And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 213: David Israelite | How Songwriters Get Paid — And Why the System is Broken

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

In this special episode, Ross Golan sits down with David Israelite, the influential President and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). A fierce and tireless advocate for songwriters, David has spent nearly two decades fighting for the rights, recognition, and fair compensation of music creators in an ever-evolving industry.From spearheading groundbreaking legislation like the Music Modernization Act to navigating complex battles over streaming royalties and copyright protections, David shares a behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into defending the value of songwriting. With unique insights into policy, publishing, and the business of music, this candid conversation reveals why David is one of the most pivotal figures working on behalf of songwriters today.If you care about music creators and the future of songwriting, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.00:00 – Intro: Why This Episode Matters More Than Ever03:40 – How Songwriters Get Paid (Explained Like You’re 15)05:19 – The Truth About Songwriter Pay: 75% Controlled by the Government07:28 – The Music Modernization Act: Progress or Political Cover-Up?09:13 – The Broken System: Why Songwriters Can’t Say No12:01 – Artists vs. Songwriters: The Industry's Unspoken Divide13:50 – Ghostwriting, Publishing Abuse & The Elvis Tax Nobody Talks About20:16 – Why Unionizing Won’t Save Songwriters (And What Might)23:55 – What the CRB Is — And Why It Still Screws Creators26:22 – Free Market vs. Rigged Game: Labels Win, Songwriters Lose28:33 – Why Songwriters Have No Real Political Power31:01 – Consent Decrees Explained: The 1940s Laws Holding Music Back33:19 – Selective Withdrawals: A Strategy That Could Change Everything39:10 – Are Big Publishers Quietly Crippling Independent Writers?45:25 – The Power of ‘No’: The One Tool Songwriters Don’t Actually Have46:25 – Are Labels and Publishers Working Against Each Other?49:45 – The Billion-Dollar Boom: Why Everyone’s Selling Their Catalogs54:37 – Final Word: Gratitude, Hope & the Fight Ahead Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You have more music being consumed and more people making money off of it than in any point in history. So you would think that songwriters would be doing really well. The problem is that songs are not valued fairly. What would the appropriate valuation be for songs? Sure. People will pay for something what it's worth to them. There's a balance between what someone's willing to sell it for and what someone's willing to pay for it. With songwriting, that doesn't happen for two,

Really important reasons. If you don't have the power to go dark, you will never negotiate a fair price. How does a songwriter get paid? Speak to me like I'm a freshman in high school. The thing that's probably most shocking to anyone who looks at songwriting is that... NMPA is the premier organization for music publishers and their songwriter partners. It's their mission to increase the value of music, and that's exactly. what they do. NMPA is working right now to raise royalty rates for songwriters from streaming services,

radio, social media, and everywhere music is essential. From the courts to Congress, NMPA works to get songwriters what they deserve. I know because I've served on the board before, and I'm the current co-chair, along with Ryan Tetter and Liz Rose for the Golden Platinum Club. So again, thank you NMPA for supporting And The Writer Is and songwriters everywhere. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. There are millions of singers and thousands of artists, but only 40 songs per genre at a time. This podcast aims to shed a light on those creators who make those songs.

I produced this with my friend Joe London in association with Megahouse Music Group. Special shout out, Charlotte, Isidore, Jad, Sad, and Michael White. And you can follow us at And The Writer Is on all your socials. We'll see you there. Now, this week's episode. Welcome to And The Writer is. We have a special guest who is back on the podcast, the CEO of the National

Music Publishers Association, David Israelite. I would normally go and do this crazy intro, but we've actually done an interview with you before, it's just so, it's been so long. October 30th, 2017. And what's so insane about that was we decided to do that interview, knowing that Spotify was doing a secret genius event. And I remember calling you being like, we need to do an interview and we need to get this out to explain what the DSPs are doing.

to songwriters. This is before the Music Modernization Act. I actually am not even sure how we were connected enough to have this conversation. But so much has changed since 2017.

And I'm so happy to have you on because we have so many questions. The songwriting industry needs to have this kind of interview right now because we get all these questions that very few people can answer. So welcome back. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back. A lot has changed, although a lot is still the same. So I'm sure we'll get into it. Okay. Let's start from the most basic thing.

Let's pretend you are chat GPT and I put in, how does a songwriter get paid? Speak to me like I'm a freshman in high school. I've actually put that into chat GPT. Oh, perfect. I'll do my best to remember I think you start with understanding that songwriters are different than performing artists. A lot of people don't really think about that. In the legal world, they have different copyrights, meaning that when a songwriter writes a song, that song has a copyright. When an artist makes a recording of that song, that recording has a different copyright. And the reason why it's important that they have copyrights is because that that That's how the intellectual property is protected.

