Brian,

The venue lobbies are strong, yes. But the music lobby seems to have made itself much stronger over the past few years. And the Congress has also become more "educated" by this effort as to the monetary value of music.


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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Artist/writers have sold their souls for a long time. They stand in line begging to sign really BAD contracts. They whore themselves out every way possible for a little attention or acknowledgement. This is simply another symptom of this problem. And sadly, no matter how bad the contract, or how little or nothing they get paid for a lifetime of effort/work, there will ALWAYS be a LONG LONG line of people willing to do more and take less for the chance to be noticed. It's like a sickness.</font>


Amen!

Here's something interesting: I subscribe to a film music composer's e-mail list. Just in the past few days, this same topic has come up on that list. Except there, it's the film composers complaining that they don't get paid accurately by the PROs.

The problem obviously goes very deep, and is at least in part a structural one -- using extrapolated radio play surveys as a "proxy" for almost everything else, for example.

I'm a very "libertarian" type of person, it takes a lot to make me say "there ought to be a law" ... but maybe there ought to be a law.

The film composer's discussion again brings home the "we're all in this together" point, however. (I have pointed them to this topic, by the way.)

Also, it seems PUBLISHERS should be very interested in this. After all, 50% of the PRO royalties go to the publisher. Where are the small publishers and the publishers associations? Why aren't they making noise, too?

--- Ed

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