UK Music Managers Forum, Rethink Music, Berklee College of Music and Kobalt Music at music transparency confab in Boston Oct 2nd 2015.

There are genuine and legitimate voices that call for transparency in the music business.  These calls include transparency starting at the top of the revenue stream, you know, from digital services like Apple, Spotify and YouTube.

Then there’s the transparency kabuki being conducted in lockstep by The Music Managers Forum,  Rethink Music, Berklee College and Kobalt that does not.   The whole purpose of this fake transparency charade seems to be to distract the public’s attention away from the meager compensation paid by streaming services and focus attention elsewhere. (Actually it is a lot like the parable of the Wall Street banker, the union worker and the box of donuts, here.) This is the most outrageous and brazen propaganda campaign I have witnessed since I started my artists rights campaign 4 years ago.

Each of these institutions receive significant funding from either Google/YouTube or Spotify. So predictably we haven’t heard one thing from these organizations on the Spotify/YouTube unpaid royalty crisis.  And I don’t expect they ever will.

But hey, maybe they’ll prove me wrong.   They could join my call to have the NY State AG investigate and distribute the unpaid Spotify/YouTube royalties. What do you think MMF, Rethink Music, Berklee College of Music and Kobalt?  Got any  principles?  Got the balls to go against your corporate masters?