That's how people get paid. And yes, you can have songwriters that are also artists. If so, they live in both worlds. They have one foot in the songwriting world, one foot in the artist world. But so many songwriters are pure songwriters, meaning that they write for other artists. And those are the ones where you really have to understand how they make their money because it's very different than someone who is a recording artist. And so if you're breaking it down as to how songwriters get paid,

I think the simplest way to think about it is we think about three different buckets of way that songwriters get paid. And the reason why these buckets are important is because the law treats each of these three buckets differently. The thing that's probably most shocking to anyone who looks at songwriters, is that about 75% of what a songwriter gets paid is actually regulated by the federal government. They set prices. Most people have no idea that that's the case.

So when we're thinking about the ways that they get paid, one bucket is when they sell copies of their song. Now, that used to mean when you would go to a store and buy a vinyl album or a CD or maybe later when you would download a song from iTunes on Apple. Today, it means when you subscribe or listen to streaming services, things like Spotify, Apple, Amazon. That way of getting paid is completely regulated by the federal government. There's actually a three-judge court that holds a trial every five years and they set prices. That's way one. The second way that songwriters get paid is when their music is publicly performed. It's sent to the public over some public airwave. It can be radio, television, it can be in a bar or restaurant or a concert venue. That's known as public

performance. That is a big way that songwriters get paid. And for most of this world, that is also regulated by the government. The third way that songwriters get paid is whenever you marry their music to video. That's called synchronization. that's the one area where songwriters actually aren't regulated by the government, and they get to negotiate the value of their songs. And so if you start with just a basic understanding that if you're a songwriter, is your song being copied, mechanical, regulated by law? Is it being publicly performed, regulated mostly by these consent decrees at the Justice

Department? Or is it being married to music? in which case you negotiate its value. Those three ways combined make up about 95% of what songwriters get paid. How has the industry changed since 2017 in addressing those things? That's a softball question because since then, the music modernization passed, which is the first major legislation in 109 years at the time. and now we are living in a world where there's the MLC and the MMA.

I know I'm going to use some acronyms, so please extrapolate. What is the MLC? We're hearing about some of these things. We're hearing about the MMA. Did the MMA help songwriters? The MMA helped songwriters immensely, but it did not change the fundamental problem that we don't get to negotiate the value of songs. And so my basic premise is that there is more music being enjoyed by more people than in any time in the history of the planet. And there are more companies making

more money off of songs and songwriters than in any point in history. So you would think in a world where you have more music being consumed and more people making money off of it, that songwriters would be doing really well. The problem is that songs are not valued properly. They don't get paid what they're worth. And there are a lot of reasons for that, which we can talk about. But that to me is the number one concern in the industry is that songs are not valued fairly. And the MMA did some things that helped quite a bit, but it did not change that fundamental problem about how songs get valued. Why have they been devalued over time and what would the appropriate valuation be for songs? Sure. There may be some kind of junior economists in the listening audience, but I'll try to speak to this for

someone that's never taken any economy class. Generally, the way things work, and I think this is just logical, is that people will pay for something what it's worth to them. That's how pretty much everything works. If you want to go buy a house, you want to buy a car, you want to go into a restaurant and buy a hamburger, there's a balance between what someone's willing to sell it for and what someone's willing to pay for it. And the market basically balances those two things out and you end up with a price that is a fair market price. With songwriting, that doesn't happen for two really important reasons. The first reason, as I've mentioned, is that for, for the majority of the songwriters work, they're not negotiating prices. The prices are being set

through an artificial way, whether it's a law that was from 1909 or whether it's from a consent decree that's from 1941. The majority of a songwriter's income, they don't get to negotiate and say, this is what I think my song is worth. And the person getting the song has to pay that or not use the song. The second problem that we have, which I believe is unique to the music industry, is that normally in a market, if someone's not willing to pay what it's worth, you don't let them have the thing, and then they go without it. The problem in the music industry is that oftentimes, we don't get to use that leverage, if you will, of not letting you use the song because of the nature of the music industry. As I mentioned earlier, you have performing artists and you have

pure songwriters. For artists who perform, the most important thing to them is their connection with their fans, whether it's because they want to do live concerts and sell tickets, whether they want to have fan clubs, which they think drive attention to their music, they are connected with their fans. And a lot of these platforms that use music, like a YouTube, a TikTok, a Facebook, Instagram, they become the way that artists connect with their fans. For artists, they may not care as much about what they get paid from those platforms, because they're using those platforms for other purposes. But if you are a songwriter

that does not do concerts or have fan clubs, these platforms are how you make your living. And the reason why we don't effectively negotiate prices in the music industry is because if you are a songwriter who says to a platform,

