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Leveling The Playing Field With The Fair Play Fair Pay Act

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Advocacy
Jun 21, 2017 - 8:14 am

Fair play, fair pay. It’s a simple concept.  And we’re finally seeing it applied in a comprehensive bill legislating pay parity for music creators.

Today representatives of The Recording Academy are standing by in New York City as Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a longtime supporter of fair compensation for music creators and the ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, introduces the aptly named Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015. This new legislation is the culmination of years of grassroots lobbying by our membership on a slate of individual issues. It also is the result of coordinated effort between The Recording Academy – which first called for a comprehensive, united approach to solving pay inequities for music professionals at GRAMMYs on the Hill in 2014 – and other music stakeholders, including SoundExchange, A2IM, the American Federation of Musicians, SAG-AFTRA, the RIAA, and many others.

As the only national membership organization to represent all music creators, The Recording Academy is particularly gratified by The Fair Play Fair Pay Act because it addresses four previously separate parity issues within one encompassing piece of legislation. First, the bill would establish a process for setting fair-market royalty rates; create a performance right for artists on terrestrial radio; close the pre-1972 loophole to see that veteran performers receive royalties; and codify royalty payments to music producers for the first time. This bill levels the playing field so that creators can get fair pay.

The timing of this bill introduction couldn’t be better. Just two days after Fair Play Fair Pay is unveiled, members of The Recording Academy from across the country will come together in Washington this Wednesday, April 15, for the 2015 GRAMMYs on the Hill Awards, where Congressman Nadler will be saluted for his dedication to championing rights for music creators alongside another intellectual property rights crusader on Capitol Hill, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and an artist who has also championed creators’ rights, Alicia Keys. And the day after that, 200 GRAMMY advocates from our 12 Chapters will converge on Capitol Hill in more than 70 meetings to ask lawmakers to support the Fair Play Fair Pay Act and other issues of importance to music professionals.

The Fair Play Fair Pay Act represents a welcome approach to solving the disparate copyright and royalty dilemmas that have unfairly impacted music creators. And it is thanks to the dedication of our 24,000-strong membership, and the power of The Recording Academy’s grassroots advocacy efforts, that real progress toward fair pay for all music creators will be made. 

News

The Band Perry Opens New Doors for Advocacy

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Advocacy
Jun 21, 2017 - 8:14 am

The cloakroom of the House of Representatives is generally considered one of the hallowed, exclusive spaces in Congress.  It's a special room, just off the floor of the House chamber, where Members of Congress huddle for private conversations, plan legislative strategy, or simply take short breaks during a busy day.  So imagine the surprise of many Members of Congress when they finished casting their votes on the House floor, exited into the cloakroom, and found GRAMMY-nominated group The Band Perry there waiting for them and visiting with their congressional colleagues.

This unique scene was the capstone to an eventful day in January when The Recording Academy welcomed the new 114th Congress with a special musical briefing featuring The Band Perry and congressional leaders.

The centerpiece of the day's events took place in the Capitol Visitor Center, where the normally staid Congressional Auditorium was transformed into a state-of-the-art concert venue for a special performance.  The auditorium full of congressional staff and nearly two dozen Members of Congress not only enjoyed hearing a few of The Band Perry's most popular songs, they also listened as siblings Kimberly, Neil and Reid Perry described the challenges facing music creators today.  In a discussion moderated by Daryl P. Friedman, the Academy's Chief Advocacy and Industry Relations Officer, Kimberly told the audience, "We're not only speaking out on behalf of the artists whose faces are on the cover of albums, but rather the army of people that are underneath that.  We're trying to make sure that music can be a living that we can all make -- a practical living -- and leave an artistic legacy behind."

The briefing, presented in partnership with the Recording Arts and Sciences Congressional Caucus, featured opening remarks from Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), both long-standing champions for the music community.  The Band Perry was later joined on stage by the co-chairs of the caucus, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) as well as by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The three congressional leaders rushed over to the event from a meeting at the White House so they could personally encourage their fellow Members of Congress to join the caucus and stand up for artist rights.

Throughout the rest of the day, the 57th Annual GRAMMY Award® nominees met with congressional leaders of both parties to advance a variety of issues, including some important to them personally as well as others shared by the entire music community.  In the morning, they met with Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and other members of the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus to discuss their desire to help youth struggling with this difficult issue.

In the afternoon, they met with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and other members of the House Judiciary Committee, to discuss the committee's ongoing review of copyright law.  They even managed to fit in a brief visit with the Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). 

By the end of the long day, as they greeted Members of Congress in the House Cloakroom, it was clear that The Band Perry's artistry and advocacy had, quite literally, opened new doors.

