Did music industry guy fake his own death?
p2pnet news view Music:- One of Fred Wilhelms’ missions in life is to try to encourage SoundExchange to be, well, just a little more diligent than it is, or has ever been.
The RIAA-heavy agency was started by, you guessed it, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA and now claims to be an independent body serving US musicians.
Cough, cough.
Wilhelms is a Nashville entertainment lawyer with a musical background and p2pnet is lucky enough to have him as a regular contributor.
“I’ve been chasing down royalties for over fifteen years now,” he said recently. “I’ve been chasing down artists where I already know where the money is for about half that time. I started out as a ‘detective’ when I needed a favor from a major label executive who needed to find about 300 artists for whom they had dormant royalty accounts. In six weeks, I found about three-quarters of them.
“For many, the check they received, no matter how small, was the first royalty check they had ever seen. From that, I’ve learned that seeing an artist get paid is a matter of honor and respect, and that not paying is the most profound disrespect you can show an artist.”
With that as background, “Winner of today’s award for living like you’re trying to write the plot for a potential Cohen brothers movie goes to William Grothe (right), a music industry guy who apparently faked his own death by making it appear that he had drowned in the Cumberland River,” says Steve Haruch in Nashville Cream, quoting an Associated Press report, to wit »»»
His car was found near the Cumberland River boat ramp, and his wallet and cap were nearby. His jacket was found in the water.
Police said his motive is unclear.
Grothe, an attorney who worked for a company that collects royalties for songwriters, has not been charged. But detectives said a criminal case is being worked up.
Whatever his plan was, it seems to have hit a snag, to say the least, writes Haruch, continuing »»»
When I saw that this guy collected royalties for songwriters, it made me think of this article on p2pnet, about Soundexchange, a royalties-collecting agency that, according to one Nashville source, has “failed to track down 40,000…artists.”
That’s a whole lot of back pay, which of course makes you wonder, you know, where the money is. I still don’t really understand what a Ponzi scheme is, but when 40,000 people aren’t getting paid, it sure seems like a scheme of some sort, doesn’t it? The sort that might make you, oh I don’t know, flee the state or something.
Just to be clear, I don’t know that these two stories are connected in any real way. The City Paper suggests that police are implying that they might have a notion of what’s going on: “Motives for the disappearance are not known, although police said Grothe had a life insurance policy worth about $1 million.”
Stakes is high, people.
Stakes is.
On that, Wilhelms has had an amazing idea and you’ll be hearing from him on it shortly.
For now, definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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January 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I don’t know this guy Grothe, who appears to have worked for SESAC, the composers’ performance rights organization. I also don’t know the guy who wrote the blog article about this that referenced my posts here on SoundExchange. Any connection between SoundExchange’s problems and Grothe is purely coincidental and exists only in the blogger’s mind.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Seems like a comtroversial death to me.