High-Level Consensus at House Judiciary's Nashville Copyright Roundtable, but Fewer Details

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and other committee members at the roundtable focused on gathering information on issues that the music industry has reached a consensus on, though that consensus is largely at a high level, participants said. “There was consensus that creators need to be paid fairly; the question is what is fair and how to you get there,” said Association of Independent Music Publishers Executive Director-Nashville Chapter Marc Driskill. “I don’t think anybody can disagree with the statement that creators need to be paid fairly. I think the committee sees government as an obstacle to a fair rate as it stands today and they’re trying to go further and see what a fair rate structure looks like.” Participants tended to stick to their existing positions on specific solutions to royalty equity and other issues, said ClearBox Rights CEO John Barker.

Much of the royalties discussion focused on equitable royalties from streaming services, though House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., both expressed an interest in setting the royalty rate structure independent of specific platforms, an industry lobbyist said. There wasn’t complete agreement among participants about setting a universal royalty rate, with Driskill telling us that “it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. You can’t really say that one play on radio is the same as one play on Pandora. They’re different business models and that’s something we’re going to have to look at.”

The need for marketplace transparency and simplified copyright laws had wide consensus, said Driskill and other participants. However, the transparency discussion tended to be one-sided, with broadcasters and other participants tending to “attack the [performing rights organizations (PROs)] and the lack of transparency that they perceive there,” Driskill said. “I think if we’re going to look to transparency, we need to see it all the way through. They’re talking about the creator and music publisher needing to see how much the radio stations are paying to the PROs, but I think it needs to go further. If you’re really talking about being transparent, we need to see how much revenue the stations receive.” Blackburn expressed interest in simplifying the existing music licensing structure, something “everybody around the table” indicated they would support exploring further, Barker said.

Goodlatte and other House Judiciary members were able to get feedback from a wider portion of the Nashville music community than would have been possible on Capitol Hill, but the roundtable didn’t appear to have delved as deeply into the details of issues where consensus was possible, Barker said. “That’s hard to do when there’s an audience,” he said. Both Barker and Driskill separately suggested that closed-door meetings like the ones House Judiciary’s been conducting on Capitol Hill might have yielded better feedback and should be explored in the future. “Whatever it takes to get people to speak freely and see the other side of the issue,” Barker said.

Goodlatte also made clear that he’s looking for the music industry to find a consensus on particular policy solutions and then bring that consensus to House Judiciary, Barker said. “They’re really encouraging us to participate in that way,” he said. “I think it’s going to take some real working sessions where people can get into a room and talk about their concerns” to achieve a policy consensus, Driskill said.