I recently had watched a disturbing video on Fox News's website about the current state of the entertainment industry. The video mentioned about how some financial institutions are looking to purchase some music publishing companies as an investment. This video set off an alarm within me, because I felt like there is no way that banks should ever be tampering with artistic creativity. These banks are not concerned about the artist's music at all, and it's only being looked at as a way to make even more money than they already are making.
An artist should never give up their publishing rights to anyone, especially a bank that more than likely does not care anything about you or your work. I watched this video as a part of a class assignment and some other students thought the bank's involvement would be a good thing. I do not see how anybody would think this is good for the music industry at all; because the artist would lose everything he or she has built. If this is the future of the recording industry, then those of us that have given our lives to it are in serious trouble.
The only time it would make sense to sell your publishing rights, would be if the artist is deceased and that artist's family could survive off the value of that music. Otherwise, it should not ever be messed with, and I feel sorry for the artists that are living that have had to sell themselves. At the end of the day, the music is all that the artist has. It is about the music and not throwing a dream around like a worn out shirt. This is what these banks and other greedy vultures in the industry are doing and I am not impressed at all about it.
According to
The Music Business Handbook And Career Guide, a publisher's main source of income comes from record royalties and performance royalties from publishing rights organizations such as BMI and ASCAP. Performance royalties are generated from performing on television, radio and other media outlets (Baskerville, 2001). If an artist owns their publishing rights, then they will generate the majority of the money that's owed to them anyway. This is exactly why an artist should not sell their rights, because it's their music and they should get the money that they deserve to have. The banks won't provide this money to the artist, and there have been hundreds of doo-wop groups from the 1950s and 1960s that still haven't been properly paid to this day.
Another example of why artists should never give up their rights happened to Elvis Presley among others. According to a book called
They Fought The Law, which was written by one of my professors at CU-Denver named Stan Soocher, he wrote about an incident with Elvis and his manager about this very important issue. Elvis's manager Colonel Parker sold Elvis's royalty rights to RCA Records for $5.4 million. Colonel Parker received the majority of the money and Elvis received hardly anything (Soocher, 1999). Elvis had trusted his manager so much at the time, that as long as he was performing and making movies he wasn't really worried. His manager really ripped him off like most managers ended up doing the same thing to their artists. Alot of artists to this day still aren't business minded, and countless stories about this type of situation is still happening.
The majority of the money that Elvis made from his movies and music went to his manager. His manager really had no concern for his client's well being and just wanted to get over. This to me is the same situation that the banks will do with the publishing rights of some of these same artists. Artists should know everything that goes on in their careers, but most don't care about the legal part of the business. Elvis barely had sought out legal representation during his career and it most definitely had shown in later years. He trusted the wrong people with his career, and in the long run he wasn't as powerful as people had thought. I sincerely hope that more artists in the future will become more business minded, and to stop outsiders from recouping the money that the artist should have instead.
Sources Citied:
Phd, Baskerville. D (2001). Music Business Handbook And Career Guide. 7th Edition. Sage Publications, Inc: Thousand Oaks, California
Soocher, S. (1999). They Fought The Law. Schirmer Books: New York, NY
