LUTHER MALLORY
AS HEARD ON ...
JEFF PRICE
TERRY MCBRIDE
Performance & Stage Psychology Coach
LUTHER MALLORY
AS HEARD ON ...
Audiam Founder & CEO
JEFF PRICE
Most of the lawsuits against Spotify for unpaid royalties to songwriters and publishers , including the current $ 1.6 billion lawsuit from Wixen based on your data , have been filed in the U . S . Is this a problem in Canada and elsewhere and why haven ’ t we seen lawsuits here ?
Now , when there is more music available and being consumed than ever before , it takes someone really aware , really knowledgeable , and , most importantly , really practiced to drop jaws , especially for those of us who are musicians or in the industry who are taking in a lot more shows than a typical member of the public .
Luther Mallory : Right , and you just said it . It ’ s not necessarily that they ’ re bad or unskilled . If we went to the Horseshoe Tavern tonight in Toronto and saw four bands , they wouldn ’ t necessarily be bad at their instruments or bad vocalists or bad songwriters . It wouldn ’ t be about that . We would be underwhelmed , probably , because they aren ’ t giving us any of their energy . They ’ re complacent , they ’ re probably on show 60 or 70 in a row where they ’ re guessing , coming on stage going , “ How ’ s that going ?” And because they have no objective , no data , no tangible result , no idea what they ’ re really after , they just keep doing the same thing over and over and going , “ Why isn ’ t it getting better ?” Then , 70 shows in , or in the case of my first band , 300 shows in , you start to go , “ OK , well what are we going to do ?” There ’ s no motivation left , there ’ s no momentum left because we don ’ t know how to scale this thing , not realizing it ’ s about energy and ending up in the small-club graveyard like 99.9 per cent of artists do – not because of anything necessarily but this critically important point that energy wins over anything else .
Nettwerk Music Group Co-Founder
TERRY MCBRIDE
How did Nettwerk successfully weather the post-Napster collapse of the recorded music industry through the 2000s ?
Terry McBride : We obviously had business units that weren ’ t just record labels ; we also had management and publishing . We also had an attitude that you can ’ t sue your music fans and that you can actually learn a lot from them . But the major attitude we had was the sort of realization that music is not copyrights . Music , I would even argue , is not even lyrics and melodies and choruses . A song is an emotion . If you love that song , you attach your own emotions to it and it becomes a bookmark within inside your life . When you hear that song a decade later , it takes you back to that time in your life and that emotion of why that song was very important to you . So , the music business is really the business of monetizing that emotion . It ’ s not a business of who controls the copyright . That ’ s where the business completely missed it . They didn ’ t understand the sort of business part of their own business and so they sued customers .
The live music business never really took a hit . Maybe it slowed down in 2008 and 2009 because of the housing crisis , but the live business continued to grow . Prices continued to go up because they were monetizing that emotional connection .
Jeff Price : It is a problem and , in fact , it ’ s a problem in every country around the world . What makes the United States unique is the statutory damages and the ability to get up to $ 150,000 for each willful infringement . Canada also has the same issue . Audiam , as you pointed out , is a reproduction rights collection agency . We work for the [ songwriters ] of the world or the companies that work for the [ songwriters ] of the world called music publishers . I can tell you firsthand , unequivocally , that for a period of over three years in Canada , many of the major digital service providers have been using the compositions by the songwriters that we represent without a licence and they know it .
Are the lawsuits dealing with unauthorized uses of compositions from a year or more ago , or is this still an ongoing problem with Spotify ?
JP : Think of it this way . Let ’ s say I built a boat and the boat had a big hole in it and a lot of water rushed into the boat . Even if you repair the boat today – and , by the way , they worked really hard to do that and they ’ ve changed the way they operate and our relationship with them has improved drastically and , in my opinion , they ’ re putting the right systems in place and so forth – but the problem is even if they patch that hole , the boat still has a whole bunch of water in it that needs to get bailed out .
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18 • CANADIAN MUSICIAN