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ty and the incentives to encourage new talent and promote new songs.

The songwriter and the publisher are partners in an enterprise that has to be both creative and commercial if anybody is to benefit. If the proposed bill becomes law, publishers would have less incentive and also less financial ability to promote songs. That surely would not be a good thing for songwriters, and it surely would not help those who recapture copyrights in songs, especially when the songs approach termination.

Thank you very much.

[Submissions for the record follow:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DEAN KAY

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT-GENERAL MANAGER,

WELK MUSIC GROUP

My name is Dean Kay. I am the Executive Vice PresidentGeneral Manager of Welk Music Group, a music publishing company headquartered in Santa Monica, California. I am also a songwriter. My best known work is probably the song "That's Life," popularized by Frank Sinatra.

Because I am both a music publisher and a composer, I do not approach the issue at hand as a question of "us versus them" or of who are the good guys and who are the bad. I am intimately aware of the contributions of both the songwriter and the publisher in the arduous process of creating and exploiting a commercially successful song. I therefore believe that the proper approach in commenting on the bill is to focus on the historic and on-going partnership between songwriters and music publishers. I entirely disagree with and reject the notion that music publishers are mere "middlemen" who passively reap the rewards of songwriters' creativity.

The partnership between songwriters and music publishers has continuously resulted in the creation and dissemination of a grand catalogue of musical compositions for the enjoyment of the public and to the mutual betterment of songwriters and publishers alike. The success of the partnership requires the activity of both the writer and the publisher, activity that was depicted at great length in the hearings leading to passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, including its derivative works exception. District Judge Edward Weinfeld and a majority of the Supreme Court in the Mills Music case acknowledged that historic partnership, and it should be recognized and protected in any consideration of an amendment to the derivative works exception.

Although the publisher's role has been presented to

Congress by various witnesses in the past, I want to reiterate and amplify on those presentations because attempts have been made to obscure the true nature of this role through the use of a label. In the Mills Music case, the songwriter's heirs -- not the songwriter himself -- tried to hang on music publishers the pejorative term "middlemen" and to suggest that publishers are nothing more than passive recipients of undeserved royalties. This attempt to litigate through labels was rebuffed, as should be any similar attempt to seek legislative amendment through inapt labels or misleading characterizations.

It is easy, though seldom fair, to attach labels to people when attempting to minimize what they actually do. Stock traders can be termed middlemen between purchasers and sellers, but without these market makers few shares would change hands. Merchants can be termed middlemen between manufacturers and consumers, but if retail promotional efforts were eliminated, few goods would leave the factory. In each illustration, a look behind the label reveals the important role played by one who searches out a product, promotes it and makes certain that it reaches the public.

The Crucial Role Of Music Publishers

In the entertainment industry, as in every commercial environment, a performance or a product has many contributors. You cannot have a successful motion picture without a screenplay, but the screenwriter cannot do it alone. On the creative side, there are also the director, the designer, the cinematographer, the technicians and, of course, the performers. On the financial side, there are the producers, the distributors and the investors. It is only the blending of creators, risk-takers and promoters that permits success.

It is the same in the music industry.

You cannot have a

song without a composer, but you rarely have a performance or a

recording without a music publisher.

When I wrote "That's Life," the song did not go directly from my lead sheet to wide public acceptance, any more than any other song becomes a hit just because a songwriter has thought up a clever lyric or a catchy tune. Between composition and success comes promotion, the publisher's key role. Even before the song is written, the publisher often plays the equally vital role of nurturing creative talent.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the continuing vitality of the publishers' role is that songwriters still enter into agreements with publishers. Indeed, songwriters literally line up at our door, seeking our assistance. This is not surprising one understands what music publishers actually do.

Our role begins even before the first bar of a song has been conceived. My company, for example, now has some fifty songwriters under contract. We manage their careers. We provide them with cash advances to permit them to write. We maintain and make available to them modern sound studios

including multi

track recording equipment and state-of-the-art synthesizers where they can experiment and create.

(We are currently con

structing a new twenty-four track recording facility in

Nashville.) By keeping in touch with what is happening in the industry, we try to steer the composers toward compositions that will be commercially successful.

promote it.

When a work has been created, the publisher begins to Welk currently maintains offices in Hollywood, Nashville, New York and London from which to promote our songs. Some dozen of our employees work full time in promotional efforts. We regularly produce demonstration recordings and, at times,

professionally recorded albums to get our songs before the public. We also prepare what are known in the trade as "pitch sheets." A pitch sheet contains information on currently popular

musical artists, on the kinds of material each artist prefers, on what producers the artist works with, and on what musical

preferences these various producers might have. Our employees are regularly in touch with producers as well as "a & r" (artist and repertoire) representatives of record companies. Over time, we have developed and we work hard to preserve harmonious relations with record, motion picture, television and commercial producers and with recording artists.

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The publisher's promotional activities continue after a
While a record company might seek

song has first been recorded.

to promote only its version of a song, a publisher strives to exploit all versions of the song itself throughout its copyright term. For example, through the efforts of Mills Music, there were 419 recording licenses issued for "Who's Sorry Now" during the twenty-eight year renewal term.

Welk Music Group now utilizes a comprehensive computer library which can cross-reference a myriad of details of any of our more than 30,000 songs. Through the computer, we can sort out and list songs to meet particular needs for stage, screen, recording, advertising or any other use. And we do it all the time. Just recently, our Italian representative received an indication of interest in a country-western album. Though it took us by surprise that Italy might have a market for such a collection, our computer enabled us to provide a list of selections overnight.

In addition, Welk regularly publishes listings of our songs arranged under various headings, such as time periods. This is designed to enable someone like a film or television producer to pick, for example, period songs to match the setting of an upcoming production or to draw from our catalogue songs to meet any other defined need.

As some measure of the success of our ongoing promot

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