to give a free ride to radio and television broadcasters, to recorded music services, to juke box operators, and to the many other commercial users of their recorded performances.

These commercial users for profit, whose massive industry is built and prospers upon recorded performances -for which they pay not one red cent to the performers -are permitted by custom and usage a patently unfair use which, until now, antiquated laws have silently protected and which the proposed law would affirmatively sanctify for all future time in the name of establishing a "single national system" of copyright.

Authors, composers and publishers societies, which so fulsomely salute the glories of musical creation,3 continue to deny to performers, who give life, articulation, depth and variety to composers' writings and whose performances create the royalties upon which composers and authors and publishers thrive, a seat at the table where the economic harvest of intellectual effort is shared.*

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Phonograph record manufacturers, who so proudly cite the cultural contributions of their product while warding off with apparent success attempts to abolish their special compulsory copyright license privilege, jostle one another in a race to donate their latest record releases to disk jockeys to the end that the artistry of performers may be broadcast for advertising revenues by radio stations, many of which are under common ownership with them, without further payment to those performers.

No Further Study Needed

Further study, it is submitted, will shed no brighter light on the motivations of those who have prospered under the special privilege and immunity granted them in the present law and to be perpetuated by the proposed law. Theirs

52-380 0-66-pt. 3-2

is a thesis which holds that it is right for users to use and profit from the recorded product of performers, that it is right for composer-creators and their assignee-publishers to reap the benefit of their recorded works, that it is right for record manufacturers to supply broadcasters with free records without regard to the performers' wishes, but that somehow it is wrong for musicians, whose records are broadcast and otherwise played for profit without payment, whose records when so broadcast give rise to composers' performance royalties, and whose records make up almost the entire program content of AM and FM radio and of the juke box, to be paid for their contributions. Certain basic facts, obvious for many years, can no longer be silently ignored. The situation has changed only in the intensity of the deterioration in the performing musicians' economic opportunity while the industry which he serves has prospered vastly.

The Impact of Musical Automation

The actual and potential impact of the science of sound recording upon the art of professional musicianship is a story many times told. Sound motion pictures, phonograph records, tapes, radio and television broadcasts, and the myriad and increasing applications of sound reproduction devices either have displaced or can displace all but a few musicians from the profession to which their talent, study and devotion have directed them.

In 1927 every movie theatre in the land had its complement of musicians ranging from the pianist or organist in the small theatre to the fully augmented symphony orchestra in the movie palaces of the larger cities. In the span of two brief years, following the introduction of the sound movie in 1928, some 10,000 competent, devoted, professional motion picture house musicians lost their jobs, displaced by

the technology of sound reproduction. The comparatively few musical jobs offered by motion picture producers in the preparation of sound tracks hardly relieved the impact of this catastrophe. Yet, despite the substantial elimination of musicians from the industry, musical performance over the last thirty-five years has become an ever more important ingredient of motion pictures and, today, scarcely a motion picture sound track, heard in theatres or on television, is without musical accompaniment.

The Corrosion of Economic Opportunity

This same corrosion of musical employment opportunity has attended the development of other fields where live musicians once performed. The sound record, viewed by the legislators who enacted the 1909 Copyright Law as almost entirely a device for home entertainment, has become the principal, if not the exclusive source, of the program content purveyed by radio, juke boxes, wired music systems, restaurants, night clubs, dance halls, skating rinks and other places of public convention and mass entertainment where musical performance is sold for profit. Yet, the musician, the creator of the record which is publicly used for great profit, has been eliminated from the radio station studio whence his record is broadcast, from the tavern, dance hall and roadhouse where the juke box has replaced the band stand, and from the restaurant, hotel and night club "discotheque"10 where in his absence his records replay his performances. The profits of these businesses mount; the royalties distributed by the performing rights and recording rights societies break new annual records; the public appetite for and appreciation of musical performance increases; and all the while, the attrition of the musicians' job opportunities accelerates as his economic incentive diminishes.

More Recorded Music

Fewer Musicians Employed

Between 1948 and today, the number of commercial radio broadcasters has more than doubled while program content has changed from live network product to almost exclusive use of phonograph records. In 1953, approximately 47% of radio broadcast time consisted of recorded music. In 1963, that figure had ballooned to 80%.11

In 1960, 502 of the 537 local radio and television stations in 31 states and the District of Columbia (not including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles from which emanate most of the network programs)-did not employ a single live musician. The remaining 35 local stations employed a total of 163 musicians perhaps once, twice or three times a year for a special casual engagement. Only 27 of these 163 local radio and television musicians had regular employment. Yet the basic program content broadcast by these stations was preponderantly musical-380 stations broadcast music for 75% or more of their total time on the air and 192 programed music for 90% or more of their total air time.12

In 1963, ASCAP's revenues from public performance licenses exceeded $37 million and the Society distributed $30 million to its 7000 composer and 2300 publisher members. The other U.S. performing rights societies added another $14 million to 1963 receipts from musical public performance. In 1921, ASCAP's entire distribution to members was $111,000.1

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In 1962, approximately $452 million was paid into 463,000 coin operated phonographs in the United States to play some 49 million records. It was estimated that in that year each machine grossed $1106.73 and weekly revenues

per machine were $18.79,14 while not a single musician was employed or paid by a juke box operator.

In 1964, the phonograph record industry of the United States, which produces more than one-half of the entire world's product, gave sporadic piece work to an estimated grand total of some 4000 non-featured musicians throughout the United States and Canada. Total phonograph sales at retail of the American industry in 1964 approximated $600 million a 10% increase over 1963.15

A Strange Paradox

So the strange paradox exists. The love, knowledge and enjoyment of music in America today seems far greater and deeper than ever it was before. There are more musical programs being broadcast by radio today than were 25 years ago. There are many more symphony, opera, and other instrumental music phonograph records sold today than in 1940. There are millions of dollars more in performance royalties being collected by composers societies today than ever before from the performance of music, much of it recorded. But despite these substantial increases in public music appreciation and in the commercial profits derived from musical performance, there are fewer musicians earning their bread from musical performance today than there were 25 years ago and, for that dwindling group who tenaciously cling to a livelihood derived from their performing talents, their way of life becomes increasingly precarious. There is far less possibility today than there was a quarter century ago that a young musician will find what his God-given talent, his years of study, training and practice, and his self-discipline should give him—a reasonable expectancy of modest economic opportunity to devote himself to his chosen profession and to work in the symphony orchestra,