Sound Advice: Hillbilly in Washington and the Performance Rights Act

Hillbilly in Washington and the Performance Rights Act

My wife Mary and I went to our nation’s capital last week along with hundreds of recording artists, songwriters, musicians and music industry professionals to lobby our legislative leaders on the Performance Rights Act. This singularly important and long overdue piece of legislation is meant to compensate artists, musicians and labels for the hits they create that generate over $16 Billion (yes, that’s 16,000,000,000 dollars) in revenue each year for the corporations that own the AM/FM radio stations in America…Wall Street financed corporations like Clear Channel Communications and Radio One. In our discussions with the legislators (most of whom support your right to get paid) one thing was clear, the tens of millions of dollars the broadcast industry is spending through lobbyists and their bully pulpit has muddied the true facts with deliberate misinformation. Broadcasters are blanketing the airwaves they control ad nauseum, poor mouthing why they should not be required to pay for using someone else’s property.

Some in our music family have been swayed by the broadcast industry’s efforts, worried that this bill will take away from the songwriter’s and publisher’s royalties. Don’t buy that! This has nothing to do with the song copyright and everything to do with the recording copyright (the record). To be crystal clear, the recording of a song is a separate asset from the song itself in the same way an office building is a separate asset from the land it is built on. As a banker, I value the office building and the land separately, as each has its own value. Using the same principle, I value the song and a recording of the song separately as they are individual assets with unique economics.

Let me ask you a question, if songwriters didn’t have singers and musicians to interpret their songs and labels to promote those records, where would the hits come from…and if publishers did not have record labels promoting those hits what would their catalogs be worth? How dare these mega corporations demand their inventory for free because they are doing us a favor when they are generating billions of dollars in revenue using the music we have committed our lives and careers to creating and promoting.

Thanks to the collective efforts of NARAS, SoundExchange, RIAA, Future of Music Coalition, ASCAP and thousands of other supporters the tide is turning against these corporate bullies. Our legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle feel the time is right to finally pass this bill. Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, and even Presidents Bush and Obama agree that this is an issue that is not only fundamentally fair, but necessary to the economic survival of the music industry.

This is our time. Seventy years of waiting for the stars to align is long enough. This will not take care of itself; we must act to support our livelihood - now! If fair compensation for your work is worth two minutes of your time, please register your support for the Performance Rights Act at this link: www.musicfirstcoalition.org.

Hell, have your mom, your dad, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends and even your dog register, because they all care about your future and want to see you get paid for your work!

Keep it in the groove,

Eli Ball

Founder

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