Songwriters Say Piracy Eats Into Their Pay

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Songwriters Say Piracy Eats Into Their Pay

January 5, 2004

By DAVID BERNSTEIN

They think of themselves as the unsung victims of Internet

music piracy.

Much of the publicity in the battle over illicit Internet

music downloading has gone to artists and record labels.

But songwriters say they are also being hurt financially.

Unless they are also performers, most songwriters are

typically neither rich nor famous, and their names may be

known only to those who bother to read album credits or

liner notes.

But their incomes can depend on royalties from sales of

recorded singles and albums. In fact, songwriters' earnings

are more directly tied to album sales than those of

recording artists, who can potentially earn substantial

sums through live concerts and merchandise sales.

Charles Strouse, a composer best known for his Tony-winning

musicals "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Annie," says illegal

downloading has had a disastrous impact on his profession,

not to mention his income.

"I am hurting," said Mr. Strouse, who is 75. Even though

his songs are not as widely sought as hits by popular rock

or pop stars like Sheryl Crow and Eminem, he felt the

effects of downloading after the hip-hop artist Jay-Z drew

on Mr. Strouse's "It's the Hard Knock Life" from "Annie"

for the 1998 album, "Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life."

According to BigChampagne, an online media measurement

company, Jay-Z's version of "Hard Knock Life" was

downloaded 1.16 million times from July 2000 (when the

company began tracking Internet use) to May 2003. The total

is probably much higher, said Eric Garland, BigChampagne's

chief executive, because the entire lifespan of the song

was not counted.

Although songwriters typically earn only pennies for every

sale of a recorded song, if every person who downloaded

"Hard Knock Life" had bought a CD instead, Mr. Strouse

would have collected at least $46,000 in royalty payments,

assuming he would have received 4 cents a download.

Mr. Strouse took in about $250,000 from recording royalties

in 2002, according to his publisher, Helene Blue. Last

year, she said, Mr. Strouse drew only about half that

total, mainly because of illegal downloading of various

recordings containing his songs.

"I've gotten fat off this business," Mr. Strouse said. "But

obviously I'm very annoyed. It's awfully hard to write

music. Ownership should be guarded very carefully."

Writers can receive as much as 8.5 cents for each song that

appears on an album, each time a copy of that album is

sold.

In practice, however, many songwriters receive less, since

royalties are typically split with their publishers,

leaving them with 4 cents. If a song is co-written, that 4

cents is split again, so the total can amount to just 2

cents. Songwriters also receive royalties of varying

amounts when a song is played on the radio, or is used in

movies or television.

"Eight cents is nothing; it's cheap," said Carey Ramos, a

lawyer for the National Music Publishers' Association,

which represents music publishers and their songwriters.

But "a penny here, a penny there - they add up,'' he said.

"In the aggregate, it's a big difference in the paycheck of

a songwriter."

Barton Herbison, executive director of the Nashville

Songwriters Association International, an industry group,

estimates that because of the difficulties in making a

living from the craft, there are only half as many working

songwriters today as a decade ago.

Nowhere have songwriters suffered as much as in Nashville,

the nation's songwriting capital. The town is teeming with

record companies, recording studios and publishing houses,

most of which are concentrated in a small area along Music

Row, a half-mile stretch along 16th and 17th Avenues, near

Vanderbilt University. The city is also home to some 4,000

songwriters, Mr. Herbison said.

"I know people that have had No. 1 songs who are working at

the Dillard's makeup counter," Mr. Herbison said. "Not that

there's anything wrong with that - it's an honorable

occupation - but that's not what they intended to do."

Illegal downloading "doesn't just affect Garth Brooks," he

added. "It affects songwriters, it affects every studio in

Nashville that's closing, it affects the working musicians.

What it ultimately affects is the choice of music the

public gets. When I have No. 1 songwriters working other

jobs, we're not getting more music."

David Ross, publisher of "Music Row," a Nashville music

industry publication, said music publishing companies had

sharply reduced the number of songwriters because of

plunging revenues from Internet downloading and industry

consolidations.

Jason Blume, 47, is one of 15 staff writers who lost his

job at the publishing house Zomba Music Group after BMG

Music acquired it in 2002. Mr. Blume had been a staff

writer at Zomba since 1991, most of that in Nashville, and

his credits included hit songs recorded by the likes of

Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and Collin Raye.

Now, as Mr. Blume searches for another staff writing job,

he said, the sense of despair in Nashville is so prevalent

that when people walk down Music Row, "they say they feel

like they're on the Titanic."

According to Mr. Ramos of the publishers' group, since the

first popular file-sharing service, Napster, emerged in

1999, annual collections of royalties from recording sales

(known as mechanical royalties) have fallen 22 percent, to

$455 million.

In the four years before 1999, he said, those royalty

collections grew 24 percent. Assuming that the pre-Napster

growth rate would have continued, and if illegal

downloading had not occurred, Mr. Ramos said, songwriters

would have collected an estimated $300 million more in

payments since 1999.

Shelly Peiken, 46, a songwriter in Los Angeles who co-wrote

Christina Aguilera's "What a Girl Wants" estimates that she

has lost nearly $200,000 in royalties because of online

piracy. Still, she considers herself one of the luckier

ones.

"Some of my friends are at the ends of their rope," she

said. "I'm not going to make myself sick over it. But if I

hadn't had these hits, I'd probably be pretty strung out

right now."

Not everyone is convinced that downloading is the

devastating problem that the music industry makes it out to

be.

"There are a lot of pieces that go into the industry's

problems that we're not hearing about," said Wendy Seltzer,

a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an

Internet civil liberties group. "It's easy and convenient

to blame it all on piracy."

Ms. Seltzer cited the sluggish economy and consolidation

among record labels and radio companies as other reasons

that record sales had fallen sharply over the last four

years. She argued that, assuming the downloading is

authorized, online music distribution actually lowered

costs and increased exposure for songwriters and artists.

Songwriters "will have to learn how to adapt to the new

technology,'' Ms. Seltzer said. "The buggy manufacturer

doesn't have a place in the world of automobiles."

She suggested that the music publishing industry adapt for

the recording business a model similar to one used in

radio, where broadcasters pay blanket fees for rights to

play songs and the money is split among the songwriters.

Whether or not online piracy is the main reason for

declining music sales, songwriters are trying harder to

make their voices heard in the debate. The Nashville

songwriters' association has made more than 20 trips to

Washington this year to lobby lawmakers over music piracy,

Mr. Herbison said.

In September, Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee

Republican, formed the Congressional Songwriters Caucus to

help address illegal downloading. About 40 members in the

House have joined the caucus.

Songwriters and publishers have also sought new sources of

income to compensate for the losses caused by piracy.

Ms. Blue, who has been in the music business 35 years, says

one of the most lucrative sources of new revenue has been

royalties from cellphone ring tones. Last year, cellphone

users bought more than 4.8 million ring tones, according to

IDC, a technology research firm.

But with two billion unauthorized downloads of songs every

month, according to the Recording Industry Association of

America, royalty fees produced from ring tones cannot make

up for the toll that piracy has taken on songwriters.

"There's a big dark cloud over the business right now," the

songwriter Ms. Peiken said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/business...ac96c32eebf3b6e