Music Row Dealmakers
Prominent entertainment attorneys Barry Neil Shrum & Dennis Disney explore their world of closing deals from Nashville's Famed Music Row, in the heart of Music City. We are the dealmakers, from composing to closing.
Music Row Dealmakers
Legislative HotTake - Pending Congressional Bills Affecting the Music Industsry
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Music Row Dealmakers Barry Neil Shrum & Dennis Disney discuss the NO FAKES and the American Music Fairness bills that are currently sitting in committees in the Senate and the House.
Welcome to Music Row Dealmakers, 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_03Hello to all our faithful deal makers out there. We so appreciate your loyalty. I'm Barry Neil Schrum, founding partner of Shrum, Disney and Associates, and co-host, along with my partner Dennis Disney, of this podcast, Music Role Dealmakers, from Composing to Closing. A great big thanks to all of you for helping us exceed the milestone of 1,000 faithful listeners in 2026. Music Role Dealmakers' next goal is to surpass 2,500 listeners. So help us out. Please uh share the link with your friends on all your social media accounts. And if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button. We really appreciate your loyalty and we appreciate you listening to us. And don't forget, we we would like for you to interact with us a little bit more. We we always welcome your questions and any and comments about anything we discuss here on the show. So please feel free to leave Dennis and me a message on 877-7 Dealmakers or send us an email at questions at musicrowdealmakers.com with your insights, questions, or whatever. And we'll we'll take all of that into consideration and maybe we'll answer your question here on air. Please take note of that new number, 877 7 Dealmakers. That's a change uh from prior podcasts. So give us a call. We really appreciate it. In this episode 17, as promised just in the prior episode, we are doing this year legislative hot takes. And that's for the purpose of keeping you up on uh to date on on what's happening in Congress as it relates to the music industry, copyright, and and of course artificial intelligence. And we are also planning to do uh similar hot takes with regard to pieces of legislation that relate to the same issues. There are currently several pieces of proposed legislation pending in the 119th Congress that are being closely watched by the music industry, which could impact many different areas, not only songwriting, but licensing, tourism, royalties, ticketing, and even live performances. So we're going to take a look at about a half a dozen bills that that are there on the floors of Congress a little bit later in the episode. If one of these strikes you as urgent or if it affects something that you do, remember that you can always email your senator or your representative and make your voice count as a constituent. Uh that's what our democratic process is all about here. As always, this podcast comes to you live from our little studio here at Shrum Disney's offices on Nashville's famous music road. If you want more information about our law firm, go to shrumdisney.com and check us out. Or if you want more information about the podcast, go to musicrowdealmakers.com. Before Dennis and I dig in and decipher these pieces of legislation, I'm going to put on my professor cap for a moment, as I frequently like to do when no one's looking. Many of our listeners are probably unaware of how the legislative process functions, that is, when it when it does function. There is an old saying that there are two things you don't want to see being made. One is, of course, sausage. Well, that's just gross. But the second thing is legislation, which honestly can be just as nauseating. So let me see if I can uh give you the peptobismol version of to keep that from happening, as it were. So the first thing to know about this is that legislation starts with the introduction of something called a bill, that is a proposed piece of legislation. You may remember that episode from Schoolhouse Rock where I'm just a bill was the title of the episode and the accompanying song. It's a cute little song and the cute little bill that the the that did the whole dance song and dance. So a bill can originate in either the Senate or the House of Representatives, which are the chambers of Congress, of course, although the the House chamber is typically the place of origin for most pieces of legislation. Furthermore, for most important pieces of legislation, sometimes different representatives and different senators, sometimes across the aisle, can float different versions of the bill for consideration, and then lobby to have their particular versions voted on. Of course, that's part of politics, and that that that kind of issue creates a political nightmare sometimes. That's why often representatives across the political aisle to co-sponsor legislation so that there aren't too many irons in the fire or too many floating versions of the bill in Congress. So you'll often see several sponsors listed on a piece of legislation. Once it gets beyond that initial period where it's being introduced, a bill can can generally get bottlenecked in several different ways. So that if it doesn't pass in, let's say the 118th Congress, then it's got to wait the