Tag: GMR

MIC Coalition Letter to @CopyrightOffice about @GMRO_PRO

Remember the “MIC Coaltion”? We haven’t heard from them in a while but they suddenly surfaced with a vengeance in the form of this letter to the Copyright Office under the guise of “PRO proliferation.”

MIC Coalition Letter to CO re GMRDownload

This is the MIC Coalition membership. The MIC Coalition is dedicated to one thing and one thing only–screwing songwriters as hard as they can. And frankly, anyone else who gets in their way. If you’re good with zeros, you can add up the total market capitalization of all the companies that these trade associations represent and you will be into the $50,000,000,000,000 range.

That’s right, $50 trillion–and all these companies are protected by the government through the longest running antitrust consent decrees in the history of the United States. And who are they protected against? Songwriters. Pullllleeeeeeze.

With one exception: Global Music Rights or “GMR”. And while the letter to the Copyright Office doesn’t come right out and say it, what these people hate the most about GMR is that these behemoths have to actually negotiate directly with GMR rather than hiding behind the government in the rate courts. That’s right, they truly hate that free market. While the MIC Coaltion’s letter raises issues about multiple PROs, the one they really have the wood for is GMR because GMR has an extremely valuable catalog. In fact, if you can judge by comparing private equity placements, GMR–based on true free market licensing–is about 3x more valuable than BMI–based on the government’s crap deals. Which also pisses them off.

You also have to understand that these MIC Coalition people are hugely pissed off about a recent BMI rate court case that applied GMR benchmarks–free market negotiations–to set the government’s consent decree rates. Rates that are supposed to approximate what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller in the government’s version of free enterprise. That case is on appeal right now. You can get a flavor of just how silly this argument is from a post on Artist Rights Watch that discusses the case in detail or read this revealing friend of the court brief from the BMI rate court appeal.

Amicus DiMADownload

The reason the trillionaires hate GMR so much is because songwriters got together and started their own PRO. Freedom of association, freedom of contract and free to bargain collectively, all quintessentially American values protected by the Constitution. Even though many radio stations settled an antitrust case with GMR resulting in a long-term license, they obviously haven’t given up sniping at the startup.

Unfortunately, the trillion-dollar soul crushers seem to have conned Congress into believing that Big Government is the way to go instead of protecting the free market. The plot sickens.

by thetrichordist

Head of Justice Dept Antitrust Division to Speak At Publisher Conference–can end of ASCAP/BMI Consent Decrees be coming?

Really great news!  It was recently announced that the head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division will speak at the National Music Publishers Association annual meeting in June!

This year’s keynote will be presented by United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim.

As David said a few weeks ago before this announcement, Mr. Delrahim is reviewing hundreds of DOJ consent decrees that have accumulated over the decades to see if these government orders should be continued.  This review includes the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees that Mr. Delrahim specifically mentioned in an address at Vanderbilt Law School earlier this year.  He seems to have come to this idea all by himself.

What’s really great about this is that it could mean the end of consent decrees in a relatively short period of time.  Since it’s never happened before, we don’t know exactly how the end of the consent decrees would impact ASCAP and BMI, but presumably the impact would be positive and quick. Goodbye rate court!  The smart money would probably be on existing rate court cases continuing, but disallowing new cases.  (Mr. Delrahim has been clear that the enforcement side would remain in place, meaning we guess that actual antitrust law violations would be dealt with case by case, just no ongoing regulatory oversight by unelected rate courts.  Example would be Global Music Rights awesome antitrust case against the broadcasters after the broadcasters brought one against GMR.)

It could possibly open the door to both organizations getting into the mechanical licensing administration business in competition with whatever comes of the collective established by the Music Modernization Act (which permits voluntary licenses outside of the collective).  In fact, BMI has already said they intend to pursue licensing outside of performances because their consent decree allows them to do so unlike ASCAP’s:

BMI is also evaluating the option of licensing beyond the performing right. We have long believed our consent decree allows for the licensing of multiple rights, which is why four years ago we asked the DOJ to amend our decree to clarify that ability, among other much-needed updates.

Of course, the last thing that anyone would want is for the DOJ to end the consent decrees, just to be replaced by some other bunch of regulations or bureaucracy.  For once, broadcasters will just have to suck it up.

So it’s a great idea that NMPA is inviting Mr. Delrahim to speak to the publishers who are most in the position to take advantage of a new dawn in songwriter freedom.  Many if not most of the NMPA members will be in the voluntary licensing category under MMA and outside the collective.  They would be in a fantastic position to support a one-stop shop for performance and mechanical licensing from ASCAP and BMI in line with what SESAC/HFA can offer, and presumably GMR could do as well.

by theinvisiblestagehand