I don't like what you're paying and therefore you can't have my songs. What often happens is our own family turns against us because the artists don't want to be off the platforms. And so that puts the songwriters in this really uncomfortable position of I'm not getting paid fairly from the platform. I don't want them to have my songs. But if I withhold my songs, then the artists that I write with are going to be upset and maybe even demand that I put

those songs back on the platform. I'll give you a great analogy. If you think about Hollywood, You have big movie actor stars, and then you have people like screenwriters. No one knows who they are, really, but they write the actual words that are said by the big Hollywood stars. When the screenwriters go on strike, the celebrity actors get behind them, even though that might mean that the television show that they're on goes dark or that their next movie doesn't come out in the time frame they wanted it to, there's an allegiance between them, of a support understanding by those actors,

these screenwriters make what I do possible, and therefore, if they're not being treated fairly, I stand with them. I think in the artist community for music, we for some reason have not developed the same culture of where performing artists will stand by the songwriters who are not artists if they're not being treated fairly. And I think this is an uncomfortable

but necessary topic to address. rest. Yeah, I have a few questions to break down here. But one issue is that a lot of publishers sign a lot of these artists who don't actually write songs, who are then pillaging the copyright by saying that they're songwriters by being in the room. So you have this natural discord where there isn't this respect for what other people do. You would never have Merrill Street be like, I'm actually, you know, I'm actually the writer of this script. You know, so put my name on it because I'm in this. And therefore, your script would be worthless if I wasn't in it.

You would never have Tom Cruise do it. You wouldn't have any of these actors do it. But there's a understanding this, quote, Elvis tax that you're supposed to give some of your publishing to these artists out of the goodness of our heart or, what, you know, it's unethical and it's extortion. And yet it's even celebrated often by our own publishing community. So how would these artists give the same respect for songwriters, in which case the actors would when the artists aren't respecting songwriters?

I think you're raising a really important point. but I think that's a different problem. Let's take an example of where you have an artist that does write, a famous artist. And let's say that artist gets in a room with a really talented songwriter and together they write an album. Yes. And that they really did split the songwriting 50-50. They both contributed about the same. Every one of the songs is 50% written by the artist, 50% written by the writer.

A darling, Greg Kirsten. Great example. Now let's say that album is being used. on a platform like TikTok. It's exploding. Everyone's listening to this music on TikTok. And the writer thinks, I'm not getting paid anything hardly from TikTok. This isn't fair. I don't want my music on TikTok if I'm not getting fair compensation. But maybe the artist is thinking, I'm about to go on tour. I'm going to be selling a lot of tickets. The majority of my revenue comes from live performances and tickets. And I'm using TikTok to promote myself.

That's a classic example of where the interest of the recording artist, even though she may be a writer too, is not the same as the songwriter. And we've seen this play out in lots of different forums where music publishers have tried to stand up for their songwriters by saying, we're not going to allow the music to be used if we don't get fair compensation. And oftentimes, you see a lot of pressure that comes from the recorded music side because of the impact of going dark on these platforms because they're using the platforms for a different reason. And I have been very focused on just how much of music is being written by non-performing artists.

If you look at the statistics, it's incredible. Billboard Top 100 this past month. 97 of the songs in the Billboard Top 100 this month had songwriters other than the recording artist. And if you look at the average number of writers on a top 100 song right now, it's about six, which means by definition, a lot of those writers are not the ones doing the recordings. Those are the ones that I'm focused on right now. One of the, in extrapolation on my earlier comment, one of the biggest problems for the songwriting industry, which is not necessarily the publishing industry, is that there are a number of

writers on a song who are not songwriters, which is such a basic thing to say that we should only have songwriters listed as songwriters. We've gone so far down this rabbit hole that you quite literally have six writers on a song that had what would traditionally be known as, you know, a song that two people wrote in any other time. If you watched the Beatles documentary where you have let it be being drafted in the room, and you had comments from almost everyone in the room, all of those people in 2025, 2026 are going to ask for publishing because they were present. it's, again, somewhat unethical.