period of time until we get the 119th Congress. And since it changes every two years, that that that can happen frequently. So a bill may be reintroduced for years before it gets considered, as some of these bills that we're going to be talking about today will have been introduced several times. If you remember uh 2019's Music Modernization Act, uh, which gave certain mechanical royalty rights to songwriters and publishers for digital performances, that had been floated and studied by Congress for almost 10 years prior to being voted on and ultimately being passed into law. So some of these bills can have a very long life. Let's assume, for the sake of illustration, that a bill arises in the House, a representative, or as I said earlier, a group of representatives, either sponsors or co-sponsors of bill, and then it gets presented to the full house for consideration. Once sponsored, the majority leader can assign it to committee for further study and further recommendation. This is often when the committee will begin to hold hearings related to the subject matter of the bill, seeking input from outside industry stakeholders and other interested parties. If you recall the hot take we did back in December on the American Music Fairness Act, I did talk about that hearing in the context of Jim Gene Simmons testifying about that bill. Probably 80% of the bills that get introduced die in committee right there, generally for partisan reasons, but for other reasons as well. But if the bill is released by the committee, then it's placed on the House calendar or docket to be voted on, debated, and or amended. In order to proceed from that point, it gets out of committee, gets voted on the House, the bill has to be pr presented to be passed into legislation by a simple majority. Now in the House, that's 218 representatives out of the 435 for those of you who are counting. So if it gets passed in the House, which is where we said it originated, it is then sent to the Senate for consideration. That's something a lot of people don't know that the bill has to pass both chambers of Congress in order to make its way to the president for either signature or veto. So then the Senate goes through the whole process there. Once it gets to the Senate, once it's referred by the House, the Senate submits it to the appropriate committee. In the case of intellectual property law, that's the Judiciary Committee, there is a potential bottleneck there. If it didn't die in House Committee and it gets voted on there, then it can come to the Senate and die in committee there. And of course, Congress can change over during that period of time because it takes the process just a certain amount of time to work through all the kinks. However, if the Senate committee approves it, it is then, like in the House, released for debate and voted on. And here, again, a simple majority passes the bill. This time, of course, since uh the Senate is the chamber made up of a hundred members, that's a 51 vote. So once it passes that the Senate, and it's already passed the House, then we have to s assemble a joint committee, a conference committee, it's called, made up of both House and Senate members, who then theoretically look at both bills and make sure they align, make sure there's no differences. And if they there are, they have to debate the differences and draft a final version of the bill that will then go back through House. Again, a huge potential death trap for a bill. Are you starting to see the resemblance to sausage here? And here's the kicker. If the joint committee approves the resulting unified bill, then the bill has to start all over again in both chambers, and both respective chainers chain chambers have to vote on it for a final approval. Man, once it clears that final approval, then it's mostly administrative from that point on. From there, the uh government publishing offices print the revised and approved bill in a process they call enrolling. And that's just a phrase used to indicate the start of a clock. Once it's enrolled, the president has ten days to sign or veto the enrolled bill. So wow, that's that's all. That's all it has to do to pass into law. Stay with us. We'll be right back to parse the current bills in Congress. Did you uh survive the uh massive ice storm we had a week or so ago? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02People say we're we're going back to the ice age. I would have thought so there for that one week. Oh my gosh. It's nasty here in town.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. So uh welcome our listeners back from that uh period. I we did a couple of shorter episodes there. So we're we're happy to be back in the studio and back and reviewing these the these pieces of legislation. The first one we're going to talk about is something called the No Fakes Act of 2025. I guess it would be 2026 at this point. Let's start by talking about that one, Dennis. This this particular bill originated in the Senate. It was introduced by uh Democratic Senator uh Chris Kuhnz from Delaware, co-sponsored by, among others, Tennessee's own Marsha Blackburn uh representative. The the the acronym, you know, Congress is is very fond of those acronyms. No fakes means nurture originals, foster art, and keep entertainment safe act.
SPEAKER_02Do they have just departments that come up with this stuff?
