Benefits for Producers and Recording Studio Engineers in the Music Modernization Act

The Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) is now the law of the land. The MMA is comprehensive and sweeping in its scope. The MMA revamps Section 115 and repeals Section 114(i) of the U.S. Copyright Act. It creates a public data base to facilitate and expedite payments to songwriters and it overhauls the rate Court system and changes the standard for setting rates to a free market standard. The MMA also incorporates several other major pieces of legislation including the CLASSICS Act (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society Act) which grants copyright protection to pre-1972 sound recordings so songwriters and artists can receive royalties on pre-1972 recordings and the AMP Act (or Allocation for Music Producers Act), which improves royalty payouts for producers and engineers from SoundExchange when their recordings are used on satellite and online radio.

Most importantly for record producers, the MMA codifies into law the right of music producers and recording studio engineers to collect digital royalties through a consistent, permanent process. The MMA is an amalgamation of several bills including the AMP Act. This portion of the MMA guarantees that producers and engineers not only receive credit but also proper compensation for their contributions to the making of a sound recording. SoundExchange, which administers royalties from non-interactive streaming recordings, will provide direct payment of royalties owed to producers and engineers upon direction by the featured artist.

Music producers have never been mentioned in any part of the copyright law prior to the MMA. The MMA has codified the producer’s right to collect those royalties due to them and formalizes SoundExchange’s current voluntary policy. As explained by the Recording Academy, which advocated for the AMP Act, “Since 1995, featured performers have had a statutory right to 45 percent of the performance royalties collected from non-interactive, digital music services. Subject to their contract with the artist, producers often collect royalties from that 45 percent because they were not included in the 1995 law for a statutory right.”

For sound recordings older than 1995, the AMP Act establishes a procedure for producers and engineers to seek permission from featured artists or their heirs to receive appropriate royalty payments.

Wallace Collins is a New York lawyer specializing in entertainment, copyright, trademark and internet law. He was a recording artist for Epic Records before attending Fordham Law School. T: (212)661-3656 www.wallacecollins.com

THE MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT: A BREAKDOWN OF THE BENEFITS AVAILABLE FOR ARTISTS AND SONGWRITERS

The Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) has finally passed both the Senate and the House after the herculean efforts of some individuals and organizations who worked tirelessly to negotiate compromises to accommodate all sides. The MMA will finally move the recorded music industry forward in a way that should facilitate more artists and songwriters being able to make a fair living from making music. The MMA proposes to reform the music licensing landscape in several substantive ways -  and vigilance is required to ensure that composers, songwriters and other copyright creators receive all the benefits available to them under the MMA.

The MMA is comprehensive and sweeping in its scope. The MMA revamps Section 115 and repeals Section 114(i) of the U.S. Copyright Act. It creates a public database to facilitate and expedite payments to songwriters and it overhauls the rate Court system and upgrades the standard for setting rates to a "free market" standard. The MMA also incorporates several other major pieces of legislation including the CLASSICS Act (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society Act) which grants copyright protection to pre-1972 sound recordings so songwriters and artists can receive royalties on pre-1972 recordings and the AMP Act (Allocation for Music Producers Act), which improves royalty payouts for producers and engineers from SoundExchange when their recordings are used on satellite and online radio. Notably, this is the first time producers have ever been mentioned in copyright law.

Here are some details of the highlights of the MMA’s benefits explained:

Section 115 Reform and the Public Database

The MMA ends the bulk Notice of Intent (NOI) process through the Copyright Office, which can prevent songwriters from being compensated or compensated in a timely manner for uses of their works. Under the MMA, the digital services would fund a Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), and, in turn, be granted blanket mechanical licenses for interactive streaming or digital downloads of musical works. The MLC would be governed by publishers and self-published songwriters. The MLC would address the challenges digital services face today when attempting to match songwriters and publishers with recordings. The MMA also creates business efficiencies for the digital services by providing a transparent and publicly accessible database housing song ownership information. Additionally, because the database would publicly identify songs that have not been matched to songwriters and/or publishers, publishers would also be able to claim the rights to songs and get paid for those songs. Songwriters and publishers would also be granted an audit right which is not currently available under Section 115 of the US Copyright Act.

Willing Buyer/Willing Seller Standard

The MMA upgrades the current standard to a free market standard. Section 115 of the Copyright Act has regulated musical compositions since 1909—before recorded music even existed. Section 115 allows anyone to seek a compulsory license to reproduce a song in exchange for paying a statutory rate. Current law directs the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB)—the government body responsible for setting the statutory rate—to apply a legal standard to determine rates that does not reflect market value. The MMA replaces the current flawed legal standard with a standard that requires the Court to consider free-market conditions when determining rates.