How does the publishing industry address that for songwriters? Because I think, again, that puts us in a complicated place where songwriters aren't being protected, even if it's not affecting the publishing industry. Well, look, again, I think that is a huge problem. I agree with you. I respect how much you've been a leader on that question and speaking out about the practice. But I don't want to confuse that with what I'm talking about, which is this idea that if you don't have the power to go dark, you will never negotiate a fair price. So imagine this hypothetical.

you and your spouse walk into a car dealership to buy a car and you're negotiating over the price of the car. And there's a place where the dealership's willing to sell it and you're willing to pay for it that meets in the middle and that is the market value of that car. And while you're in the negotiation, your spouse says, you know, we've got to get this car today. We're leaving here with this car. I don't care what it costs. We're not spending another day without this car. what do you think happens to that negotiation? And this is what's happening with our ability to negotiate prices on these platforms

where we don't necessarily have the support of part of the music industry that, again, it's not that they're bad people. They just have a different motivation than the pure songwriter or music publisher. Correct. And that needs to be addressed. Your problem also needs to be addressed. Let's keep going with your train of thought because I do think that these are obviously different questions. When all these songwriters were like, well, why don't we unionize where we could support each other?

It's a basic question that gets asked and it actually has a basic answer. But how could we create an organization a way for songwriters to unite and include artists in this? the ambition of supporting the same view. Yeah, I think what you're touching upon is exactly right, which is that there is this passion among many people in the songwriting community that have discussed what do we do about our current situation? And one of the things that gets thrown out is we should unionize. And I think that it comes from a place of true feeling,

but without a real understanding of what you're asking for. Unionization is not the answer, in part, because songwriters should not want to give up ownership of their copyrights, in part because... Not to interrupt, but the gist is, in the Screen Actors Guild analogy, those people, once they sell the script to the studio, the studio now owns that script. In our case, we never sell our songs to the record label. We own our songs. And for as long as we decide not to take fees so we're not a work for hire, as long as we are able to own our IP that gives us a higher ceiling potentially. So that's part of why we don't want to unionize in it just to clarify. No, that's right. I mean, songwriting is unique in that way. And it's a beautiful thing

about the songwriting industry, right, is that songwriters get to keep their intellectual property that they create. In cases of unionization, you often have to be an employee of someone where what you create on the job isn't yours. It's your employers. The other basic problem with unionization is that let's say that songwriters got together and decided to strike. Strike against whom? It's not their music publisher. Their music publisher is in the same boat as the songwriter about the compensation. They're really wanting to strike against the people paying for the music. And that just doesn't work in a union setting against a company like a Spotify, for example. You can't strike against a Spotify. You can stop writing new music. And initially, that's going to be a dispute with you

and the artist that you write with. Down the road, it's going to be for the people that carry that music. But this passion behind this all comes from the same place, which is that in a world where, again, there's more music being valued by more companies. Why are songwriters struggling? it's coming from this idea that we're not being treated fairly. And I think, again, it goes back to the root cause of why. And so if you can establish a culture where there is support for the songwriters being treated fairly on these platforms, I promise you it will strengthen the hand that negotiates the rates from these platforms.

And that's what I'm very focused on trying to help build, along with many others, is this idea that we need to raise awareness. about the songwriter's interest in these disputes, and we need to create support from the entire music community about that the same way that we've seen happen in other industries. I want to get into, we're about to enter a new CRB, another acronym that we can dive into.

This will help set the rates for us for the next four years. We are coming out of a budget, bundling issue that was started by Spotify that has been adopted by some others, but it's caused some issues where we were hoping a CRB new rate would be something really easy for us to get into. And now it looks like we're getting into another complex era of, you know, publishers and songwriters versus DSPs. This, explain what the CRPs.

is and what it would take for us to get rid of the CRB and what is the history behind the CRB? Sure. So it's a long, boring story, but I'll try to make it short and as interesting as possible. You go back to the year 1909 when music publishers would license player piano roles, those things that you would stick in a piano, they'd play themselves. This was before there even was. recorded music. And the United States Congress thought that music publishers had a monopoly in violation of antitrust law. And so they passed a law that said, you music publishers must license your copyright, these songs and the player piano rolls. And we Congress will set the price. Fast forward to a world where people buy records. And when I started in this job 20 years ago, I think about 65% of the revenue came from record labels. They would sell vinyl, cassettes, a-track, CDs, collect the money,

and what they would pay the songwriters was regulated by law. Today, we live in a very different world. Only 4% of the money that were paid comes from record labels. The most important source of our revenue, by far, are digital streaming companies like Spotify, Apple, Amazon. What they need is to get a license from the record label for the recording of the song and a license from the music publisher for the song itself. Well, the record label is in a free market. There was never a law passed like the one we have. So let's take the biggest record label

in the world, sits down at a table with the biggest digital music company in the world, and in a private room, they negotiate over prices. And if the record label doesn't like the price, they can say no, they can walk away. And then the digital company can't use the recordings. And we know from that experience that record labels have been able to negotiate around 50 to 55% of the money that's being generated by these digital companies. And both sides must be happy with that arrangement because they both agreed to do it. On the publishing songwriting side, it's completely different.