SPEAKER_03I think they must have somebody just sitting around thinking of stupid things to call them. Exactly, or just maybe deprived of sleep. This was first introduced in the eight 118th Congress, the last session, and and uh generally ostensibly intended to protect an individual's intellectual property rights in their voice and visual likeness, among other things. And I've been suggesting the need for a federal law similar to this, Dennis. The new parlance is to call it name, image, and likeness. And and that's not exactly apropos in our world, you know, on music row, we deal with a lot more than just name, image, and likeness. We deal with a voice, we deal with persona. It's it's more appropriately traditionally called rights of publicity. And this particular version, the No Fakes Act, is for registration of post-mortem rights of publicity, but but it's kind of limiting in my my way. And and interestingly enough, it's the the registration is going to be handled by the copyright office, not to confuse things even further, right? It's an interesting choice, but but it doesn't really provide any registration process for a right of persona while the individual's living. And you know, after all, we deal with both. That's important. And furthermore, it's limiting in that it only applies to voice and quote unquote visual likeness. That's one reason I would have a big question mark about this. And there was a period of time when the Sixth Circuit had interpreted some similar language in what is currently called our Elvis Act, Tennessee's Elvis Act, to mean that it applied only to photographs. I I know you've done some research into some groups that support this bill versus ones who don't. But what's the lay of the land there?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's it's it's interesting. The people who support it, obviously, are the ones who have been, shall we say, assaulted by these fakes. So I couldn't can think of another word for that. But you know, the people who've had their images. No, no. But they've had their images used, they've had their voices used, images, both still images and and moving picture videography.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't know if you saw it, but Tom Hanks was subject subjected to the AI fake, deep fake. They you know made him into an endorser for a dental service or something.
SPEAKER_02And there's a current case right now that's pending in the third middle district of Tennessee, brought by just recently brought by the Johnny Cash estate against Coca-Cola.
SPEAKER_03Our buddies Phil Kirkpatrick and uh Tim Warnock on opposite sides on opposite sides, and that's that that should make for an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_02So we'll see, they they they filed the complaint, the answer hasn't been filed yet, they've got an extension for that, so we don't know where where it will head. But you you've got those things happening on the commercial side, and then some of the most egregious, as we've seen on both sides of the political aisle, has been attributing certain statements to politicians and and things like that, that in the campaign seasons and all trying to get a political upper hand on something. And some parts of that are getting out of hand to the point where I gotta be honest, even right now, my my children, I have three kids, ages 38, 34, and almost 30.
SPEAKER_03Dennis, those are not kids.
SPEAKER_02Those are not kids. They're kids to me. And along with my wife, we have this big group test going on all the time, and we'll share certain things. Oh, this is isn't this cool. And surely one of them will say, Yeah, that looks like it's AI. That's it, that's gotta be AI. So even now, just in normal commentary about trying to share things we think are interesting, we don't know if it's real or not. It looks very real. So I understand why uh legislation like this needs to happen at some level. I understand the necessity. Yes. That there is that. And so the people who have have been negatively impacted by this, I would even argue the consumer who's just trying to enjoy the material. We don't know sometimes if it's true or or not. And but on the people who are stressing the negative side of this, I really found a couple of interesting perspectives. One came from the foundation of individual rights and expression. They go by the acronym FIRE, and they do a lot of First Amendment work, and they do a lot of good work. And there's a lot of cases I've followed from them over the last few years that they have done some really great work in the area of freedom of speech and things like that. And then I came across a couple of other articles, one from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and another one from called Truthonthemarket.com, who his was actually a bit more balanced, but FIRE has published an article late last year. What they're arguing are the deficiencies in this bill. But the headline is sort of incendiary to some degree. What do you expect from FIRE? Well, that's a ha I didn't think about that. That's a great, great word, but it is definitely hyperbolic in many respects. It says the no fakes act is a real threat to free expression. And and so when you read through the article, they bring up the read through the article when you read that. But but the first situation they say that could could happen. They said, imagine a fourth grade teacher is wanting to show a speech from Ronald Reagan. And so she creates this video image of Ronald Reagan uttering these words to the class to give it more impact to the students. She could be held liable for that. Of course, it goes on to say, there are carve outs for academics and that that sort of thing. But I'm like, okay, well, if there's a carve out, then you can't do anything. You know, she's free to do that. She can't take it and share it and try to sell it as something else. But is that a problem?
