The Music Modernization Act, a legislation that is set to go before the American Congress this year, draws strict criticism from songwriters and publishers.
In the age of digital streaming, which is the go-to medium for listeners today, following the outcome of The Music Modernization Act (MMA), a legislation that is set to go before the (American) Congress this year, has enormous value. In Pakistan, for instance, more and more artists are embracing the digital method. Pakistan’s biggest music group Strings, who are presently gearing a comeback to their own brand of music with eight new singles, beginning with the recently released ‘Sajni’ are doing so by embracing the digital method.
A digital shift is the new norm: Hadiqa Kiani’s last album, Wajd, was released digitally while Pakistan’s longest running music group have also embraced the same method and have released their newest single, ‘Sajni’ as a digital release.
As Faisal Kapadia explained in a recent interview: “With the digital revolution things have changed. 15 years back we all used to release an album with 8 songs and then used to release one video every 3 or 4 months. Now the information travels so fast and mechanics have changed. We will be releasing 1 video every month for the next one year. We feel this is the best solution to move forward in this digital world.
Coke Studio’s current co-producer for season 11, Zohaib Kazi too released his last album, Fanoos as a series of singles, exclusively on Patari, Pakistan’s largest audio streaming platform. Hadiqa Kiyani is another example. Her last album, Wajd, for which she won the Lux Style Award for Best Music Album earlier this year was also released digitally.
Deciphering MMA
Just as important as artists embracing the digital method is the question of royalties and that artists and songwriters should get paid. And, this is where the ongoing issues surrounding The Music Modernization Act (MMA) are important to follow. As Variety reported in a story this month: “three pieces of legislation that aim to update the ways that royalties are paid to songwriters and artists — the Music Modernization Act, the CLASSICS Act and the AMP Act — are going before Congress later this year”.
However, “National Music Publishers’ Association president/CEO David Israelite and Recording Industry Association of America president Mitch Glazier argued for combining the three acts into a single piece of legislation.”
The MMA, reports Variety, is a legislation that has the potential to reward the music community including songwriters and composers for the millions of streams they attract on which “digital music services base their businesses”.
But, songwriters/publishers Phil Galdston and David Wolfert, in a guest column for Variety explain why MMA is missing the mark.
As the duo notes, the present draft that could become law by the end of this year, “fails to accomplish one of its most important goals: ensure that all the writers whose music is played on digital music services get paid.”
Galdston and Wolfert, writing for Variety, explained the dynamics further: “The publishers have gone so far as to claim that if the writer of a song doesn’t file a proper claim within 36 months of performance, 100% of the royalties from those streams will instead be paid to the top publishers (and some of their biggest writers) via the world’s largest black box of royalties. The music business is going through an unprecedented period of growth, fragmentation, and democratization. A new generation of writers is looking for new ways to get their music to market, and new business paradigms based on transparency and technology are being developed with and for them. Big music publishers still control a large portion of the business, but a global world of independent writers and publishers is beginning to challenge their dominance.”
While going into the full piece of legislation is impossible, given this limited space, the one thing that did stood out from their statement about MMA was this: “It is highly unlikely that the tens of thousands of independent self-published and unpublished writers whose music is performed on Spotify and other digital music services will ever get their fair share.”
Fortunately, Galdston and Wolfert also offer a solution. As they explained in their response, “There are many provisions in the MMA that can and should be corrected, but the easiest one may be this: distributions from the black box should only be made to writers and publishers who file legitimate claims for previously unidentified or mis-identified tracks. That would take the politics out of distribution, create a real incentive for writers and small publishers to file claims, and ensure that the legislation fulfills one of its primary goals. While we imagine that there are other possible solutions, this one seems simple and fair enough to win widespread support.”
If the debate shows anything, it’s that while legislation continues to be a complex issue when it comes to the digital method, more needs to be done to accommodate artists who create content in the first place.
– With information from Variety
