You’re probably aware that musicians, particularly songwriters, aren’t all that jazzed about streaming services and the meagre royalties they receive from them. One of the reasons for this is because the laws that govern the music industry were drafted decades ago.
In fact, as Forbes notes, songwriting and music licensing regulations in the US date back to before World War II, and it’s a similar case throughout the rest of the world. Of course, today’s music world is slightly different to that of the 1940s.
For one thing, those laws could never have predicted the rapid progress in technology that took place during the 20th Century and how it impacted music. In particular, there’s no specific provisions for digital streaming and therein lies the rub.
Some would argue that major labels and their ilk were fine with the old laws when they were making tons of money off of them and using them to draw artists into exploitative record deals, but it’s the musicians who are still on the line.
That’s why the reaction to a recent decision by the US Department of Justice has been met with outrage in the professional songwriting community. “This would create Armageddon in the professional songwriter community,” said Nashville Songwriters Association (NSAI) Executive Director Bart Herbison.
What Herbison is referring to is a new ruling by the DOJ on music licensing consent decrees. “I am stunned and sickened [by the ruling],” added NSAI President Lee Thomas Miller. “DOJ did not take the impact on songwriters into account when issuing this ruling.”
Over the past three years, the two largest performing rights societies (PROs) in the US, ASCAP and BMI, have been warring with the DOJ (enough acronyms for you yet?), urging them to change the Consent Decrees and allow for fairer payouts to musicians for streaming, among other changes.
As Forbes reports, “The DOJ denied virtually all requests from music publishers and songwriters, and also ruled that each PRO can license 100% of a song for use, regardless of what percentage of the song a PRO represents.”
In other words, songwriters will continue to receive streaming royalties based on laws enacted when streaming didn’t even exist and PROs can license 100 percent of a song for use, even if the song has multiple songwriters who all belong to different PROs.
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For example, ‘Lean On’ was written by Major Lazer, DJ Snake, and MØ. Let’s imagine for a second each of these artists belongs to a different PRO (which could well be the case), each artist’s PRO currently has a right to license 100 percent of ‘Lean On’.
This is an issue because it discourages songwriters from working with other songwriters who aren’t affiliated with their PRO and poses an administrational nightmare. As for streaming, the DOJ denied requests from songwriters for a right to withdraw their catalog from digital licensing services.
Record labels and recording artists already have this right, since they’re not bound by the old Consent Decrees, but songwriters don’t. To put it another way, Taylor Swift and UMG can withdraw Swift’s music from streaming services, but Max Martin can’t.
Obviously, this limits the rights of songwriters to negotiate with companies like Spotify and Google for fairer payouts, which could be why those companies are more than happy to continue with the status quo.