SPEAKER_03Why use AI to recreate Ronald Reagan? Well, A, he's dead, but that's I get that.
SPEAKER_02But B, I'm not sure it was a recorded speech. I I don't know. Yeah, I I don't know. So there was a lot of speeches, I'm sure he in talks he gave that he said things or wrote things that weren't recorded audibly or video-wise. But that was just one one of the things. And and and it goes on to say, and there's some legitimacy to this claim that you get what the what they call hecklers online that are just screaming, oh, they've they've used this inappropriately, and now this bill would make it the obligation of the platform, the online platform, to take that down just by the accusation, which is similar to what we have now.
SPEAKER_03It is similar to the copyright uh DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows a copyright owner to notice a platform, ISP, and and then they're required within a certain amount of time to take that down. It it's worked quite well with copyright. And here's the thing you know, you you talk about these First Amendment issues, copyright is and and our founders recognize this, as did our legislators and the people that drafted the 1976 Copyright Act. And and it has, according to the Supreme Court, built in First Amendment accommodation, which is based on a social contract theory that society is basically giving over some of its First Amendment rights so that a person can have exclusive rights in an expression. That's the copyright construct. And very frequently courts borrow things of that nature from other intellectual properties. And I think they would do the same thing here. In the case of your teacher, you know, that's a very perfect first or fair use use. That's what I would think of. It's it's one of the illustrations in the preamble to section 107, education, teaching. And i as long as it's done in that context and and according to the four factors, it's a fair use. She wouldn't be sued for infringement. And the same would be true, I believe, in in a situation like that. However, I will agree with FIRE to the point that the law really doesn't address those kinds of issues. If you're going to, and and that's part of my thing, if you're gonna a and I understand artificial intelligence is a big issue and it's important, and there needs to be legislation. But let's not force fit the rights of publicity in Issue into a law dealing with just AI. Yes. Let's create the right and talk about what the exceptions are. And then we can build in the fair use arguments and all of that and those kind of things. And to that point, they're right. It should be broader. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02And you may have mentioned it prior, but one of the reasons for you and I both would love to see a national right of publicity is right now, there's only about 25 states that actually have statutory agreement.
SPEAKER_03About 30 some odd have either statutory or some kind of common law rights publicity. So yeah, I mean you're right.
SPEAKER_02So it's not every state. Right. So if you do have an issue, and and we've seen that in some of the higher profile cases where Prince. Yes. It's a great one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Prince uh when when he died, I forget what state he was from, but but that state did not have Minnesota. Yeah. Minnesota did not have a rights to publicity statute. And and you know, the estate was running around trying to figure out what to do. And and you know, I think I don't even remember what ultimately became.
SPEAKER_02And in the world we currently live in, with online and the easy distribution internationally of things, even, but just domestically, it it's problematic if if you're not careful. It just creates a huge burden on the person whose rights have been violated to go find a jurisdiction that they can sue in even when they shouldn't have to do that necessarily. So I'm I'm all for a national right of publicity. I don't necessarily agree with fire in their take that this is going to kill free expression and it's an attack on the First Amendment. They do they bring up a couple of really good points, in my opinion, but they seem to, in their article, seem to really drill in tighter on this idea of this particular legislation. They say, quote, in practice, it would give politicians, celebrities, and other public figures new leverage over how they're portrayed in today's media and grant their families enduring control over how they can be portrayed in history. Yeah, I have no problem with that. I mean, they there are there are public figures, I get that, but they still have rights. They don't give up certain things. So I don't see that as being an issue. They also closed out their article with a line that I I didn't know what to think about this. They ended it with creativity cannot thrive under a constant need for permission. New mediums shouldn't mean new muzzles. You know, I guess they're operating on it's better to seek forgiveness than get permission idea. I guess I don't buy that.
SPEAKER_03I strongly disagree with their creativity, doesn't thrive under what was the word cannot thrive under a constant need for permission. Well, hang on a second. That the copyright law has done just that and has achieved the purpose of promoting useful arts and sciences for over 200 years. So they're wrong there.
