RICK

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

from Casablanca, Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Howard Koch 

Following are excepts from Graham Davies keynote at the 4th Annual Artist Rights Symposium

“The issue – and challenge – of incomplete metadata is one close to my heart, as I worked for many years dealing with finding solutions to reduce the significant cost that collecting societies incur, trying to find this missing data. This is why I started the Credits Due initiative when I was at Ivors [Academy], to raise awareness of the problem and support industry wide solutions that enable accurate metadata to be attached to recordings at the earliest point in the creation process.

This was how I first encountered [Digital Media Association], who have supported the initiative from the beginning. The supply of recordings with accurate metadata is in the interests of creators, rightsholders and streaming services alike.”

“The previous pre-[Music Modernization Act] approach to licensing musical compositions was not particularly effective before and became entirely unfit when it was overtaken by the speed of adoption of streaming. And to understand why this was the case, let’s step through how the licensing process worked – or didn’t – pre-MMA.”

“To date, DIMA’s members and other streaming services have paid more than $160 million dollars for the operation of the [Mechanical Licensing Collective], including meeting all of the requirements for its setup. And the MLC has now distributed more than $2 billion dollars in revenues collected from the streaming services. 

This is a great success. The MMA has given certainty to licensees and rightsholders alike, whether major publishers, independent publishers and songwriters.”

“It is our collective role to ensure the MLC embraces its responsibility – actually, it’s statutory obligation – to serve its three key stakeholders – songwriters, publishers, and streaming services.”

Let me be clear –  any efforts to unravel the MMA will not improve licensing or improve the growth and success of the music industry. Rather, such moves will lead to an upheaval of the whole system and likely return to the problems of the past.”