Rate Court System Overhaul & Section 114 Repeal

The MMA overhauls the rate Court system. Currently, ASCAP and BMI are each assigned to a single, respective rate court judge. Every case must be adjudicated before each performance rights organization's (PRO’s) respective designated consent decree judge. Under the MMA, a district judge in the Southern District of New York would be randomly assigned from the wheel of district judges for rate setting disputes. The “wheel” approach would enable BMI and ASCAP, as well as licensees, to go before any judge in the Southern District of New York on a rotating basis - rather than being assigned to a single judge - for the purpose of rate setting disputes. This approach ensures that the judge will find the facts afresh for each rate case based on the record in that particular case, without impressions derived from prior cases. The MMA would also repeal Section 114(i) of the U.S. Copyright Act which prevents rate courts from considering sound recording royalty rates as a relevant benchmark when setting performance royalty rates. As a result, the playing field has been uneven, at the expense of songwriters. The MMA moves the industry to a fairer system under which PROs and songwriters would have the opportunity to present evidence about the other facets of the music ecosystem to judges for their consideration. This repeal creates the opportunity for songwriters to obtain fairer rates for the public performances of their musical works.

Wallace Collins is a lawyer with 30+ years’ experience specializing in entertainment law and copyright, trademark and internet law matters. He was a teenage recording artist for Epic Records before attending Fordham Law School. T: (212)661-3656 / www.wallacecollins.com

Songwriters Still Need To Be Aware of the "Controlled Composition Clause" in Record Contracts

"Mechanical" royalties, so-called from the days when the only recordings sold were piano rolls which mechanically triggered a player piano, now represent royalties due to songwriters and their publishers for each copy of a record sold (whether physical copies or digital downloads or transmissions). The base statutory mechanical royalty rate in the United States is currently $.091 per song per record sold (and varies depending on whether the format is a digital download, streaming transmission, etc.). 

Pursuant to the U.S. Copyright law, this mechanical rate is applicable to all recordings made and distributed in the United States. However, due to certain ambiguities in the Copyright law, almost all record companies use their substantial leverage over new recording artists to cause them to enter into record contracts which substantially reduce this statutory mechanical rate pursuant to a controlled composition clause, often referred to as the "3/4 rate" since it typically reduces the amount to 75% of the statutory rate.

Under U.S. Copyright law, Congress established a statutory mechanical royalty rate for songwriters and their publishers based on an upward-sliding scale tied to a cost-of-living index on a per song per record basis. However, the controlled composition clause, one of the many royalty-reducing provisions in any record contract, contractually reduces the mechanical rate for a songwriter/ recording artist and its publisher on songs written or otherwise "controlled" by the artist. Most such clauses not only reduce the payment per song, but may also put a limit on the total number of songs on which payment will be made and may fix the point in time at which the calculation will be made (thereby circumventing the cost of living index increase).

A detailed analysis of a controlled composition clause is beyond the scope of this article. However, for a simplified example of how it works, lets assume a typical clause which might say that the songwriter/artist will receive 3/4 of the minimum statutory mechanical rate ($.068 instead of $.091)payable on a maximum of 10 songs per LP. The mechanical royalty on the artist's entire physical LP then has a cap of 68 cents (3/4 rate x 10 songs) so that, even if the songwriter/artist writes 12 songs for its own album, the artist's publishing which should be worth about $1.09 cents an album at the full rate is only allocated 68 cents under this clause. To further illustrate, assume the 12 song album has 6 songs written by the artist and 6 songs from outside publishers. The outside writers and publishers are not subject to the artist's 3/4 rate so the 6 outside songs get the full rate and are entitled to a total of about 54 cents. However, since the mechanical royalty on the entire LP has a contractual cap of 68 cents, the recording artist's publisher is limited to applying the remaining 14 cents to the artist's 6 songs, so that the artist's publishing is worth only about 2 cents per song.

Some controlled composition clauses also contain language which further reduces the mechanical rate on mid-priced and budget sales, etc., providing for a 3/4 rate on the 3/4 rate. In addition, record contracts often contain several subparagraphs that eliminate royalty payments for free goods and records sold below wholesale price, etc. Several of these categories would ordinarily be subject to mechanical royalties absent the controlled composition clause and, although this provision reduces mechanical royalties on the artist's publishing, it does not reduce payments to outside publishers and writers since they are not subject to the terms of the artist's contract.

The most treacherous dilemma for the songwriter/artist is that, even if the record company does not expressly acquire the artist's publishing rights in its contract, the value of the artist's publishing may so greatly be reduced by the controlled composition clause that the artist may find it difficult to get a publishing deal elsewhere. This is particularly true if the mechanical royalties are cross-collateralized with the artist royalties which means that, until the artist is recouped, no mechanical royalties are payable on the recording artist's publishing.