SPEAKER_02I agree. Totally agree with you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but uh more to their point on the legislation, and maybe not to their point, but to our point, I think we need to back up and decide what our goals are here with this kind of legislation. Their point is that if it's not properly done, it could hamper free speech. And if that's their only point, I agree with them. It should be properly done. It should be constructed to give a right of publicity, not just to celebrities and politicians and and and others that are high profile. Tennessee's law applies to all citizens. Yes. And and that's what the right of publicity should be. A family should have the ability, whether the person is a celebrity or not, to control the image that is portrayed commercially who have gone before them. And they should have the right to control their own.
SPEAKER_02That's that's where I fall down. We don't give up certain rights because we all are rights, put it that way, because we become a public figure necessarily. This other article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, some of theirs is stronger for me. One is I don't fully agree with this. They they claim this act doubles down on a whole new censorship infrastructure, it encompassing not just images but products and services used to create them with few safeguards against abuse. I don't know that I agree with all of what they just said there. I personally don't think it's a whole new censorship infrastructure. You just need to get permissions.
SPEAKER_03Well, you have to you have to understand the perspective EFF is coming from. EFF was leading the charge back in the 90s during the free culture movement that anything that's on the internet should be free to use. And that applied specifically to copyright in in their mind. And and their their philosophy with that, and I don't know if you know or not, but John Perry Barlow, who wrote some songs for the uh uh Rolling Stones and some others, is was one of the founding members and and donors to EFF. And his thing was, you know, we have this idea of embodiment of creativity, records, you know, physical objects, things like that. We're in the internet age now. You know, there is no embodiment, it's just little zeros and ones flitting about the internet, you know. So no longer this this idea of uh an idea expression dichotomy where we own the expression, that's not relevant anymore. Everything should be free. If it's out there flitting around in the uh ether, then it's ours. And so they're coming at it from a censorship perspective from that view, that that jaundice view that it's a bad thing. And and we shouldn't have that right. I I personally have had a long-standing dichotomy with the EFF for that reason, because I, you know, I teach copyright law and and I know their role in the whole Napster devoid of of revenue for for songwriters, and that that makes me question a lot of what they they put out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Old school me thing says, okay, you guys are just talking about anarchism, you know, electronic anarchism is like, come on, man. You know, we we all we have a right to our work, in my opinion. However, they do bring up some a couple of interesting points, other interesting points. One is it would allow anyone to get a subpoena from a court clerk, not a judge, but a court clerk, and without any form of proof, forcing a service to hand over identifying information about a user that has been the allegation against that user that they infringed. If this act is going that far, I would say, yeah, we can't go that far.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I think it does provide that methodology for getting a subpoena from the the court. I like all subpoenas, they can they can challenge to squash those or quash those. I mean uh uh well, maybe squash and quash. I don't know. But uh I I I think that would be the normal, you know, legislative or judicial procedure to to do that. Yeah. However, I I tend to agree with you. I think that that may be a step too far. There may be a better way to do that.
SPEAKER_02I think there's got to be a better way. I think it is a step too far as this is currently written.
SPEAKER_03But I will say this if it's like copyright, if it's like the DMCA, if you are the registered copyright owner and you registered with the copyright office, you can do that. That's the procedure you got you do to do a DMCA takedown note. There's not that much difference between those two. And I don't specifically recall the language in this act, but you know, maybe it needs to be modified a bit. But um, if they're going to have this registration system with the copyright office for post-mortem rights of publicity, and we're suggesting they expand that to include lifetime rights of publicity, then that would cover it. That you you would have to present that certificate to the clerk. So that that may solve the abuse issue that that they're referencing.
SPEAKER_02The other thing that the Electronic Frontier Foundation and FIRE both tried to address is this idea that within the act you are able to if the tool was specifically designed to create fakes, it's illegal. That tool is illegal and it needs to be taken down, taken away from the owner. They're they're subject to penalty, the developer of that. They're claiming that that that type of law threatens innovation. And because people will be too nervous about stretching it too far. I I don't think that's ever stopped innovation. People threaten that this could be used for nefarious purposes. And we all know that certain things have been developed over centuries for this one purpose that might or might not have been nefarious, but but there's other elements of that that get used for good purposes. And so I'm not sure that I buy into that. I think they're trying that the act is trying to say if you're developing tools specifically to break the law, that should be illegal.
