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Senator SPECTER. Ms. Ringer, thank you very much for your testimony. I would like you to stay at the table, and let us now hear from the panel which we have scheduled next, and I will defer questions until we have heard from the panel and have some opposing points of view.

I would like to now call Mr. Irwin Karp, counsel for the Authors League of America; Mr. George David Weiss, president of the Songwriters Guild of America; and Mr. Dean Kay, executive vice president and general manager of Welk Music Group. Mr. Kay is going to be accompanied by Michael Oberman, from the firm of Kramer, Levin, Nessen, Kamin & Frankel in New York, which successfully presented the Mills Music case.

Let us reverse the order of the panel, since we have already heard two witnesses testifying in favor of this legislation, and let us turn first of all to you, Mr. Kay, if we may, to get an opposing point of view.

Also, Mr. Oberman is welcome to pull up a chair and sit at the table.

My compliments to you, Mr. Oberman, on your victory.
Mr. OBERMAN. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF A PANEL, INCLUDING DEAN KAY, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, WELK MUSIC GROUP, SANTA MONICA, CA, ACCOMPANIED BY MICHAEL S. OBERMAN, COUNSEL, OF KRAMER, LEVIN, NESSEN, KAMIN & FRANKEL, NEW YORK, NY; IRWIN KARP, COUNSEL, THE AUTHORS LEAGUE OF AMERICA, INC., NEW YORK, NY; AND GEORGE DAVID WEISS, PRESIDENT, SONGWRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY

Mr. KAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Dean Kay, and I am the executive vice president and general manager of the Welk Music Group, a music publishing company headquartered in Santa Monica, CA.

I am also a songwriter. My best known work is "That's Life," a song made popular by Frank Sinatra.

The Welk Music Group is probably among the 10 largest music publishing companies in the United States. As the head of the firm, I am in a unique position, I believe, of being a songwriter who truly understands the innermost day-to-day operations of a music publishing company. And as a consequence, I believe I can fairly describe the creative partnership between publishers and songwrit

ers.

I have submitted a written statement, and as you have stated

Senator SPECTER. All written statements will be made a part of the record, and we would appreciate your summaries within the 5 minutes.

Mr. KAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When I wrote "That's Life," the song did not go directly from my lead sheet to public acceptance. I was entirely unknown at the time, but I was lucky to have had a publisher who believed in my song, kept it in mind and carried it around until it ultimately was

brought to the attention of Frank Sinatra. From the time that Mr. Sinatra recorded "That's Life," I became established as a successful songwriter and as a result have been able to build a career in the music industry.

That, in a nutshell, is what music publishers do. They promote songs and help songwriters. What my publisher did for me, the Welk Music Group and many other music publishers have done for a host of others. Songs do not automatically come to the attention of those who record, produce, and use music. There are hundreds of thousands of songs out there, all competing for the attention of artists, producers, and the public. The publisher's job is to maximize the value of the songs in his catalog, to get as many uses as often as is possible—in recordings, advertising campaigns, movies, television shows, and concerts. The job requires a substantial investment in time, effort, and money. It also requires a willingness to take risks with unknown songs and unknown songwriters, as well as a recognition that most songs do not become hits or standards.

Let me give you some examples of what we do as music publishers. We nurture talent. We presently have under contract 50 songwriters. We give many of them cash advances. We manage their careers. We advise them of commercial opportunities, provide them with places to write, and provide them with modern recording studios to work in.

We promote our songs every day. I have a dozen people on the street who do nothing but promote-not only the new songs, but the catalog material as well. We have submitted, as an example for your review, a publication that we call "Ideas." It presents our catalog in several different ways, each one designed to appeal to a different need of potential music users.

We maintain close relationships with artists and producers and users so that we can bring to a song the attention it deserves.

We even computerized our entire catalog, which currently is at about 30,000 songs, so that we can present those songs to producers in any number of ways, according to any characteristics they might choose.

We do special promotions, as well. I think a good example is the promotion that we have carried on for this entire year, to celebrate the centennial of the birth of Jerome Kern. Our investment in this promotion has been to date about $150,000. It has resulted in 11 newly recorded albums featuring Kern's work and the rerelease of 7 others, accounting for 291 releases of Jerome Kern's titles during this year alone. Our promotion has also inspired a hit musical which is on its way to Broadway. It has also inspired the use of Kern's music on radio and television, worldwide, and new print

uses.

These kinds of activities are what keep the songwriting industry active and profitable. Publishers are not passive middlemen who do nothing but receive and count royalties. The publisher is the industry's mover and shaker, one who sees to it that worthwhile songs find as many uses as possible. I do not think it is unfair or unreasonable to reward publishers for such activities. After all, you have to promote a lot of songs to obtain even a small repertoire of standards that keep generating royalties over the years. It is the publishers' share of these royalties that gives them the financial abili

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

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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

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