of the interlocking boards and executives who demand to be in charge. They wanted it, well now they’ve got it. Of course it’s also the fault of greedy, drooling, big tech executives and their minime lawyers, starting with Spotify and the evil Daniel Ek.
Independent songwriters dealing with Big Tech in litigation is a little bit like dealing with government prosecutors. They whinge about how dedicated they are and what super lawyers they must be because they have a high conviction rate. (Many have never conducted an actual trial.) You’d have a high conviction rate, too, if you had hundreds of lawyers, unlimited budgets, privacy busting tools, and political control of judicial appointments through the alumni network of former members of your operations. And who is on the other side? This array of legal and lobbying muscle is in the field against underfunded public defenders who are mostly trying to cut the a deal based on the lesser of two evils.
While redesignating the MLC is an opportunity to look back at that organization’s job performance, it’s also an opportunity to look back at where the current decisionmakers and power brokers have gotten us with our so-called “partners” at the platforms. Further, it’s an opportunity to look at the entire structure of government mandates, interlocking boards of directors, lack of songwriter representation, highly paid lawyers, lobbyists and executives, and abysmal royalty payouts mixed with the absurd MLC black box.
But there’s no point whinging about it on our side, either, because we are where we are and we’ve gotten where we’ve gotten. Ivors Academy in the UK is hosting an important event by songwriters for songwriters that will take a welcoming yet no doubt critical eye at the current environment. I wish we had something similar in the US. But guess who has no interest in allowing the workers to talk amongst themselves.