because of this 1909 law, we now live in a world where every five years we go to a trial. There are three judges that sit in judgment over the value of songs. NMPA is on one side of the courtroom, and on the other side of the courtroom are the biggest technology companies in the history of the planet, Google, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora. and we litigate with each other over what the song is worth. And at the end of that trial, these judges make a decision, and that decision is law. We can't say no. We can't withhold our music. And that's ended up with about 15% of the revenue going to the songwriter and publisher, instead of the 50 to 55% that the record label negotiated for their intellectual property.

That's the world we live in. Now, the obvious question, is, why can't we just get rid of that old law? And trust me, if there were a way to do it, I would love to get rid of that old law. The problem is everyone who pays songwriters likes that law being there. And in a world where you are then trying to convince Congress to do something, we are a very small, tiny industry fighting against giant economic interests that don't want that law to go away. Yeah, it's hard to explain the history of this again. In 1909, You have Taft becoming president. You just had Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, going through, you know, the steel industry and the railroad industry and the oil industry.

So it was a fad at the time to find in almost every sector, somebody is a monopoly, somebody is not. But when you end up with pianos versus songwriters in this same era that you can convince Congress that, hey, these guys are, the, these guys are the oil company and these guys are the lantern companies. That's essentially the fact that there were three rate court judges in the 20s when you would have had Louis Armstrong, you know, becoming the first real star or the, you know, from slack to vinyl to, you know, to CDs to, or sorry, to, what, a million. different things, cassette, CDs to where we are now, you could see where every, every single era songwriters have lamented that this is the way it is. And every single era, the Congress has

had on the lowest priority is fixing, you know, songwriter rights. It's also, it's a great lesson in political power, all right? One of the things about the songwriting community is that generally we are congregated in a few cities, right? Songwriters, you want to make music for a living. You generally will go to L.A., you'll go to Nashville, you go to New York, maybe small pocket in Atlanta, Miami, but we're very concentrated in small. Now, think about the people who pay for music.

Every congressional district in the country has a broadcast radio station, a broadcast television station, hundreds and hundreds of bars, restaurants, hotels, music venues. these are the people on the other side of political fights. So it's no surprise that when you're concentrated in a couple congressional districts around the country and you're the small player that you can't go to Congress and pass laws over the objection of industries that are everywhere and that have an enormous amount of political capital and money to spend.

It's just the reality of the political situation. And so instead, we try to find ways to navigate through that and improve the situation short of repealing this law. And there's one really important way that we think that we can do that, which is how we regulate one of those buckets that we talked about earlier, which is public performance. Our public performance right is not regulated by law. It's regulated because two private companies in 1941 were judged to be too big by the Justice Department. And they were put under what's known as a consent decree. And so ASCAP and BMI, two of the six PROs, performance rights organizations in the United States, they probably represent about 90% of the commercial activity in the United States.

those two companies have been living under a consent decree since 1941 and it never ends. And what the consent decree means is that when you're negotiating for that exploitation of a song, not the mechanical copy that the judges and the CRB set the price for, but rather a public performance of your song. It works just like you were regulated by law because the consent decree says, ASCAP and BMI, You can't say no. You have to license anyone that asks you for your license. And if you can't agree on a price, you'll go to a single federal judge in New York City,

and that judge will set the price. So it operates very similarly to how the law operates, which means that for an entire area of how songwriters make their money, they are being regulated by these consent decrees, just like the part of them that is regulated by the law. There's a way out of that. And that doesn't require an act of Congress. It requires the Justice Department to change those rules. And that is also a big focus of ours right now. Okay. So this is a big focus. And what we're talking about right now will gain a lot of steam

in the next, say, few years, if not months. But explain what selective or partial withdrawals are. Sure. So when you're a songwriter, you generally pick one of the PROs to join. It's usually one of the first things you do when you're a songwriter is you'll say, oh, you've got to join ASCAP or BMI. And generally you'll do that before you ever even get a publishing deal because you can join when you've had no commercial success. You can join when you've written one song as a high school student. They have to take you under the consent degrees. You have to be a member of these PROs. When you are a member of a ASCAP or a BMI, they now license your public performance for everything that's a public performance. And we mentioned all these categories earlier. Broadcast radio like AMFM, cable television, bars, restaurants, hotels, concert venues. But they also license digital companies that do public performance. When we found such difficulty with this law that says we can't set our price,