SPEAKER_03That's fair enough. I mean, I get the point that maybe there needs to be some transparency. On the other hand, this idea that innovation should be encouraged at all cost to other personal rights is where I would say you don't really understand what intellectual property is. Intellectual property is so t strongly tied to that social contract, the the Lockean theory that society is established to protect individual rights sometimes gets lost in these discussions about innovation. Because the whole purpose of John Madison and and Jefferson coming up with this idea that we're going to give a monopoly to the individual, society is going to give that to the individual is so that it would encourage innovation. And it has. And the idea is that you create an expressed idea. Let's say it's a book, right? And that book gets published. If we didn't have a monopoly for the individual, that individual is not going to publish the book. So you might have innovation, but the innovation is not going to be useful to society. So to encourage that, the the founders said, let's give them that monopoly. And to do that, society has to give over some of its rights. It does have a right to free speech you know, to free speech. But it has to give over those. You know, why would it do that? So that it can take the ideas in there and innovate on its own. So allowing somebody to own their rights of publicity would not hinder innovation. Rather, it would encourage innovation. If I can own that intellectual property, I'm going to want to use it, right? I'm going to want to share it. I'm going to want to do it. I I think to me that's misunderstanding the purpose of intellectual property.
SPEAKER_02So I I know you've got to run here, so let's um I think we probably is there anything else you No, I was gonna say if you if people wanted to read it, there's an article by a gentleman named Ben Sperry from last August. It's titled Getting Real on the No Fakes Act. You can find it on truthonthemarket.com. Again, his name is Ben Sperry from August 6th of last year. But he brought out some much more even-handed approach to everything. And he he does get into talking about he's not necessarily a fan of the act as it's written, but he says if ultimately the intent is about dealing with the outputs of some of these things, not just the inputs, which we've talked about that with some of them court rulings that have happened recently with Anthropic and some others, where the ruling was that they did violate copyright by input, and another court said, well, they didn't do it just by using it to train their models. It's all about the output. And I can see both sides of that, honestly. I'm just a you should get permissions. That's that's my bottom line on all that.
SPEAKER_03That is the bottom line. You know, and here's here's the rub. I mean, I think you're you and I are both saying the same thing. The the the act as it sits needs to be read, rewritten, needs to be broader, needs to be thought through a little bit more than it is. It is at this moment a reaction to artificial intelligence and what's happening primarily in the visual world, right? The deep fakes. And for that reason, it has the support of people like the Recording Academy and the RIAA, but also, you know, Sony and UMG and all the the big movie places out there. It it's of course, generally, when that group of creatives supports something, then YouTube and all of the tech giants are going to be on the other side saying, you know, screaming free speech and EFF and all that. So that's the the that's how it's falling out now. My problem with the Elvis Act was this very issue, right? All it did is take a very limited law and add the word voice to it, essentially. I mean, there's more to it than that. But but that's essentially all it did. And it was a response to artificial intelligence. So we've got to find some legislators who will think about these issues a little bit more, Dennis. They just import us into Washington.
SPEAKER_02We'll we'll fix it. I also think that it's so funny to me how some especially we get into political seasons, people start talking about slippery slopes on certain legislation and whatnot. And and on the one hand, these articles that are opposing the No Fakes Act, their slippery slope they're talking about, is what's gonna we're gonna stifle innovation, we're gonna do these things, or it's going to create more censorship because it's putting more authority, the obligation really for the takedown back on the platforms to you know to police these things, and if they don't, they get penalized, etc. And so they're gonna overreact and shut down everybody.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, it's I I love the slippery slope. That's a logical fallacy, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03The parade of horribles. This is what's this is gonna happen. This is gonna happen. Well, and most often it doesn't happen, right?
SPEAKER_02So exactly. I I I think the No Fakes Act, it may not be a perfect bill the way I've read it. I think it's got a lot of great things in it. Doesn't mean it can't be tweaked, but let's not ignore the fact that there is a problem out there. And if it's not here yet, it's coming with these low-cost tools to create digital fakes that's that is already causing problems and wreaking havoc in certain circles. And I do think both First Amendment issues on the one hand, but also just rights of privacy on the other, intellectual property rights are all implicated by this if we don't get a bit of a handle on this.
