J
ASON MRAZ WAS OVERSEAS
crafting his 2005 album, Mr. A-Z,
when he saw the performance rights
royalty statement for his songs
played on terrestrial radio. “I noticed I
was receiving a different royalty that I
didn’t receive back in the United States,”
he says. “In Europe, even the drummer
on a song is going to receive it because
there’s a consideration and care for the
artists who make music great. Other
countries seem to acknowledge this, and
the U.S. does not.”
The United States is one of just a few
countries, including Sudan, North Korea
and Rwanda, where songs can be played
on the radio without compensation. It’s
one of the main issues for The Recording
Academy’s sixth annual District Advocacy
Day on Oct. 2; Mraz is the event’s first-
ever ambassador. The day brings together
some 2,000 members of the music
community with congressional leaders
to discuss a range of topics important to
the music business.
“Ideally, this year we’d have Con-
gress realize that everyone should be
paid fair market value, whether they are
a performer, songwriter, producer or
engineer, on any platform,” says Daryl
Friedman, The Recording Academy’s
chief government, industry and member
relations officer. “We’d love to see the ra-
dio industry and Congress agree that it’s
an injustice that doesn’t take place in any
other developed country in the world.”
This year, the music industry is return-
ing to Capitol Hill with a major accom-
plishment under its belt thanks to the
passage of the Music Modernization
Act, which was signed into law
in October 2018. The first major
reform of copyright law in a
generation, it showed how the
various sectors of the music busi-
ness could unite to push legislation.
“The message we’re sending is,
‘Advocacy works,’ ” says Friedman,
who notes that the event has
grown from just 200 participants
in its first year. “Your voice is
amplified when you’re with
2,000 other academy members.”
Now, attention is shifting to not
only fighting for a performance rights
royalty, which has been a battle since the
era of Frank Sinatra, but the passage of
the CASE Act, which would create a sort
of small-claims court system for copyright
infringement. Friedman says it’s designed
to help “some of the smaller players or
songwriters or independent artists who
don’t have the means to sue every infring-
er. They can use it as a vehicle to control
their copyright if it’s being abused.”
Also on the table this year are
the ASCAP and BMI antitrust
consent decrees that constrain
the way the collecting societies
can negotiate with businesses
that use music, which is currently
being reviewed by the Department
of Justice. “We want Congress to
understand the importance of
what’s going on at the Depart-
ment of Justice,” says Friedman.
“Hopefully we’ll come up with
a solution that helps songwriters
get their fair market value, as well.”
For artists like Mraz, the goal is to
fight for what’s fair. “It’s up to us to voice
our concerns,” he says. “Copyright is a
right, and that’s what we’re showing up
to make improvements on.”
The Next Copyright Fight
AFTER THE PASSAGE OF THE MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT,
THE RECORDING ACADEMY TURNS TO NEW PROBLEMS
BY ROB LEDONNE
O
VER THE PAST 13 YEARS, FIVE OF
the Grammy Awards for best opera
recording have gone to pieces written
since 2000. By the standards of an
awards ceremony known for honoring
the new, this might not sound like a big deal. For the
previous 45 years, however, since the category was
created, new operas were completely shut out in
favor of established masterpieces by Mozart, Verdi
and Wagner. So what’s going on?
“Despite the general press that comes out about
classical music, opera has been a real growth area
for new works,” says composer Mason Bates, whose
opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs won the cate-
gory in 2019. “You have this explosion, especially in
the American opera scene, of new works. I think that
people have started to realize that opera’s a phenom-
enal medium for talking about any topic.”
That’s good news for the best opera recording cate-
gory. “At the Met, part of my efforts to stimulate opera
audiences is to feature more contemporary music than
ever before,” says Peter Gelb, GM of the Metropolitan
Opera in New York and the former president of Sony
Classical. The Met’s recordings of John Adams’ Doctor
Atomic and Thomas Adès’ The Tempest, both of which
premiered in the mid-2000s, snatched trophies in
2012 and 2014, respectively, while Gelb is hoping for a
nomination this year for the company’s DVD of Adès’
cataclysmic The Exterminating Angel.
He also points to the decimation of the CD market:
New operas stand out in a narrowed field. “The
difference in sales from the time I arrived at Sony to
the time I left Sony was dramatic,” says Gelb, who
departed a few years after the one-two punch of
Napster and the iTunes Store gutted physical retail in
the early 2000s. “A new recording of Aida in the ear-
ly 1990s might sell half a million or 300,000 copies.
By the time I left we weren’t even releasing them.”
Those studio sets cost up to $1 million to pro-
duce, says Gelb, so today’s label executives are more
inclined to release live recordings provided by
institutions like the Met. That means that the opera
companies are the de facto producers, and the re-
cordings reflect their taste: They pick the opera and
cover the cost of the orchestra, cast, conductor and
staging. “And even then it takes a certain amount of
coaxing” to get a label to distribute it, says Gelb.
It’s a far cry from the 1960s, when the best opera
recording category was created. Superstars like
Leontyne Price, who won four times in the cate-
gory’s first decade, could clean up at the Grammys
with lavishly produced studio albums of Madama
Butterfly and Carmen.
This past year Bates’ new opera about Apple’s
visionary founder bested the Met’s recording of
Richard Strauss’ 1911 composition Der Rosenkavalier,
which starred Renée Fleming — one of the most
beautiful voices in the world — in a signature role.
The mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who has won for
both Doctor Atomic and Steve Jobs, thinks new works
generate their own kind of enthusiasm.
“Interest in the old pieces will always be there, but
opera has to maintain the role it had in its inception,
as a commentary on social happenings,” says Cooke.
“Steve Jobs was revolutionary — I’ve never seen an
opera house turn into a rock concert. There could
have been a mosh pit. They sold out every show.”
Move Over,
Mozart
Contemporary opera composers are
giving the masters a run for their Grammys
BY OUSSAMA ZAHR
Friedman
Mraz
Bates (third from right)
and the Grammy winners
for The (R)evolution of
Steve Jobs in February.
OPERA:EMMA^MCINTYRE/GETTYIMAGES.^ F
RIEDMAN:^ PAUL^MORIGI/WIREIMAGE.MRAZ:GARY^GERSHOFF/GETTYIMAGES.70 BILLBOARD • SEPTEMBER 21, 2019
● RANDY TRAVIS was chosen to receive the Founders Award at the ASCAP Country Music Awards on Nov. 11. ● Springsteen on Broadway and HBO’s Leaving Neverland won Creative Emmy Awards.