Copyright Office Symposium focuses on MLC's challenges

By Emmanuel Legrand 

Creating from scratch a collective management organisation is “a huge undertaking.” This is how Alisa Coleman described the task ahead of the music publishing and songwriting community, in tandem with the digital music services, in setting up of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the new entity designed by the Music Modernisation Act that will from January 1, 2021 license and administer mechanical rights in the USA. Alisa Coleman is chair of the MLC and Chief Operating Officer of ABKCO Music & Records.

  Coleman was speaking at the Unclaimed Royalties Symposium organised by the US Copyright Office in Washington, DC on December 6. “We have the unique opportunity to represent songwriters and publishers and make sure that we put into place systems and controls that address the concerns the community has,” said Coleman. “We have to grow a huge corporation overnight, we have to hire a CEO, a COO, a CFO and a CIO, we have to find underlined staff, build community outreach, a web site that reaches the masses. And then build the back office that will process all the transactions.”

  Coleman said the creation of the MLC, and its licensee counterpart the  Digital Licensee Coordinator, is taking place in a spirit of cooperation between all stakeholders. “It was great of our teams that they saw the benefit of not extending what could have been an adversarial situation and everybody worked for the greater good of the community,” she said. 

Cooperative mindset

  Coleman's counterpart at the DLC, Garrett Levin, who is CEO of the Digital Music Association (DiMA), confirmed the cooperative mindset by stating that the DLC will “work closely with MLC” on all the issues leading to the creation of the MLC. He added that one of the illustrations of the working spirit was highlighted by the decision from the DLC, which will by law will finance the MLC, to accept broadly the budget presented by the MLC for the start-up costs and the first year running. “We did come to negotiated agreement that we filed with CRB [Copyright Royalty Board] and we are waiting for the CRB to accept the settlement,” said Levin.

From l. to r.: Alisa Coleman (MLC and ABKCO), Garrett Levin (DiMA and DLC), Lisa Selden (DLC, Spotify) and Richard Thompson (MLC).

  One of the key tasks of the MLC is to create an authoritative database of compositions that could be matched with recordings to ensure that all rights holders get paid when the MLC get operational. A few weeks ago the MLC announced that mechanical licensing administrator Harry Fox Agency (HFA) and technology company ConsenSys as "the primary vendors responsible for managing the matching of digital uses to musical works, distributing mechanical royalties, and on-boarding songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers and their catalogues to the database."

  “We are not done yet with vendors selection,” said Coleman. “There's more work to be done. We have to develop things over time. We have a five year plan. We are going to progressively build it out so that it is functional for everyone.” She added that the end goal was to “to get the money as quickly as possible to the people it is owed.” 

A five-year plan

  Coleman said a lot of attention will be put in the database and in its matching capabilities. “It is not just matching the songs to recordings, we need all the information, who are the true owners, whether they are the songwriter, a publisher or an organisation that has the right to collect,” she explained. “And this is not just a US thing, it is a global thing. We don't just listen to music created by US songwriters and we listen to music from all over the world so there's a lot that need to be done to be collected.”

  Richard Thompson, MLC's Chief Information Officer, a former executive from Kobalt, said the MLC will have to work for different communities, from the “hobbyist” songwriter to the established songwriter, from the small independent publisher to the major publishers. “We have to make sure the experience works for all,” he said.

  Thompson said the MLC has to be seen as a project with a five-year plan, with 18 months to start the operation from scratch. “We will move heaven and earth to make it work," he said, "but when we will start it will be version 1.0 of the MLC. A lot of things cannot be achieve in 12 months. So we are focused on delivering core functionalities but our overall performance needs to be judged over three or four years.” 

Reaching out to the creators

  DLC's Levin added that one of his tasks ahead is to reach out to all the digital licensee community. “The DLC is open to any licensee that applies for it,” said Levin. “This is an opportunity to engage in information sharing and operate in this new space. Please reach out and get involved and see how we can grow the DLC through new entrants and existing players.”

  Levin also said that the DLC will “help get to the artist community.” He added that the MLC and the DLC will have to build two educational strategies, one towards creators and another towards the licensee community.

  Lisa Selden, head of publisher operations at Spotify and board member of the DLC, confirmed that the DLC is planning “to have big outreach to drive people to the MLC.” She added that digital services were going to coordinate with the MLC on marketing campaigns to reach out to the community of songwriters.

  Two sessions focused on the involvement of creators in the MLC process. Building the MLC database, in particular, will depend on the involvement of each and every songwriter, said Mark Isherwood of the DDEX secretariat. “You have to engage all the community all the time,” he said, noting that for creators the upside out-weighted the downsides of being involved: “If you don't register, your stuff you won't be paid.” 

Protect creators rights

  Producer and songwriter Ivan Barias said it was important for creators to “be true stakeholders in the discussion” and urged fellow creators to get involved “and make sure we do our part and do it for the next generation.”

  Songwriter and performer Rosanne Cash acknowledged that the digital landscape was complicated for creators to navigate but could also start a new era for the creative community. “We are not victims here, we can empower ourselves in the process,” she said. “We need education, we need support, and we need a community.”

  John Simson, a professor at American University, who was part of the team that built up neighbouring rights society SoundExchange in the early '00s, recalled that they had to overcome “a lot of lot of suspicion” from creators in the early days of SoundExchange. “Some people turned down the money,” he said.

  For Todd Dupler, Senior Director of Advocacy & Public Policy for the Recording Academy, it is important for creators to be involved in the way their business is set up but admitted that “there are people who want to get involved and people who don't get care.” He added: “Information is power, so the more they know the more creators can protect their rights.”

L. to r.: Ivan Barias, Rosanne Cash and Daryl Friedman, Chief Industry, Government, & Member Relations Officer for the Recording Academy at the Copyright Office's Unclaimed Royalties Symposium