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On July 12, 2005, Senator Orrin Hatch, photographed at a Senate hearing on the reform of music licensing. Hatch, songwriter with a platinum and gold record for his efforts, added his name to the Music Modernization Act's unanimous Senate on September 18, 2018.
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Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
On July 12, 2005, Senator Orrin Hatch, photographed at a Senate hearing on the reform of music licensing. Hatch, songwriter with a platinum and gold record for his efforts, added his name to the Music Modernization Act's unanimous Senate on September 18, 2018.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
On Tuesday night, the Music Modernization Act (renamed the Orrin G. Hatch Modernization Music Act in the 23rd hour – in honor of the outgoing Utah politician, who himself holds a platinum record), has unanimously adopted in the Senate. was earlier this year by the House. At a time when political and artistic consensus is more and more commonplace than in cultural wars with like-minded people, bipartisan support for the bill may be a small symbol of unity. (But rest.)
"It is the most important law of a generation to help our country's songwriters be paid and receive a fair market value for their work," said Senator Tennessee Lamar Alexander in Congress. The bill is essentially a peace treaty in the music sector, designed to address some of the long-standing issues. This is the result of several years of slow compromises between technology companies like Spotify who rely on music (and want to pay as little as possible for their privileges), well-established interests of the music industry major labels and independent publishers (who want to be paid as much as possible by companies like Spotify) and the organizations that defend them.
[Disclosure: NPR’s public policy office — which operates wholly separate from the editorial division — has been active in lobbying efforts around this legislation.]
For years, these largely opposing entities have been arguing over the tortuous system currently in place to music licenses, compositions of the two songwriters – which are legally distinct from the recordings and governed by rules established before the First World War – as well as the money paid to songwriters for these licenses. Spotify, when launched in 2011, did so without having an effective way to identify and pay millions of recordings of these compositions that he made available to his clients. And since Spotify has become one of the world's largest music societies, she has been pursued several times. The introduction of the Music Modernization Act last December actually accelerated the filing of a $ 1.6 billion lawsuit against Spotify to address this problem once the law is passed.
The compromise at the heart of the bill (which will now come back to the House for approval of the Senate amendments before going to the White House) is to provide a legal shield to companies like Spotify at these lawsuits and to the big settlements that have accompanied them. Clearly, the music industry has evolved considerably in the last century since the introduction of these rules, but it has never changed as quickly as it has in the last ten or two years. years. The Music Modernization Act attempts to repair the cracks created by the digital revolution and to balance the interests of artists and tech giants who need them.
To do this, it will create a new quasi-governmental organization called Mechanical Licensing Collective – at the expense of digital music providers that will use it the most – which will create and operate a complete public database containing all relevant author information. -compositeurs. technology companies will then use to (finally) pay the songwriters properly. The bill also addresses the rates that songwriters are actually paid for their work, which is not much, as Senator Alexander learned from having contributed to the writing of the lyrics. a song with Nashville professionals.
"A few years ago, I was in my hometown of Maryville, Tennessee," he told the Senate. "I went into the pharmacy and when I left, there was this old couple sitting in a van. I asked: How are you? The woman in the van said, "We are falling apart." During this weekend, my son, who works in the music business, had a group of songwriters at home and they wrote songs. "After mentioning the story to his son, a song -" Falling Apart Together ", of the country artist Lee Brice – was made from it. Money, however, was not, although it has been played on Spotify more than a million times to date. "According to Nashville's custom," continued Alexander, "I receive a quarter of royalty for the song when it is played … In 2016, I indicated on my form of ethics, that I deposit each year, that my royalties up to $ 101.75 , a quarter of a record that was played on an album of a well known singer and writer. "
In addition to the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the new bill addresses other issues of longstanding contention. The Royalty Board, a group of three judges charged with setting certain royalty rates, primarily related to radio-type services such as Pandora, where listeners can not choose any of the songs they would like to hear, is now allowed to consider the value of a song on the open market, what is called a "willing buyer, willing seller", which should ultimately mean more money for songwriters. In addition, advocacy organizations such as ASCAP and IMC will now be able to plead their case before a rotating group of judges in the Southern District of New York, instead of having to repeat their case. arguments constantly before the two same. as they have been for a while. The system will remain terribly baroque, but the changes should also lead to an increase in the salaries of songwriters.
Despite the congressional unanimity it faced and the compromises required of all sectors of the music industry to introduce it, the Modernization of Music Act did not result in the passage of yesterday.
Just two days ago, a group of 150 artists, from Paul McCartney to Sia, issued a letter reproaching SiriusXM for trying to derail the bill, as he saw it, at detriment of a royalty on the royalties of recorded songs. before 1972. And earlier this year, private equity firm Blackstone hired Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to try to introduce a language protecting a subsidiary against competitive danger.
"It was a very complicated exercise," said Senator Alexander in the Senate, "and there was a doubt until about an hour and a half ago to know if we could do it tonight. ".
If the amended version of the bill is passed in the House, it will be forwarded to the office of President Donald Trump for adoption. Assuming there are no complications in this process, all those involved, who have spent all these years meeting to hear about this important compromise, can return to war. Just with new weapons.
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