Unpaid Artists: Part II
2pnet.net News View:- SoundExchange used to be a Big Four Organized Music royalty collection and distribution agency, run under the auspices of the Big Four’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
It now floats its own boat with a DIY search site called PLAYS (Performance Log Archive of Your Songs). And it claims, “thousands of artists” are “united” in receiving “a fair price for the licensing of their music in a new digital world” and that members include small, medium and large independent record companies, as well as the major label groups and artist-owned labels.
However, “an unbelievably huge number of people on the roll aren’t receiving a fair price,” we posted recently, adding, “In fact, they aren’t receiving anything at all.
Fred Wilhelms is an entertainment attorney in Nashville, primarily representing artists and songwriters, with a focus on royalty and rights recovery.
Here’s what he had to say in a comment post:
Several years ago, I was publicly critical of SoundExchange at a music conference. John Simson, the executive director, tried to call my bluff by asking, in front of witnesses at the conference, for my help in finding the artists for whom they had collected money. I have a well-earned rep for finding money for artists, so finding artists for money that was already there sounded like a snap.
It turned out I called John’s bluff. For a year, I bugged SoundExchange to get me started on the detective work, and they never even responded to my calls and letters. Finally, after I had given a newspaper interview where I was critical again, and JUST BEFORE I was about to serve on another conference panel, he called me.
To cut to the chase, after several more months of delay, Simson offered to send me the list of everyone they hadn’t found. There was just one condition: I had to promise not to tell anyone about the list. I couldn’t even call Ice Cube’s manager and say “Do you know there is money for your client sitting at SoundExchange?”
In other words, the official SoundExchange stance is “we have a list of people for whom we have money, but we don’t want to let them know they are on it.”
This is completely consistent with their PR spin that they have worked very hard for years to find these artists and still have nearly 9,000 they can’t find, and 1,900 labels, too. Somebody should contact the folks at Fat Possum. I’d sent them an email because they obviously aren’t answering their phones.
But, frankly, it is time to pay attention to the “man behind the curtain” on all this.
SoundExchange is doing a great job. It is excellent at the function it was set up to do. Collecting and distributing money isn’t their reason to exist, and if you look beyond that, you’ll see an efficient and effective organization doing exactly what it’s founders want it to do.
SE sits astride the main pipeline of money running from Internet and satellite broadcasters on one end and copyright holders and artists on the other. When you know who runs SE, you see it as a smart move by the RIAA to maintain some control over distribution, and the monetization of distribution, of music.
SE negotiates the license fees for these uses. In essence, they get to exert control over what we hear from Satellite and Internet stations by being the entity that negotiates how much the piper is going to be paid, and who gets to pay him.
Looking at SE as a distribution control device, it works PERFECTLY before the first licensing dollar is received, or the first royalty pennies are paid out. As an organizational function, paying people is secondary to keeping the RIAA in the distribution game. It’s almost a distraction from their main goal, and they could do the job as well, or even better, if they weren’t collecting and distributing license revenue at all.
Take a step back and look at the larger picture.
The Internet destroyed the labels’ control of distribution of recorded music. You’ve got the Internet, not just to download stuff, legally or not, but to listen to streaming broadcasts of just about any type of music you choose to hear. And the key words there are “you choose.” There are no programming directors limiting outlets to a tight play list based on what the major labels have spent to influence them.
The Internet is an endless smorgasbord. And the RIAA ignored the party until it was too late.
And because the smorgasbord was already up and running, they graciously “volunteered,” through SoundExchange, to be the guys sitting at the front door, selling tickets. They also sit at the back door, selling tickets in the form of license fees to the people bringing the musical food in.
Quite a racket, and completely legal.
The RIAA is truly the only organization to which SE is accountable. It isn’t accountable to the Library of Congress or the Register of Copyrights, which gave it essentially monopolistic control of the field. Sure, you can elect to go with Royalty Logic instead, but the default position is SE, and that’s where all that nice unclaimed money is, which, in mid-December, is going to defray SE’s costs of operations, including the legal fees incurred to maintain the control of the licensing process. No one outside the SE board room knows how much license revenue they take in, or how much they pay out to artists and copyright holders.
As for the side benefits of not finding people, I figure there’s about $4 million in those “unfound” accounts. Nobody knows for sure, because SE isn’t telling. It’s like that plot gimmick in “Office
Space,” where the unhappy employees set up an account to catch all those fractional cents from rounded off transactions. You don’t notice the pennies until they pile up. And if they are piling up in your vault, like they are for SE, then so much the better for you.
It’s the same reasoning why labels don’t spend a lot of time making sure their royalty accounting is accurate. There’s nothing in it for them.
It is also why labels love to exploit back catalog. The royalties earned by single tracks on oldies compilations are rarely enough to justify an artist conducting a full blown audit, so if there are errors and omissions in favor of the labels (and there are), all those insignificant amounts start to pile up.
And remember, the guys who set up and ran the royalty accounting systems at the labels are the guys behind SoundExchange.