about 15 years ago, many music publishers said, well, aha, we've got another card to play. We may have to give you our mechanical under the law, but you also need our public performance. And that, if we can take out of the consent decree, we can now be in a free market and say, if we don't like the price, you can't have our public performance. And so many music publishers wanted to pull their rights out of ASCAP and BMI, not for everything, just for the area that we thought was broken, which were the digital companies not paying enough. Well, those consent decrees went to court and the judges decided the current decrees don't allow you to do this. The current decrees in their mind say, you have to be all in or all out. You don't get to have a menu of picking what they'll represent you for and what they won't.

So the simple response to that is, well, then let's change the consent decrees because it would be an enormous benefit if we could pull rights out only where we needed to get into a free market because the system wasn't working. So when something like Spotify bundling comes around, you would have an answer to it. You'd be able to say, you may not do what you're doing, Spotify, or I'll be. I won't give you my public performance rights. If I'm in ASCAP and BMI, I don't have a choice. I have to give you my public performance rights.

And so in the first Trump administration, we went to the Department of Justice and said, we'd like you to consider changing the consent decrees so that we can be part in and part out. And the head of the antitrust division was very sympathetic to that argument. And he conducted hearings. He took papers. He actually spoke at the NMPA annual meeting about. this and then the Trump administration term one ended and he didn't do it. Well, now we're in the second Trump administration and we think it's time to revisit that question about whether

you should be able to be part in and part out for the purpose of being able to get your rights into a free market to give you leverage. And I think maybe the best proof that this works is that we talk so much about Spotify bundling. Guess what? record labels aren't impacted by it the way publishers are because they're in a free market. They don't have to let Spotify do this. Right now, we do. So this would be a perfect example of where we would want to say, no, you cannot have our songs if you're going to treat songwriters this way with what you're doing on bundling. And so again, I think this problem of songwriter compensation is based in two fundamental problems. The first, not being able to negotiate,

our rights in a free market. The second, when we are in a free market, actually meaning that when we say, if we don't get a fair price, you can't have the songs. So how would PROs react to an EPA asking the DOJ to get rid of or allow for partial withdrawals? How would our PRO partners? How would our PRO partners view that move. Right. And partners are the right word. The PROs are our partners. There are friends. There are allies. They provide a service to songwriters that is important and necessary. And let me be clear, ASCAP and BMI do everything in their power to get fair rates for songwriters. The problem for ASCAP and BMI, which is the same problem for the mechanical under law, is that if you can't say no, you're never going to get the true.

fair value of the price. Now, the first time that we tried to amend the consent decrees, ASCAP and BMI did not oppose the effort. This time around, I suspect they will not like this effort, that they'll be against it. We'll have a difference of opinion about it. But the thing about being such good allies and friends is you can disagree on some things and still work together on everything else. And that's what our intent is. There are songwriters who are not signed to a publisher who are self-published, and a lot of them are worried that if Universal or Sony or Warner are allowed to negotiate their rates, that these people will be left out of, left out in the cold. How does NMPA support smaller members?

Sure. And I love that question. I get it a lot, too, because I think that it's an opportunity. to really discuss how this works. So I've mentioned several times that the songwriter is regulated for about 75% of what they do. Let's talk about the 25%

where they're not regulated by a law or a consent decree, and that's this synchronization right that we have, right? If you're going to marry music with video, you're in a free market. You can negotiate whatever price you want. So the theory behind the question that you and I both get

from smaller self-published writers is, well, if I'm on my own in a free market, maybe I won't get as good of a deal as these big, large companies get that have more market share or more power. If that were true, then for 25% of the market where this has been how it works since the beginning of time, you would see that happen. It doesn't happen. So let's talk about the synchronization right in the two basic ways that you exploit it. One way is when you use a single song for a single purpose. You want to put a song in a movie, a TV show, a commercial.

