The Oracle Edition: What the future holds for Music Row Dealmakers Podcasts

In this episode, co-host Barry Shrum looks at MRD's future plans for Music Row Dealmaker episodes, new features, and new related podcasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Music Road Deal Makers, where we explore our world of making deals from Nashville's famed Music Remote. In the heart of Music City, we are the deal makers, from composing to closing. Now, here's your hosts, Barry Neil Schrum and Dennis Disney.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Greetings to all of our faithful deal makers out there. We appreciate your loyalty. Thank you for listening. I'm Barry Neil Schrum, founding partner of Shrum Disney and Associates and co-host of Music Row Dealmakers from Composing to Closing. Dennis is not with me today. In fact, we've had a little bit of an emergency situation here in Nashville for the last week, as many of you may know if you're keeping up with the news. But before we get there, I want to thank all of you, all of our listeners, for helping us to exceed 1,000 faithful listeners. Last episode, I told you, we're approaching that number and we have exceeded that. We are now pushing toward our next goal of 2,500 listeners. So please help us do that by uh telling all of your friends about the podcast. And if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button, the share button, and share us on all of your social media. We really appreciate it. So Nashville and the surrounding area was hit with what they tell me was the one of the worst ice storms in over a hundred years, at least uh according to the people that keep track of such things. At my home personally, we lost power on and off for about 14 hours. We thought we were going to have to weather the storm throughout the night. Fortunately, it came back on in the uh the waning hours of the evening. Because of the ice, we we lost over a dozen trees in in on our property. That kind of situation is happening all over Nashville. If you drive the the residential streets around Nashville, you will find all kinds of trees that are down and power lines down and and lights that aren't working, just all kinds of chaos. And slowly but surely things are are gearing up for the cleanup and it's ongoing, and the National Guard has been called for a useful purpose to help us do that. So think about us in in this area and pray for us. And and and it's definitely a difficult time for a lot of us in this area. So we here at uh Music Road Deal Makers appreciate your understanding and patience as we are not putting on a full episode for this uh this particular time, but we are planning an exciting year for you. And Dennis and I have been talking about that and and the kinds of uh things that are upcoming. So so today's uh brief episode serves as sort of an oracle, if you will. In Greek mythology, the oracle was a source of uh prophetic wisdom whose divine providence guided the heroes and us mere mortals on their successful quest. Okay, so I wax a bit philosophical here, but but the this episode is in fact intended to give you guidance as to the types of shows and the information we have planned to share with you in 2026. As we were planning these future episodes, as we are planning them, I do encourage you to give us your input as to things uh you might be interested in. What kinds of deals would you like to hear about? What kinds of information would you like us to share and talk about? Uh, you can leave a message in that regard at 800-D-E-A-L-M-K-R 332-5657, or send us an email at questions at musicroaddealmakers.com with your insights and we'll take it all into consideration. Of course, we we plan to continue the series we started late last year called Dealmaking on Music Row, where we discuss terms and provisions contained in a lot of the music industry contracts that Dennis and I frequently deal with here at Schrom Disney and Associates. Thus far, we've discussed the personal management agreement, where a celebrity enters into an agreement for somebody to manage their career. And we've talked about the exclusive recording agreement. Future episodes planned in that series will discuss the elusive, exclusive songwriting agreement, as well as various types of touring, booking, venue contracts, merchandise licensing deals, things of that nature. So look for some of those coming up in that series in the next few months. In addition, in in mid-December, while Dennis was struggling with a little bit of illness at home, I did a quick take about uh some pending legislation that was being promoted at the time by KISS Star or frontman Gene Simmons. That episode received a lot of positive feedback. So thank you for that. But it also made Dennis and I realize that there is a demand for a more informative or news-based kind of podcast in connection with our music role deal making episodes. So as a result, we we plan to do some of those hot takes or quick takes, if you will, regarding legislation to keep you up to date on what's happening with our our wacky, sometimes wacky Congress. Look for two of the or three of those uh throughout the year. As you may know, legislation sometimes like paint dries slowly or moves slowly. But but look for two or three, maybe four of those throughout the year, with our first one being scheduled for our next episode, which uh we'll release in February on February 15th. So be on the lookout for that. Uh, we're going to talk about some of the uh legislation pending or or in committee in in Congress as we speak. In addition to those kind of things, laws and regulations, deal making on music road or music role deal making often is impacted, or frequently is impacted by case