So we shouldn’t be surprised at what has happened, and we shouldn’t be surprised at the spin SE is putting on its own failure to find people. Because it really isn’t failure. It’s successfully screwing artists, which is something the members of the RIAA have been very, very good at.
We might not be able to deal with this side of things right now, but we, as individuals, can do something to make sure SoundExchange does a better job of keeping its public promises. If you know any recording artists on the list, let them know. The first check, even if it is retroactive to 1996, isn’t going to make them rich, but it is their money. It doesn’t take a lot to register.
Also See:
anything at all – Unpaid Artists: unbelievable list, September 22, 2006
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September 26th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
American music publishers who monopolized the ownership of Cuban songs before the Cuban revolution are now refusing to pay (since about 1960) the songwriters and their heirs royalties because, allegedly, the Bush embargo prohibits payment to Cubans.
Based on the Bush embargo arguments, the publishers retain the money while the songwriters and the heirs die and eventually the debt is forgotten, making th publishers richer and the Cuban poorer.
If the Cuban’s money is skimmed, and American songwriters and artists have not complaned about what their country does to the Cubans, why should they not suffer the same destiny with SoundExchange?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 27th, 2006 at 9:40 am
i feel for you, i really do. but i think i have read over 500 posts by you and it always ends with the same thing.
September 27th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Sorry, but cannot determine what you call “the same thing”.
I must, though, imagine that you do not care for my being passionate about the rights of authors and artists, music fans and consumers, and the abuse and disdain of the “rights holders” against these very same group.
Now, will you please prove that you are or are not not a RIAA or music publisher troll, by telling us what do think about the subject at hand, the unpaid artists (and songwriters) who are being routinely ripped off by the various components of the music industry?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas,com
September 27th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
You said:
“American music publishers who monopolized the ownership of Cuban songs before the Cuban revolution are now refusing to pay (since about 1960) the songwriters and their heirs royalties because, allegedly, the Bush embargo prohibits payment to Cubans.”
If this non-payment has been in place for 45 years, it is hardly accurate to call it the “Bush embargo,” is it?
You said:
“If the Cuban’s money is skimmed, and American songwriters and artists have not complaned about what their country does to the Cubans, why should they not suffer the same destiny with SoundExchange?”
Following this reasoning to its logical end, no one should EVER complain about being ripped off because someone ELSE has been ripped off just as badly, or worse.
I understand your passion about the embargo of royalties due to Cuban composers. Their plight, however, does nothing to diminish the legitimacy of the problems faced by the artists SoundExchange cannot find. This is not a zero-sum equation. If full immediate reparations to the Cuban composers were made today, it would not change one thing about the SoundExchange situation.
Now, if you really want to talk about the problem of Cuban artists in terms of the SoundExchange situation, you can address the facts without blowing smoke about the “Bush embargo.” There are a number of Cuban artists on the SoundExchange “unfound” list. How can we get them paid like the rest of their peers?
September 27th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Let me clarify.
While Bush did not commence the embargo, he supposrts and maintains it against all reasoning. If the Vietnam were still going on, yes, I may cal it the buss war. Certainly the Iraq war is a Bush war. I know a few american frined and none of them support the current Bush wars.
“Following this reasoning to its logical end, no one should EVER complain about being ripped off because someone ELSE has been ripped off just as badly, or worse.”
I think you got i backwards. American artists that are ripped by the cartels and others should do something about it. The problem is that besides compaining to each other most artists are simply waiting in the sidelines hoping the problem goes away. Look what has hapenned to composers. External forces have “organized” them but the organization is a front for the cartels.
If anyone knows of a recording artist or songwriter organization that defend the interest of these and has produced uniform results for its membership, just let me know.
“I understand your passion about the embargo of royalties due to Cuban composers. Their plight, however, does nothing to diminish the legitimacy of the problems faced by the artists SoundExchange cannot find.”
And who says that SoundExchange cannot find the artists. What the article says is just the opposite, that SoundExchange does not wanr to find the artists because it it wants to retain the money that belog to the “lost” artists, just like the american publishers do not want to pay the cubans and simply use the embargo as a reason for not paying while refusing to turnover the songs to their would be owners so these can exploit the songs and be paid for it. After all the only country that has an embargo against Cuba is the USA.
“you can address the facts without blowing smoke about the “Bush embargo.”
I understand the pain some Americans feel when things like the embargo agaist Cuba, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war are mentioned and how irrational and quick to forget history some become. Iam not American, but if I were, I would be deeply ashamed of the behavior of some (not all) american politicians and businesses overseas, where there has been a total lack of respect for the sovereignty of the people of Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, and many other countries.
Within America, that total lack of respect is for artists, songwriters, music fans, and those that are sued for copying music like all our parents and grandparents and judges and politicians have traditionally done.
Yes, everything is interelated.
Said the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana.
“Those who don’t know history are comdemned to repeat it”.
If more American artists knew and talked about and protested of what is being done to the Cuban songwriter, less of it – not getting paid – would happen to them.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com