The foregoing scenarios raise numerous legal concerns for the record labels. The specter of antitrust and restraint of trade claims arises since virtually all labels have the three-quarter rate in their contracts giving the artist little, if any, choice. Since the controlled composition language is almost identical in each label's contract, it might not be all that difficult for a plaintiff to establish circumstantially that the labels conspire to fix the rate. A claim of interference with prospective financial advantage could be raised since the controlled composition clause devalues an artist's publishing rights. Another pertinent issue to be considered is whether, under partnership law (where one partner can bind the partnership), an artist's co-writer who is not actually a signatory to the record contract is subject to the 3/4 rate by virtue of being a "partner" in the song's creation.

Although a controlled composition clause can be made somewhat less onerous through some tenacious negotiating (e.g., restrict only to physical records sold), record companies are generally inflexible on this provision and their obstinacy can only be mitigated if they have an ardent desire to sign a particular artist.

In fairness to record companies in the current marketplace, with the exorbitant cost and high risk of the recorded music business balanced against the greatly reduced financial rewards of the modern era, the companies need to cut costs where they can to try to make a profit on the few artists who do succeed. However, the question is one of whether devaluing the artist's publishing is a fair way of doing it. Record companies contend that, since they are financing the production and marketing of the artist's recordings, the artist should give them a break on the publishing royalties they would otherwise have to pay. However, whether the contractual reduction by a record company of the Congressionally legislated mechanical royalty rate would hold up if challenged in a court of law has yet to be tested.

Moreover, in the wake of Congress having amended the Copyright law to allow for performance rights for digital transmissions, and with the Music Modernization Act moving through Congress, the time is right for lobbying efforts by songwriter organizations and publisher groups to bring attention to the 3/4 rate issue and the need to clarify certain ambiguities in the copyright law so as to better protect songwriters and their publishing rights.

       Wallace Collins is a New York lawyer specializing in entertainment, copyright, trademark and              internet law. He was a recording artist for Epic Records before attending Fordham Law School.          T: (212)661-3656 / www.wallacecollins.com

LEGAL BASICS FOR THE DIY WORLD: ARTISTS, AUTHORS, CREATORS AND MUSICIANS

Four Essentials:

1) Copyright Protection 
Under US copyright law, copyright (literally, the right to make and sell copies) automatically vests in the creator the moment the expression of an idea is "fixed in a tangible medium" (in other words, the moment you write it down, type it or record it on tape). With respect to music specifically, there are really two copyrights: a copyright in the musical composition owned by the songwriter and a sound recording copyright in the sound of the recording owned by the recording artist (but usually transferred to the record company when a record deal is signed). It is important to remember that you own the copyright in your work the moment you write it down or record it, and you can only transfer those rights by signing a written agreement to transfer them. Therefore, you must be wary of any agreement you are asked to sign. 

Although it is not necessary, it is advisable to place a notice of your copyright on all copies of the work. This consists of the symbol "c" or the word "copyright", the author's name, and the year in which the work was created (for example: "(c) John Doe 2017). The filing of a copyright registration form in Washington D.C. gives you additional protection in so far is it establishes a record of the existence of such copyright and gives you the presumption of validity in the event of a lawsuit. Registration also allows for lawsuits to be commenced in Federal court and, under Federal law, allows an award of costs and attorney's fees to the prevailing party (and you can register on-line or by mailing in forms with submissions). Currently, the filing fees are low enough to make registration well worth while. www.copyright.gov

2) Trademark Protection for Your Name 
Trademark rights are rights in a name or logo which indicate source or quality. Such rights are based on "use" of the mark and vest in the owner when the mark is first used in connection with goods or services. Although the title of a work is not protected by trademark, these rights are applicable to names used by actors, musical performers, DJs and companies. The more unique the name of your company, product or band is, the more easily protection is available for it as a trademark. 

The best way to protect yourself is to file a Federal trademark registration application, since registration will give you a presumption of ownership of the name nationwide. Before investing too much in your prospective trademark, however, it is a good idea to order a trademark search to make sure no one else has been using the same or a confusingly similar name before you. You can do this through a combination of on-line researches, through your lawyer, or by contacting a searching service. With respect to the name of a performer or band, keep in mind that a mere search of current Federal trademark registrations may be insufficient. It is best to conduct a full statewide search as well as a search of the copyright office records in order to find any songs which may be copyrighted in a band's name. This is important because trademark rights are based on "use." Therefore, even if another user does not file for Federal trademark registration, certain rights vest in that user under state law when they start using the name. This has led to problems in the past. For example, when you go to release your record or film worldwide you may find that someone else has been using the name of your band or film company in, say, Illinois. If they were using the name prior to when you first started using your name then, under state law, that user could prevent you from releasing your record in that state. The usual solution to such a problem is to buy out that users rights, but this can be costly, or enter into an agreement to alter and distinguish the names (e.g., Squeeze/Squeeze UK; Dreamworks, Dreamworks SKG. 