You go to that publisher and you say, I'd like to use that song for this purpose and I'll pay you for it. And we have to agree on a price. There is no evidence that smaller publishers get worse rates than larger publishers do in that circumstance. Because they want a particular song. And so you might say, well, yeah, but if you're not. If you're a small publisher, you might have a really good song that has a lot of value. And so for that song, you can get a fair value. Well, let's talk about the other way we get paid from synchronization, which is called mass

synchronization. That's where a platform goes to a publisher and says, I want to synchronize your songs to video for everything you have. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Triller, Twitch, can go on and on. there is no evidence that has ever happened to smaller publishers. And I think I know why. First of all, as you know well, songwriters own songs in fractions, which means that your market share as a smaller publisher or self-published writer is beyond what you have because

every fraction of a song that you have a fraction of, you can control. And so for a platform to say, I'm going to pay one publisher a hundred. higher rate, and I'm going to try to squeeze the smaller publisher for a lesser rate, they're risking losing not the market share of that smaller publisher, but every song that songwriter or publisher touches. And that's why the market has never reacted that way. And so for people that are afraid of if we're in a free market, we'll be playing by different rules, you already do for a quarter of your business. And I've challenged everyone who's ever asked me this question, can you point to me where it's happened? And no one can. And the thing that's so interesting about

this question, go back to anyone who raises this point and say, okay, well, then would you like to take your synchronization right and put it under a consent decree so that everyone is regulated from compulsory synchronizations? Not a single person says yes. So they understand that a free market is better, but they reasonably are just worried about a change like this. And the other thing that I will say that's really important. To slow you up for a second, because there's a lot there, I think that what you're saying, what you just said at the very end is that people are afraid of change. All the songwriters want change, but because we're hanging on by a thread or feels that way, there's this fear that if you were to disrupt something substantial like

partial withdrawals, that it could affect songwriters even worse, especially those who are self-published or are smaller. And the reality is, I answer similarly, which is that no, I know, I know, maybe it's because I personally know that people run the major companies, but I've seen how much it has affected positively smaller writers to have the, the 800-pound gorillas in the room leading the way. And it's just, it's so important to me in when I'm in those meetings with songwriters who are afraid of this change because they're worried it's going to get worse. My general response is it can't get much worse.

And trust me that like you can't predict just as much as you can't predict that it's going to go down. You can, you can, you can, it's worth, it's worth trying. I actually think you can probably predict that it can go up before you can predict that it'll go down. And to try to predict what's going to happen in 10 years or how we're going to view it, you know, we've got, you know, a million different things that are going to pop up between now and whether selective withdrawals will have a negative effect in five to 10 years. And to be clear, I don't hear people worried that it's going to go down for anyone. What I hear is a concern that some people might do better, but not me. That's really where the concern is coming from. And despite the fact that you have this long

historical track record of where in practice this hasn't happened, I would also offer this. Let's assume worst case scenario, a large publisher pulls out, negotiates a significantly better deal for that company because they're in a free market and they can say no. Now, ASCAP and BMI have precedents they can use when they set their rates. It actually lifts up the market. Totally. That's worst case scenario to be clear. Yeah. And so I understand where it's coming from, but I feel so strongly that the only way to unlock the value of songs is to address the fundamental problem behind it. And the fundamental problem is when you can't say no to someone that wants to take your property, they're never going to pay you what it's worth. There are a number of books

on negotiating that the, you know, the power of no and saying saying, saying no is the most essential part of negotiation. You have to be willing to walk away. And that, again, that goes to the the fear that songwriters have. But to move on to the next thing, one of the other, that piggybacks on this is a lot of people feel that there is a conflict of interest in these major publishing companies

that also, whose parent company also owns a major record label. I've always said, if you've ever met John Platt or Jody Gerson, or you've met Carrie Ann Marshall, or guy mood or any of these you know very quickly

that these people are not that concerned about their partner record companies in a sense that they're not going to take a reduced rate for their writers so some parent company can make more money

but I explain to our viewers how do major publishers deal with a conflict of interest for their parent companies that own record companies? Sure. So one of the reasons I felt so strongly about adding songwriters to the NMPA board of directors. And you were the first songwriter that was asked to serve on the board and you did it for five years. And we've had other great writers now serve in these positions like Liz Rose and Laura Veltz and Sean Douglas is because I was so confident that if you could sit at a table where the CEOs of all the big publishing companies

sat with the CEOs of a lot of the really important independent publishers and actually watch this dynamic, you would understand what I have known, which is you're exactly right. The major publishers fight for songwriter rights as hard or harder than anyone does. Now, let's also be blunt and honest about things because, you know, I'm not. known for saying things that people think but don't like to say sometimes, there is a tension between a record label interest and a publishing interest. It'd be silly to admit otherwise. And there is a truth that sometimes a label dollar is worth more to a corporation than a

