SoundExchange: a prediction….
p2pnet news view | music:- If the corporate music industry had any ethics, Nashville entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms would be its “ethicist-in-chief,” wrote Dave Marsh, and quoted by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk.
Wilhelms has for years been hammering tirelessly at the major labels and the people around them, asking only that they be fair to the artists they purport to represent.
But that’s like trying to get blood out of a stone.
Wilhelms contributes to p2pnet and yesterday I ran a letter he wrote to John Simson, the public face of the shadowy (un)SoundExchange, the RIAA spin-off principally tasked with keeping track of royalties and making sure artists receive what’s due to them.
Sadly, the organisation isn’t able to adequately manage this. And that means many thousands of artists have been somehow mislaid.
So what’s happening to the missing millions of dollars.
Could it be the SoundExchange is using it to pay for lawsuits and PR?
Surely not.
On the other hand, though ……………
Meanwhile, “Wilhelms lays out EXACTLY the sort of questions that thousands of artists and their various representatives should be demanding from SoundExchange,” says alant in a Reader’s Write, going on:
“Because it looks like they’ve been using artist royalties to fund their lobbying and litigation efforts. I guess they’ve got to spend all that cash somehow – so it doesn’t wind up on the IRS filings – but of course hiring more folks to LOCATE AND PAY THE ARTISTS THEY PURPORT TO REPRESENT is out of the question …”
He continues:
I’m going to go ahead and predict how this one pans out:
1) In a few days, SE will release a press release on the matter, saying that no such money was used to fund their lobbying efforts blah blah vast conspiracy against paying artists blah blah big radio funding campaign of misinformation blah blah why just today we saved a starving artist from certain doom, now please move along. They won’t, however, provide any proof whatsoever.
2) They’ll dodge the nonprofit question completely, or simply say “Our work with (and yes, they’ll always say ‘work with’ – never ‘creation and funding of’) musicFIRST is in keeping with the broader effort of representing artist rights and therefore part of our nonprofit status.” And then they’ll just hope that no actual tax lawyers show up.
3) In about 25 minutes, this press release will be proved factually incorrect, intentionally misleading, and stupidly vague in key areas by just about anyone with a pulse and three minutes on Google.
4) If we’re *really* lucky, they’ll trundle out some has-been, one-hit-wonder dipshit artists nobody’s ever heard of as “proof” that their efforts are in line with artist representation. (Heads up SoundExchange! I can pretty much guarantee you “International Recording Artist Kristine W” has Thursday free. Along with every other day.)
No bets on alant not being correct 
And, he adds, “Kudos to Wilhelms for digging out the nice fat raises that SoundExchange staff got between ‘04 to ‘05 in a prior article – folks will want to note that was another period where SoundExchange couldn’t find all those wonderful, hiding-in-plain-sight artists in order to pay them their royalties. Which, come to think of it, is also something these artists should be asking SE about: why their staff get paid for not finding people.”
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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August 8th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
My bet is on no response from SoundExchange at all. In terms of arrogance and disdain for what the public thinks, SoundExchange has learned much from its RIAA controllers.
Check their press releases. They never directly answer any questions. Their spokesmen talk around and past the real subjects.
Look at the last gem for an example; when asked if SoundExchange’s sponsorship of musicFIRST was legal, John Simson replied “the Broadcasters will say anything.” When asked if SoundExchange’s sponsorship of musicFIRST was legal, MIchael Huppe said the Board of Directors approved it unanimously. These guys are the nimblest side-steppers since Fred Astaire died.
I think John Simson has also learned the hard way that not everyone swoons when he walks into a room just because he’s a likeable guy anymore. His sorry showing on Velvet Rope, where he couldn’t explain some outright contradictions in his own statements and ran off after promising to discuss things, makes me sure he is going to pretend my letter never existed this time. He isn’t fooling anyone any more, but as long as he can fool himself and his bosses, he will be OK.
And, let’s face it, he doesn’t have to care what I think about the lousy job SoundExchange does, or the outright lies he tells. He doens’t have to because I can’t touch him. What am I going to do, take my clients to the collection agency down the street? Oh, that’s right. The Copyright Office and the CRB gave SoundExchange a monopoly. The lack of competition can build a real contempt in an organization, and we are seeing Exhibit A at work here.
As long as he keeps his RIAA masters happy, John Simson will continue to make a couple hundred thousand a year, plus fringes, even if he never finds another artist on that unfound list. If there was an honest-to-God independent voice on that Board of Directors, or one real artist representative, we’d already hear the noise. There’s nobody outside who can challenge the real leadership and no one inside with the guts to try.
So don’t expect an answer. Public opinion is just not that important to SoundExchange.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
However, Mr. Wilhelms, they know that they must find somebody to maintain their monopoly status. It would be wrong to just simply keep all that money without some sort of effort to find somebody. That’s money launduring in it’s simplist form.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Mr. Himura, they will “find” some people because people like those Live365 webcasters (and me) will send artists to them as long as SoundExchange has a monopoly on the money. They are already taking credit for all those artists that people have sent to them, so there’s little chance they are going to get honest about who is doing what.
Finding an artist and registering him or her with SoundExchange is satisfying in many ways; the artist gets money, you prove SoundExchange is incompetent by doing something for free in a couple minutes that their paid staff hasn’t been able to do in years, and it reduces the amount of money SoundExchange can suck out of the “unfound” artists’ accounts to pay for the Christmas bonuses for the staff who couldn’t find the artists in the first place.
You can’t beat that kind of triple play.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
The RIAA is too busy suing states:
RIAA To Sue Minnesota
http://www.crystalair.com/content.php?id=91200708004
August 8th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
You get no arguements out of me, and it still proves a point.
Example, let’s say that you are the trustee of Bill Gates’ estate, and you are responsible to find 9,000 people to divide up his estate(Forbes has him pegged as being worth $53 billion as of the 2006 list). If my math is right, each one will get nearly $6 million. Now you have a big responsibility, as well as a lot of zeros to deal with.
You are then faced with a choice. Do you find these people and give them their money, or do you claim that some people couldn’t be found and keep the money for yourself, simply because the will states that you can keep the money if you don’t find these people.
Now then, I finally had enough of you mismanaging funds, and have obtained a unfound list to Mr. Gates’ billions. Now I find nearly 200 people and sent them to you so that they can collect their money that they have properly inherited.
Now that the example is over, the real story is that Sound Exchange doesn’t want to work(like the lawyer), and so people like the live365 and yourself, Mr. Wilhelms, must do SE’s dirty work and send artists to sign up to recieve their royalty checks. Kind of a cheap way of doing PI work, don’t you think?
August 9th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
**Kind of a cheap way of doing PI work, don’t you think?**
As an added bonus, they then get to use this money to lobby, litigate, and push for more power … and more ‘rights’ to collect even more money on behalf of folks they don’t plan on paying. And the cycle continues …
June 13th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Insulting artists is unnecessary, really. You can have this debate without the childish and rude remarks about people you don’t know. I would expect more professionalism from a music industry veteran. Kristine W is a cancer survivor and an inspiration to many and those comments are out of line.