decision on royalties — have caused
the differing sectors to retreat to their
respective corners and away from the
consensus that forged the MMA.
In the CRB process, the digital
service providers are represented by
the Digital Licensing Coordinator,
run by leaders from Apple, Spotify,
Google, Amazon and SiriusXM. The
DLC board is expected to negotiate
with the MLC board to reach an
agreement on costs in order to avert
a fee-assessment proceeding.
The MLC will be based on
Nashville’s Music Row, and
testimony from new board members
breaks out its budget by department.
The filing is heavily redacted, but
presumably gives salary amounts
for the 95 staff employees, among
other costs, and says the organization
expects to hire a full-time CEO
by January 2020. The MLC didn’t
respond to questions about when it
will start hiring.
The DLC has until Nov. 15 to inves-
tigate the MLC’s proposals and must
respond by Nov. 19. The MLC then has
until Jan. 23, 2020, to reply. A second
negotiation period will run from
Jan. 14 to Jan. 28. If no settlement is
reached, the proceedings would begin
Feb. 18, and the CRB would make its
determination by July 8.
In building an MLC big enough
to initially handle at least 100
blanket licenses, the collective will
administer, process and pay royalties
on every blanket mechanical license
in the United States starting Jan. 1,
- That means processing trillions
of transactions and paying billions
of dollars in royalties around the
world. At the same time, it must
build a musical-works ownership
database and claiming portal, plus
manage the inevitable conflicting
ownership claims.
Right now, between 30,000 to
40,000 recordings are uploaded
daily to the major services. For songs
and recordings where no matching
publisher is found, those royalties
become black-box revenue, which can
be distributed on a market-share basis
per service to publishers if they are
still unmatched after three years.
Seventeen tech firms submitted
proposals to help handle the matching,
royalty processing and reporting that is
required. Four are being seriously con-
sidered, according to the MLC filing:
ConsenSys/The Harry Fox Agency/
Rumblefish/SESAC, IBM/SACEM,
Music Reports and SXWorks.
There’s still a question of what
each digital service provider will
pay — and how. The MLC recom-
mends that each provider report its
service revenue, whether from paid
subscriptions, advertising or buying
digital music. The MLC and DLC
could then calculate what percentage
of the proposed first-year $29 million
operating budget each digital service
should pay. If one service has a 10%
market share, for example, its annual
fee might be $2.9 million.
Other metrics also could be used,
a decision that will fall to the CRB if
the DLC and MLC boards can’t reach
a settlement by Jan. 28. Instead of
looking at revenue, sources suggest,
the cost for each streaming company
could be determined by its mechanical
royalty payments, number of streams
or number of subscribers.
Rep. Doug Collins tells Billboard his
office will be closely monitoring the
implementation of the law. “It is my
hope,” he says, “that the music indus-
try will continue the constructive and
collaborative efforts borne out of the
Music Modernization Act and work to-
gether for the betterment of the music
ecosystem for years to come.”
G
INGER BAKER, WHO
died on Oct. 6 at age
80, is best known
as the drummer in
the late-’60s British rock band
Cream, where he showed that a
drummer could be a star, as well
as a soloist. And after achieving
a level of fame few drummers
had at the time, he moved to
Nigeria and played with Afrobeat
pioneer Fela Kuti, became a
formidable polo player and earned
a reputation as one of rock’s more
cantankerous characters.
Peter Baker — nicknamed
Ginger for his red hair — grew
up in South London, the son of
a bricklayer who died in World
War II. Baker started drumming
as a teenager and in his early 20s
began his career in Alexis Korner’s
Blues Incorporated, where he
replaced future Rolling Stones
drummer Charlie Watts, before
joining The Graham Bond Organ-
isation, a British R&B group that
also included bassist Jack Bruce.
In 1966, Baker, Bruce and Eric
Clapton formed Cream, a super-
group that performed psychedelic
blues with a level of power and
precision new to rock.
Baker arguably did more than
any other musician to establish the
archetype of the hotshot drummer
who lived as hard as he played. He
was one of the first rock drummers
to use a double bass drum, and
for Cream’s first album he wrote
the instrumental “Toad,” which
features one of the first drum solos
on a rock album. Baker stood out
when he wasn’t playing, too —
even by the standards of the ’60s.
According to the 2012 documen-
tary Beware of Mr. Baker, he once
pulled a knife on Bruce onstage.
After Cream broke up in 1968,
Baker and Clapton, along with
Steve Winwood, formed Blind
Faith, which lasted less than a year.
Baker went on to start his own
group, Ginger Baker’s Air Force,
which made two eclectic albums
in 1970. By then the hard, showy
drumming he had pioneered with
Cream was de rigueur in rock.
So in 1971, Baker drove across
the Sahara in a Land Rover to
Lagos, Nigeria; set up a recording
studio (where Paul McCartney
later made Band on the Run); and
played with Kuti, with whom he
recorded the album Live!
Baker spent the late ’70s in
the Baker Gurvitz Army. Later,
he played on Public Image Ltd’s
Album, made two acclaimed
experimental LPs with producer
Bill Laswell and recorded with
jazz musicians like Bill Frisell and
Sonny Sharrock.
Along the way, Baker made and
lost several fortunes while moving
around the world, from a small
olive farm in Italy to Parker, Colo.,
where he founded a polo team. In
2005, he reunited with Cream for
a series of shows in London and
New York. By the time Beware was
filmed, however, the money he
had earned from those concerts
was gone — spent on polo horses
and feuds. Baker still had enough
energy to hit director Jay Bulger
with his cane, though, in what be-
came the movie’s opening scene.
Beware is filled with stories of
such bad behavior, as well as tes-
taments to Baker’s influence from
top drummers like The Police’s
Stewart Copeland and Rush’s
Neil Peart, who called him “the
pioneer of a rock drummer.” With
the kind of chops that later gen-
erations strove to emulate, Baker
brought a new level of rhythmic
complexity to rock — and then
went far beyond.
MARKET WATCH
SiriusXM and Pandora appointed DENISE KARKOS to chief marketing officer. TINA TCHEN, chair of The Recording Academy Task Force, was named CEO of Time’s Up.
GINGER BAKER
1939-2019
BY ROBERT LEVINE
Baker, in
shearling coat
and snakeskin
boots, in 1970.
20 BILLBOARD • OCTOBER 12, 2019
WATFOR
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P
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IMA
G
E
S22.83B
0.9%
TOTAL ON-DEMAND
STREAMS WEEK
OVER WEEK
Number of audio and video
on-demand streams for the
week ending Oct. 3.
843.4B
32%
TOTAL ON-DEMAND
STREAMS YEAR
OVER YEAR TO DATE
Number of audio and video
streams for 2019 so far over
the same period in 2018.
13.26M
0.6%
ALBUM
CONSUMPTION UNITS
WEEK OVER WEEK
Album sales plus track-equivalent
albums plus audio streaming-equivalent
albums for the week ending Oct. 3.