publishing dollar. And that just speaks to the strength of publishing that so much of the money that publishers collect goes to songwriters. But the way that these companies operate and the way that these individuals operate who run these large publishing companies is that they would never, ever do something other than fight for maximum value of songs. And the way it kind of plays out is the way you might expect where sometimes in families, the most competitive things that happen happen among family members. When you'd think that they might take it easy on each other, no. The bloodiest backyard football and basketball games often are among siblings. right? The coach is often coaching his son or daughter harder than the other players. That dynamic

also plays out in these music companies where these executives are being judged on their performance for their songwriters and they're in a competitive environment. And so I have never one time in 20 years heard a major publisher take a position that was somehow in deference to a label and not what's best for their writers, not once. There has been a massive consolidation in the publishing industry since our last conversation. There's been a major push for IP acquisition, so a lot of people are selling their catalogs, and a lot has changed on that front. How has that part of the industry affected working songwriters?

It's a great question, and you're right. it's been one of the most important developments over the last 10 years, is this influx of investment money into the music industry and in particular into songs. And let me start by at least saying that it's because people are understanding the true value of these songs. That's why the money is flowing in. There's a saying about smart money. It chases what it knows to be valuable. So here, Here's what I'll say about the overall concept. First of all, I think it is patronizing to suggest that a songwriter shouldn't have the choice of what to do with their own property. Now, I feel strongly that everyone should be educated. They should get good advice. But we should not

in any way act like we know better than what's best for them in their property that they created. It's their decision. And so if they want to sell, if they want to take on a partner, if they want to not sell, as long as they do so in an educated way, it's none of my business what they do. A lot of people have really strong feelings about private equity and other outside money that comes in, about whether or not they have the best interest in the industry. And there's no question. They're doing it to make money. They're doing it to make money. But having these investors in the industry can strengthen us in a lot of different ways. And one of the things that I'm starting to notice is that the investors who come from financial backgrounds, not the music industry, where things

have been done for over 100 years in ways that may not be considered the most transparent, the most efficient, they are bringing some efficiencies and disciplines that I think are healthy for the industry. And if they are increasing the value of the songs, because more people want them, more people are willing to spend money for them, a songwriter has more choices, I think those are all good things. And I mentioned earlier about our political problem. Well, having investors who have much more broad political support from their platforms care about our issues is also a positive for the industry. And I'm trying to work as closely as I can with those financial investors, whether they be private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds, family funds, insurance and pension

funds into making sure they're part of the advocacy effort for their own investments, right? They care about these investments. So that brings allies to the table, and I think that can be a good thing. There are arguments as to why it's bad, but for any songwriter, they can take that into account as regard to who they sell to. You might decide you don't want to sell to a non-music kind of entity. And the other thing that's true is that if you are a financial investment, that buys copyrights or name image and likeness rights or income strings, and you're not from the music

industry. You need a partner. You need someone from the music industry to represent you. And so you're starting to see a lot of that come into the industry about these partnerships between financial firms and music firms. And overall, whether you think it's good or bad, it is. And so instead of pretending like we wish it hadn't happened, I'm focused on how do we make the industry stronger because of it. I think that there are a million reasons why that acquisition space in music is a positive thing, especially for either the older writers who never experienced ownership or the younger writers who are now asking for things like reversions, which there are multiple reasons why I think that acquisition space has actually educated younger songwriters and older songwriters

in, again, the value of their music. we don't have a lot of time left, and I have so many questions, but one of the best parts of our main sponsor this season is the National Music Publishers Association. Our main sponsor, next season, is the National Music Publishers Association. So every single season that we're going to make sure we sit down and have these conversations, because we haven't addressed live music and how that has affected songwriters and the growth of live music and how PROs could maybe build on attaching songwriter growth to the growth of, say, Live Nation. We didn't even get into AI. We haven't gotten into so much and I can't wait for our next discussion, which will

undoubtedly happen as soon as soon as we get into the next season. Before we sign off, is there anything you want to add? We've got a very exciting conversation that will have happened the day before the release of this or the week before the release of this when you give the annual meeting address for NMPA. What would you like to add for our listeners? Well, thank you. And I want to explain why.

NMPA is sponsoring this podcast. It's not just because we love you. It's because you are performing a service that is so valuable and we so appreciate what you do. You know, a lot of writers who are in their prime that have become very successful naturally get very introverted about their own career. You have spent an enormous amount of your time, your capital on not only advocating for other songwriters, but educating the whole world about what it is songwriters do and why it's valuable. And so we're just so appreciative of what you do and what this podcast does that it was an easy decision to get behind it and support it. So I just want to say thank you. And it's been a pleasure. Thank you.