SPEAKER_03And I will say this to all my students who are listening out there. I will know if you use AI to do your assignments. I just wanted to briefly update our audience on the American Music Fairness Act. And I and for our listeners out there, I I know we had targeted to do all of the legislation that's pending regarding music in the entertainment world, but we realize that that's going to create like a four or five-hour podcast. So we're gonna break these up into chunks just so we don't put you to sleep. How about that? Anyway, I wanted to update you on the American Fut Music Fairness Act. We I talked a little bit about that while Dennis was out with the with a cold or with some some illness in December. The bill was co-sponsored, if you recall, by Blackburn, as as well as Tillis and Sands. And of course, this was the the subject of that hearing that I was talking about in December that that featured Gene Simmons of KISS and where he said it was on American not to support this legislation. And this is one of those bills that you know has been floated around Congress for a while, Dennis. Yeah. And the issue, gosh, it's been around since the beginning of music. You know, you have the radio industry fighting with the recording industry and claiming, look, we're giving you free marketing and and therefore we don't need to be paying you performance royalties for for radio airplay, and the the record labels have always, you know, they've always been at odds. So uh kind of brief our audience real quickly and and tell us where that stands, Dennis. Well, where the legislation stands at the moment or where the sentiment stands. I think it's just in committee, but yeah, it is kind of summarize what it does.
SPEAKER_02So what it what it does is currently in the U.S. and the U.S., to my knowledge, is the only, at least the only industrialized country that does not pay recording owners and recording artists royalties for radio airplay. Right. They pay publishers, they pay songwriters. People say, well, you have sound exchange. Well, sound exchange does collect money, but only from satellite and internet radio, not terrestrial over-the-air radio.
SPEAKER_03And for those of you over the age of 50, that's AM and FM radio. Yeah. Exactly for those of you under, go check out what that is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you're if you're under 50, go get a dictionary, look at the word terrestrial. Get a world book encyclopedia. The and so for years, for decades, has been pretty intense out there from the sound recording owners and the recording artists that radio stations are making a ton of money off of playing music, which they are. The stations and their lobbyists, the National Association of Broadcasters in particular, have really lobbied for decades. Well, it's we're really bartering. You're giving us the music to play. In exchange, we're giving you airtime. And when people like your music, they go buy it, or now they stream it, they go buy tickets to your concerts, that sort of thing. And, you know, historically speaking, I think there was some legitimacy to that. There is. In the early days of radio in particular. I I I do. But where it's gotten to now over the last several decades, in my opinion, at least since you know, I got into town in the mid-80s. I would say that's about right. So at least since then, I think that's a bit of a f fallacy. What because what's ended up happening over the ensuing decades has been, yeah, you get radio airplay, and if it's a hit, it'll drive those things you're talking about for sure.
SPEAKER_03But how do you get radio airplay? Well, and the counter to the radio industry's position, of course, is if you look at a station like what used to be KDF Rock in Nashville, right? You listen to that station, not because you wanted to listen to that station, but because they were playing Journey or Whoever at the time, right? And that was the big bands. And they are getting advertising dollars driven by the popularity of those bands.
SPEAKER_02So there is a counter to that. There is. Radio stations, the the both non-commercial and commercial drive revenue by what they put on the air. And in the commercial sense, they're selling ads, true ads, based upon ears. How many listeners do we have? And how does that relate to the other stations in our market? And then we can build our advertising rates. Even non-commercial stations, they don't look at it from that same perspective of how do we compete on an ad rate basis. But they're getting donors to their nonprofit donors, you know, sending in monies to the nonprofit, and they use that to pay their bills and do what they do, and and and that's great. But those monies are driven by who's listening. That's purely and simply what it is. And their staff gets paid, they get raises, they get bonuses, they get 401ks and been, you know, all these things are happening. And yet the recording owner and the artist are spending, especially in the mainstream, hundreds of thousands of dollars per radio release per year. It's it's staggering what some of these numbers can be to try to break into radio. Yes, for the benefits of it drives sales and it drives concert opportunities. But let's make no mistake about it, the radio stations are getting a lot of money. And I'm not saying they're getting filthy rich and everything. What I'm saying is that there is a real disparity, and they should be paying something for those uses of that music.