law or decisions that are made by courts, both state and and federal. So in addition to these legislative hot takes, we're also planning to dedicate some of our episodes to discussing recent decisions handed by handed down by those courts from time to time. For example, early in 2025, there was a very important Fifth Circuit an issue involving or a case involving a songwriter, Vetter, who was versus uh resnik. That's the name of the case, Vetter versus Resnick. And that impacts a songwriter's ability to terminate or or transfer or terminate a transfer of their copyright. For example, if somebody assigns the copyright to someone else. And the importance of that case is that decided the issue of whether a termination under U.S. copyright law would affect an assignment to a foreign entity, which would normally be out of the jurisdiction of U.S. law. So, uh, and it said in fact that it did. So we're going to be exploring the implications of that ruling as well as others. Uh another one that just came uh out earlier this week or maybe late last week was a Ninth Circuit opinion. You may remember hearing about the case involving Kate Von D and her tattoo of a very famous image of Miles Davis onto someone, some client's arm, which she put up on social media. That photographer was Jeffrey Sedwick, who took that photograph and spent a lot of time creating the the image that she essentially copied. In my mind, a clear example of copyright infringement. But the the the district court, the jury, did not see it that way. And ultimately it went up on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit upheld the ruling of the jury, which was that it was not infringement, for technical reasons. And we'll get into that when we talk about that decision. So those kinds of decisions impact me and Dennis as entertainment lawyers, as copyright lawyers, and it affects sometimes how we negotiate deals. So it's very relevant in the context of our podcast on music row deal making. Finally, and this is sort of a segue, I'm also planning to start a we're still figuring out the relationship, but another podcast, probably under the Music Row Dealmaker that deals with artificial intelligence. And if you've been keeping up with news, you know that that is a big deal. There's a lot uh going into artificial intelligence right now, a lot of energy being dedicated to the servers necessary to operate artificial intelligence, a lot of electrical cost because those things require electricity, and that drains the grid, and that makes our electricity more expensive. But for our purposes, it impacts copyright law. You may have heard the ominous predictions that it's going to take over humanity and all of that as well. I'm going to start a podcast, haven't decided what I'm going to call it yet, but for our purposes, it's going to deal with how artificial intelligence interacts with copyright law and whether or not we need to adapt our laws or change our laws or how the law interacts with that artificial intelligence. It should be a fun topic. This is something I talk uh about with all of my students in classes at Belmont where I teach. And it's something more significantly that I think is important as we as a society move into this quote-unquote brave new world, as Huxley would have described it, in connection with this kind of thing. How do we treat creation? Do we treat artificial intelligence creations the same way as we treat human creations? As I said, I don't know what I'll be calling the series, but we will provide you with more information about that in the near future, and I'm very excited about that. Last but not least, another thing Dennis and I are exploring is having various guests into our podcast booth here at Shram Disney who also specialize in the areas of law Dennis and I do. We've got a lot of friends. We are members of various societies, ends of court, uh involving entertainment law and copyright law. And we know a lot of people outside of the legal industry as well. We are very familiar with a lot of music industry type people. So we know a lot of these key players who are making news in the industry and sometimes who are making law in the industry. And we'd like to give you the opportunity to hear about some of those issues that that they deal with and that they are dealing with directly from their their own perspective, as it were, or the horse's mouth, if you will. So we got an exciting year in 2026. We're we're very excited about all of this. Again, my name is Mary Neil Srum, the founder of Shrum Disney, and and one of the co-hosts here. As always, this podcast is coming to you live from our little podcast studio here at the Shrum Disney Offices, located on Nashville's famous music row. We invite you to go to shrumdisney.com to read about our law firm and what we've done. You can also find all of our past episodes available at musicrow dealmakers.com. And I encourage you to call 800 Dealmaker 332 50 5657 if you have a question, to give us feedback on what you'd like to hear, or just send us an email if you if you don't prefer to call at questions at musicrowdealmakers.com. Again, take a little time, show us a little love on social media, help us spread the word. We need your help to grow our audience to that uh 2,500. We'd like to reach that by the end of the physical quarter. So hit that subscribe button, hit the share button, share us on social media. We really appreciate it. Thank you all.

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Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shroom Disney and Associates. Recorded on location on Music Remote, the heart of Music City, Nashville. Subscribe to future episodes wherever you enjoy your podcasts.