Once you have determined that no one else is using your name, the next step is to file an application for Federal trademark registration in the US Patent and Trademark Office. Registration provides nationwide protection as well as the presumption of validity for lawsuit purposes, as well as legal fees and additional damages for infringement. www.uspto.gov
  
3) To Incorporate or Not to Incorporate 
As a practical matter, sooner or later you may want to incorporate in order to limit your personal liability. When you incorporate your business you actually create an entity separate from yourself which will have its own bank account and tax identification number. If you operate properly as a corporation (i.e., signing documents as an officer of the corporation rather than as an individual, using a separate bank account, etc.), then, as a general rule, only the corporation is liable for the obligations of the agreements the corporation makes. The easiest example of how this protects you is if you imagine a situation where your corporation pays you a salary of several hundred thousand a year for several years. Over the years you use that salary to buy a house, a car, and a boat. Then one day catastrophe strikes and the corporation is sued for millions or goes bankrupt. Although the creditors could take the assets of the corporation, they could not pierce the corporate veil and force you to sell off your house, your car and your boat (Imagine: even when Chrysler went bankrupt Lee Iacocca did not give up any of the assets which he had purchased with his salary. In fact, he kept right on getting a salary from the corporation). If properly employed, a corporate entity can be used as a shield to protect you. In most cases, however, it is not really necessary to incorporate at the start of your artistic career. The law does require that, if you use a name professionally other than your personal name, then you should file a Business Certificate (or "DBA") in the County in which you reside or do business under that name. A DBA is necessary if you want to open a bank account in your professional pseudonym or group or company name. The DBA form is available in stationary stores or at the county clerk's office.

There are also tax advantages to operating as a corporation. As an individual making in excess of  a certain amount, as set by the IRS, even if your write-offs and deductions reduce your income substantially you will still be subject to the "alternative minimum tax' under current law. However, as a corporation, you are entitled to take the deductions and, as an individual, you are only subject to standard tax on the amount which passes through to you individually. Also, as a business matter, the individual members of a group or company may want to enter into a partnership agreement between and among themselves in order to spell out the particulars with respect to certain rights such as songwriting and ownership of the trademark rights in the name. Otherwise, any group of two or more persons operating a business for profit is considered a partnership for the purposes of applying the laws of partnership under the laws of most states. These laws generally employ a rule of sharing evenly in profits and losses, including all assets of the business
  
4) Signing Contracts 
Never sign any contract given to you without having your lawyer review it first. Do not rely on anyone else (or even their lawyer) to tell you what your contract says. And never let anyone rush you or pressure you into signing any agreement. There is really no such thing as a standard "form" contract. Any such contract was drafted by that party's attorney to protect that party's interests. Your lawyer can "translate" the deal and explain its terms to you, and then help negotiate more favorable terms for you. 

Keep in mind that it may, in fact, be in your best interest to "get it in writing" if you have an arrangement with someone. This is especially true in collaborative situations. Otherwise, you run the risk of a disagreement later over the actual terms of the oral agreement, and it becomes your word against that of the other party. That is not to say that an oral agreement is not a binding contract (as Kim Basinger recently found out). It is just that a contract is easier to prove if the terms of the arrangement are in writing. A simple contract may not necessarily require extensive involvement by lawyers. A contract can be as basic as a letter describing the details of your arrangement which is signed by both parties to the agreement.

As a general rule, you should consult with a lawyer if you are asked to sign anything other than an autograph. Too many aspiring artists want to get a record deal so badly they will sign almost anything that promises them a chance to do it. Even successful careers have a relatively short life span. Therefore, it is important for you to get maximum returns in the good years and not sign away rights to valuable income like publishing. Everyone needs someone to look out for his or her interests. That is why, at the end of the day, you may want to consult with an entertainment lawyer. Meet with several lawyers to find one whose vibe is right for you. If you believe in yourself and your talents, give yourself the benefit of the doubt, and invest in good legal representation.

Wallace Collins is an entertainment and intellectual property lawyer with more than 30 years of experience based in New York. He was a recording artist for Epic Records before receiving his law degree from Fordham Law School. Tel: (212) 661-3656; www.wallacecollins.com