 

News

Letting the Air Out of New Coalitions

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Todd Dupler
Advocacy
Jun 21, 2017 - 8:14 am

Last month, this blog recounted how hundreds of music creators and Recording Academy members descended on the nation’s capital for GRAMMYs on the Hill Advocacy Day.  Hundreds more reached out to Members of Congress in their home districts last year for the inaugural GRAMMYs in My District.  And so far this year, thousands of music creators and music fans have sent emails to Congress and flooded social media through the Academy’s online tools and through our partners at the musicFIRST Coalition.

Real people, real advocacy.

Whether it’s in Washington, D.C., in local congressional districts, or online, the message is both clear and simple: all music creators deserve fair compensation whenever and wherever their work is used.  It’s not surprising that thousands of voices have risen up for basic fairness.  It’s also not surprising that those who have an interest in keeping the status quo – big corporate broadcasters and Internet giants – are unable to muster the same kind of authentic, grassroots support for their cause.  What is surprising is the lengths they’ve gone to convince us otherwise.

The newly formed Mic Coalition purports to be for a “rational, sustainable and transparent” music industry in service to the needs and wants of consumers.  In reality, it’s a manufactured interest group led by a who’s who of corporate interests – including the National Association of Broadcasters, iHeartMedia, Google, Amazon, and Pandora – that are all committed to resisting the call for fair music royalties for creators.  Under the guise of keeping music “affordable” and “accessible,” the coalition’s mission is fear-mongering, warning that modernizing music licensing laws to ensure fairness will somehow destroy their billion-dollar businesses.  The Mic Coalition has already been rightly dismissed as the “McCoalition” for its corporate underpinnings. 

The new Re:Create Coalition requires a little more effort to look behind the curtain.  On its website, the coalition states principles that sound good.  After paying lip service to creativity, the coalition espouses the principles of balance, freedom and clarity in copyright law.  But for this coalition, “balance” really means to weaken copyright law; “freedom” is about securing the freedom to use someone else’s work; and “clarity” only seeks clear limits on the rights of creators.  The Re:Create Coalition includes the Consumer Electronic Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, each an organization that counts tech giant Google as either a member or a supporter.

During World War II, a secret unit of the U.S. Army was deployed in Europe to fool the enemy about troop strength and movements.  The “Ghost Army” used inflatable tanks, special sound effects, fake radio communications, and more to convince the Germans that massive infantry and artillery units existed where there were none.  The effort was a rousing success and a testament to American ingenuity and creativity.  Perhaps inspired by history, Big Radio and Big Tech think they can fool us with their own fabricated ghost armies. 

The efforts of The Recording Academy’s 24,000-strong membership and other like-minded allies have stirred up some mighty big guns, the best that money can buy.  But like the rubber tanks that sat on the front lines in Europe 70 years ago, those guns aren’t real; they’re filled with hot air.  These fake coalitions can’t match the real voices of music creators and music fans that are committed to basic fairness.

Make sure your voice is heard too.  Take a moment right now to ask Congress to update our music laws to provide fairness for creators: grmypro.co/updatemusiclaw

 

radio tower

Photo: Education Images/UIG/Getty Images

News

Radio Station Owners Petition For Greater Consolidation

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Eight stations in a single market is apparently not enough for already-consolidated station owners — are they really representing radio's best interests?
Philip Merrill
Advocacy
Dec 5, 2018 - 4:37 pm

Is big radio getting bigger? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to issue a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for comments about media ownership regulation of audio programming later this month. In anticipation, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has submitted its latest arguments for special treatment while musicFIRST and the Future of Music Coalition submitted joint comments opposing greater consolidation.

The FCC was created in the 1930s to ensure that America's broadcast and wire communications functioned efficiently and in the national interest, without discrimination or unreasonable charges. As the voice for the nation's radio and television broadcasters, NAB speaks for the industry and its owners. As the FCC prepares to review caps limiting how many radio stations can be held by a single owner, NAB has stepped out to argue why it believes station owners should have lighter restrictions.

America's communications infrastructure is no longer dominated by telephone lines and broadcast towers, but the FCC remains the primary agency with jurisdiction over the rules of the airwaves. As summarized at Billboard, the dueling submissions present competing views of how government should participate to ensure a competitive marketplace. The established and already consolidated owners of radio stations are fighting the rules limiting them to ownership of only six FM stations and two AM stations in each of America's major markets. Meanwhile musicFIRST and artist groups view the radio industry as already highly consolidated, leading to consequences for types of programming that discriminate and reduce the number of independent voices.

"Such consolidation … causes homogenization of AM/FM music playlists," they argue, "such that listeners of commercial AM/FM music-driven stations now hear a substantially less diverse swath of artists and recordings than before consolidation."

