Every year during Grammy week, members of the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) gather at Lawry's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills to hear a speech by David the Israelite, president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). In it, Israelite discussed the successes of the Music Modernization Act, the new UMG TikTok licensing controversy, the viability of AI regulation, and more.
He began the presentation with slides showing publishing revenue for 2022, broken down by category: performance (48.29% or $2.7 billion), mechanical (20.27% or $1.1 billion), synchronization ( 26.07% or $1.4 billion) and others (5.37% or $300 million). Synch, he says, is the fastest growing source of revenue.
Israelite focused much of his time on dealing with the Music Modernization Act, which was passed about five years ago. “I don't want you to forget how amazing the Music Modernization Act was and is for this industry,” he said. “I think it's the most important piece of legislation in the history of the music business … You start to take some things for granted … but we had to fight and win to get this done.” He pointed to landmark law successes such as changing the price standard to a willing-seller, willing-buyer model and the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC).
Earlier this week, MLC (and its digital licensee coordinator, DLC) began the process of its first redefinition. This is a routine five-year reassessment of the organization and how well it is doing its job of managing the general engineering license created by the MMA. As part of the redefinition process, songwriters, publishers and digital services are allowed to submit comments to the Copyright Office about the performance of the MLC. “Many of you will have a role in offering your views to the copyright office on this,” Israelite says. “The process must be respected and played, but [The MLC] it will be redefined and is an absolutely unapproved decision. There is a lot about MLC that I want to remind you of.”
Israelite then highlighted the organization's “transparency,” the lack of administrative fees for publishers, and that forecast 2023 revenue from recorded music streaming ($6.3 billion) and publishing ($1.7 billion ) “the split is the closest it's ever been.” attributing this, in part, to the work of MLC.
He also talked about the biggest story of Grammy week: the UMG TikTok licensing controversy. “I'll just say two things about TikTok: the first is that I think music is extremely important to TikTok's business model, and secondly, I'm just stating the fact that the NMPA model license, which many of you use, with TikTok expires in April.” At that point, the NMPA can either renew its model license with TikTok or walk away. If it were to pull a similar punch to what UMG has done, indie publishers could either negotiate directly with TikTok for their own permission or they could also be removed from the platform.
Later, facing concerns about artificial intelligence, he pledged his support for creating a federal right of publicity, but admitted “I want to be honest with you, it doesn't stand a good chance.” Although the music business is pushing for its adoption, Israelite says the film and television industry doesn't want it. “Within the copyright community we don't agree… and guess who's bigger than music? Cinema and TV”.
However, he believes the proposed bill is worth fighting for. “It can help state legislative efforts and it raises the profile,” he said, but Israelite said his priority for AI regulation is to require AI companies to be transparent and keep records of how models are trained. AI.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/publishing/indie-music-publishers-tiktok-license-up-april-nmpa-1235596465/