The leaders of music industry heavyweights ASCAP and BMI convened a private meeting Monday for Nashville’s songwriting and publishing community in a historic show of solidarity by the two competitors, which are banding together in the wake of a controversial licensing finding handed down by the Department of Justice.
Speaking in front of a frazzled group of songwriters and publishers, ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews and BMI CEO Michael O’Neill outlined the early stages of what figures to be a protracted battle with the DOJ.
According to The Tennessean, the two performance rights organizations, which handle music licensing for songwriters and publishers, were put on the defensive when the DOJ announced it would not amend their federal consent decrees governing the licensing process. Instead, the DOJ determined that it interprets the existing consent decrees as requiring so-called 100 percent licensing, which allows a copyright holder to license a song no matter how small a percentage of the song’s copyright they own.
ASCAP and BMI believe that 100 percent licensing threatens co-writing and collaborations that are especially prevalent in Nashville and, as a result, complicate music licensing. Matthews and O’Neill plan to hold similar town hall meetings in Los Angeles and New York.
The two performance rights organizations are typically competitors that work to ink deals to represent the nation’s top songwriters when their music is played on the radio or performed live. But, in the wake of the DOJ ruling, the two have been working together.
The DOJ ruling has been applauded by music tech firms such as Google and Pandora, along with radio broadcasters and restaurants that license music.
But ASCAP and BMI say the ruling threatens decades of common practices in music licensing and throws into chaos the regular course of business. The two groups hoped the DOJ would amend their decrees to allow copyright owners to withdraw some rights and negotiate better deals on their own with the top digital music services.
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