SPEAKER_03And but well, as we know, they pay the uh songwriters. Yes. They just don't pay the and the publishers. Yes. They just don't pay the the recording artist and and and yes, the sound exchange. You know, that's all part of this. When when one of the times when when radio was was fighting was when the recording industry was saying, Hey, people are streaming our recordings. And we're not getting anything. And that's when the the the digital performance for sound recording copyrights came around. And and the radio industry fought that. So they've been fighting this for a long time.
SPEAKER_02But obviously they're paying that now on the internet streaming side. So you mentioned KDF, their website streaming internet. They're paying there. Yeah. They, in my opinion, they they do need to pay on the other side. No, you and I, what was it, two months ago, I guess, we had someone come in, gave us a presentation on at least on the nonprofit side of massive radio network that's out there. And the numbers stunned me. And I've been around this for a long time. And I didn't realize what that really meant. And it and it's staggering. And to me, that is prima facie evidence that there has to be a change. Because if that's happening in that sector, a small sector. Small sector. Yeah. Take that now over to what's happening in pop, country, and other formats, it's it's it's gotta be staggering.
SPEAKER_03It's a real issue. And I I I I know I I was interviewed by Fox on that issue in December, and and and the only thing I pointed out was that that we oftentimes in these discussions, the the lowly songwriter gets left out. And and honestly, you know, that was a little marketing. But because this act really has nothing to do with the songwriter. It is all about the the performer on the sound recording, and and it's not a bad act. And then like to your point, it needs to be addressed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What can't happen and and it won't happen, is you can't diminish what's being paid out to the publishers and songwriters. That needs to stay up and or higher. I mean, I I've represented creatives. I've been at the label side as an executive, yes, but I've also been in artist management, uh working as an attorney now as well. I can my my honest opinion is they're all underpaid for these uses. They are and there needs to be something addressed in that area. Especially with the the recording artists and sound recording side. It's just not it's it's not fair to me. I agree. It's just not fair.
SPEAKER_03I agree. Well, Dennis, I think uh we've been bit off a lot to chew here. And uh, you know, uh like I was telling the listeners earlier, we were intending to go through three or four other pieces of legislation here today, but uh we're gonna put a pen in it right there. A lot of things we want to do this year. There's that case involving Kat D. uh, involving the tattoo that that came down and and uh told the audience last uh episode that we would eventually get to that. There's also that case with Johnny Cash and and and his voice uh on the commercial, which has a lot of precedent to it. You know, there's the Bette Midler case and Lou Rawls and others who have won on that issue, and and you know, I think it's probably a pretty good case on behalf of the.
SPEAKER_02I'm anxious to read the answer to the opinion or to the complaint.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was gonna say no offense to Phil. It won't but I think he's got his work cut out for him.
SPEAKER_02Right now, according to the filing or the case management order in the system, it's not due until the mid-March. So we've got to look at it.
SPEAKER_03So we'll follow up on that. And I, you know, I hopefully maybe have one or uh, you know, Phil Kirkpatrick and and maybe Tim in as well. Just get into an argument right here.
SPEAKER_02That'd be great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that'd be nice. We could we could argue the case and serve as the justices, maybe maybe arbitrate it. I'll bring the popcorn. And then we'll follow up on this later, uh audience. And uh we appreciate you listening. I hope you have a great day.
SPEAKER_02I would I would uh with these legislative acts, if anybody has questions or comments, I'd love to hear what their views of these two acts of the No Fakes Act and the American Music Act. Thank you for reminding. I would love to What do they call? Well, I you just changed the number.
SPEAKER_03Didn't you eight seven seven seven deal makers? Easy to remember. 8770 dealmaker. Seven deal makers. 8777 deal makers. Yeah. Not very complicated at all. Or you can send us questions at musicroaddealmakers.com. You guys have a great one. Thanks for pointing that out, Dennis.
SPEAKER_00Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shroom Disney and Associates. Recorded on location on Music Row, the heart of Music City, Nashville. Subscribe to future episodes wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