On the other hand, NAB's answer to the need for more competition is in favor of more consolidation, falsely believing that greater market presence, with less diversity, is the only way for radio stations to compete with the diverse options presented by digital and streaming platforms.

In their comments, the music organizations also call out the unfair legacy advantage radio station owners enjoy that they do not need to pay musical performers for the use of their recordings.  But for NAB, considering this copyright concession is "outside the scope of [the FCC's] regulatory jurisdiction and expertise." It should be clear that both the arguments for consolidation and for non-payment of royalties recommend taking a point of view that favors current owners.

Clearly, NAB wants the FCC to take internet competition into account so that radio itself can be made less competitive, to improve its financial stability in competition with high-tech providers playing by a different set of rules. But NAB wants the FCC to stay hands-off about radio's unfair advantage of not paying performance royalties. It's questionable whether such arguments genuinely put the interests of broadcast radio first. They seem to favor the financial interests of radio's struggling established owners, who seek more special advantages.

The cost of perpetuating radio's carve-out from market forces and competition guidelines has retarded the progress of its own platform. Our national culture is less interesting due to this continued protection, but big radio wants the freedom to continue to fail in their established old ways, by gaining even more special protection from the government.

Changing radio and ending its fossilized protections is an opportunity to show what these towers and stations can do. NAB should tune into the new frequencies and not be stuck arguing that eight stations in one market is too strict a limit.

Learn More About The Performance Right For Sound Recordings

Conversations In Advocacy #43

An Academy member meets with Congressman Doug Collins (R-Ga.) in his district office.
Photo: Moses R.

News

Welcoming Music Champions Returning To Congress In 2019

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It's no coincidence that music's bipartisan friends in Congress are all returning for another session of service
Philip Merrill
Advocacy
Nov 9, 2018 - 2:51 pm

"If we ever get to the point in our society where we take away the creative spark, we have failed the soul and heartbeat of music, of books, of our creative output as Americans."— Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Conversations In Advocacy #43

The 115th Congress is still in session for a few more weeks but with the midterm elections behind us, we look forward to the start of the 116th Congress in January. While the make-up of the next Congress will be decidedly different looking, it will bring back many familiar faces who supported music and its makers this past Congress, and proved instrumental in last month’s historic signing of the Music Modernization Act.

Notably, every member of the Recording Arts and Sciences Congressional Caucus who appeared on Tuesday’s ballot won re-election to the House of Representatives and will have the opportunity to continue to support music creators in Washington. In addition, many music champions will move into elevated roles come January. Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), author of this week's quote while being honored at the 2018 GRAMMYs on the Hill earlier this year, is in line to become Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, where past GRAMMYs on the Hill honoree Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is expected to assume the duties of chairman as the Democrats gained the majority.

While the Judiciary Committee is expected to take on a number of high profile agenda items, Nadler and Collins have proven time and time that they will prioritize copyright and creators’ rights. Their work side by side this year on the MMA bodes well for the Committee’s ability to continue working in a bipartisan fashion to protect our society's "creative spark" when the next Congressional session begins.

And even with the enactment of the Music Modernization Act, work will continue within the Judiciary Committee to advance creators’ rights. On Oct. 24, at our 2018 District Advocate Day, the Recording Academy’s members pushed forward a legislative agenda inclusive of a number of issues that could cross the committee’s purview. More than 1,500 Recording Academy members met with both lawmakers and candidates to discuss Judiciary issues like terrestrial radio royalty payments, copyright office modernization and the establishment of a copyright small claims system.

Beyond the Judiciary Committee, other prominent music champions will also be in position to affect change for music makers.  Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), co-chairs of the Recording Arts and Sciences Congressional Caucus, have both declared their intentions to run for their respective party's leader races. Other allies like Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) are in consideration for Speaker of the House, Majority Whip and Democratic Caucus Chair, respectively. While it's too soon to be sure who will occupy leadership roles in the 116th Congress, once again music stands out as an area where leaders can work together as colleagues on issues of shared concern.

And that’s important because the fight will continue to protect funding for the National Endowment of the Arts and music education programs in the federal budget, and negotiations on trade deals will merit increased attention. All of these issues were discussed last month during District Advocate Day, and will be at the forefront of the Recording Academy’s agenda entering into the 116th Congress.

Congratulations are in order for lawmakers returning and new as the 116th Congress continues to take shape.

Celebrating District Advocate Day Engagement & Looking Ahead

"Conversations in Advocacy" is your weekend digital tip sheet on music advocacy and the policies that affect music makers and their craft. New installments post every Friday.