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by DJ Frosty

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Inside Track

Music business lawyers, songwriters, and other professionals gathered at the University of Georgia in Athens for the Artist Rights’ Symposium on Nov. 15. Hosted by senior lecturer, songwriter and member of band Cracker, Dr. David Lowery, the day-long conference discussed ways for the music industry to better champion songwriters, to address the problem of metadata inaccuracies, and to explain the differences in rate setting across different countries.

The series of panels was bisected by a lunch and fireside chat with Hipgnosis CEO and founder Merck Mercuriadis, moderated by attorney Chris Castle, who explained why he feels the industry is in the “age of the songwriter.” “There has been a massive paradigm shift,” he said. “Forty years ago, the power was in the artist brand,” but now, most songs that top the Billboard charts are written by a larger number of songwriters than ever, meaning the demand has never been higher for good hitmakers. “But songwriters have to have a place at the negotiating table now,” he said, citing that in the United States, rates for mechanicals are set by the government’s Copyright Royalty Board, barring “free market” negotiations. “Let’s face it, [the government controlling rates] is insulting to songwriters.”

Mercuriadis said he’s a supporter of the recent Phonorecords IV settlement, which set the U.S. mechanical streaming rates for 2023-2027, and was formed by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Digital Media Rights (DiMA) and Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) banding together earlier this fall for “one main reason:” he believes it will provide the industry with stability for the next five year period. This would contrast the current five-year period (2018-2022), Phonorecords III, in which publishers, rights holders and songwriters have not had a clear idea of what rate they would be paid due to a lengthy appeals process that has tied up royalties.

He detailed an ambitious hope for the future, to “get out of the CRB in the next five years and into the free market.” Mercuriadis’ vision, he said, was inspired by the screenwriters guild — The Writers Guild of America — which has been able to secure fair compensation for those who create the scripts the industry is reliant on through advocation, unionization and bargaining with its titans of industry. Mercuriadis has certainly espoused his vision for a coalition of songwriters in the past and stood by that vision during his chat at the symposium, but he did not reveal many new details of his plans to build it.

“I have tremendous faith,” he said of it happening, despite the challenges and legal roadblocks he faces to achieve this scenario, adding that artists could be a major potential ally to songwriters getting what he thinks of as fair opportunities. As a leader in the catalog acquisition business, Hipgnosis has financial interests that overlap with songwriters regarding compensation rates.

Some panelists who flew in from Europe and South America for the event broadened the discussion beyond the U.S. borders. Crispin Hunt, the former chair of the U.K.’s Ivors Academy, explained how whatever rates are set in the U.S. often act as a benchmark for other countries during their respective negotiations with the same services. Also during the panel, Hunt added that he felt this was “an incredibly critical moment for songwriters,” as traditional offline broadcast income continues to fall and is replaced more with each coming year by digital.

Samantha Schilling of Songtradr brought her perspective from working in Brazil and with a mostly Latin American music business. She pointed out the differing standards that separate her business with that of the U.S. and how the two regions might learn from each other. For example, she said, while commonplace in the U.S., some Latin American countries prohibit work for hire agreements for songs written for TV/film. She said this helps songwriters maintain ownership and secure royalties on the backend. “That was put in place to protect songwriters,” Schilling noted. “Netflix tried to change it… but we were able to fight for songwriters to get that backend income.” In the U.S., some streaming video on demand (SVOD) companies are rumored to be asking songwriters to give up their backend royalties, a crucial component of income for those working at the intersection of music and visual media.

The day ended off with a discussion of the importance of metadata — which is often incomplete or incorrect, causing misallocation of songwriters’ royalties — and registering properly with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) to collect due compensation. Led by Abby North (North Music Group), Erin McAnally (Artists Rights Alliance), Helienne Lindvall (European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, Ivors Academy) and Melanie Santa Rosa (Word Collections, The MLC), the conversation harkened back to Hunt’s earlier point about the growing importance of digital income streams, which according to CISAC’s 2021 annual report, comprises of $3.62 billion to the worldwide music business, and how the industry can clean up its rocky start to collecting from these sources.

AMSTERDAM — While dance music makes up a relatively slim portion of the global music industry — earning a $6 billion valuation in 2021 — the genre felt like the center of the universe last week in the Netherlands.
Or at least the center of Amsterdam’s fairytale Centrum district, with dance/electronic music taking over this canal-lined neighborhood and points beyond for the 26th edition of the Amsterdam Dance Event, or ADE, the world’s largest gathering of the global electronic industry.  

Launched in 1996 and returning for its first full-fledged edition since 2019 — with 2020 and 2021 moved online and trimmed down dramatically due to the pandemic — the four-day conference drew an estimated 10,000 agents, managers, label owners, product developers, publicists, execs, data analysts, journalists, veteran and emerging artists, event producers and all other varieties of dance scene professionals from across global markets, with a heavy influx of European and U.S. attendees.

Think of it like the global electronic industry going on a field trip to the Dutch capital together, with one-on-one discussions, panels, product demonstrations, mixers, many stroopwafels and a lot of dancing all on the packed itinerary of the four-day ADE, which spanned Oct. 18-22.  

ADE 2022 also featured more than 1,000 club and festival shows, which were geared towards both delegates and the roughly 450,000 fans who took part in the bacchanal. 

A Pro portion of the conference — designed for established professionals, with scene newcomers taking part in ADE’s parallel Lab programming — featured more than 130 discussions in 10 meeting spaces located across two stately historic buildings over four days. They addressed a dizzying range of topics, with a few key themes emerging.  

One was how a sound fostered by technology is itself keeping up with emerging tech. While other music industry conferences have made Web3 a focal point following the explosion of the sector, ADE programming didn’t linger on the topic, with just a handful of discussions on the metaverse, AI and NFTs. Even without the official spotlight, however, Web3 was a hot topic on the ground, with one representative from an electronic-forward NFT company noting that while non-fungible tokens may not be something every artist is especially passionate about, their company is seeing real evidence of NFT sales allowing for emerging and middle-tier artists to earn a living wage. For them, this revolution in earnings potential adds a very human, and thus widely compelling, dynamic to the sector. (And to a field, they also noted, which could use a diversity influx, given its current domination by “cis, white crypto bros.”)  

Others observed that it will take Web3 coalescing into an umbrella company like Google or Apple for the possibilities that the technology presents to be adopted by the wider population. One person involved in signing up attendees of a major U.S. music festival with crypto wallets as part of the event, noted that months later, only a small fraction of the crowd is still using this tool.  

Amsterdam Dance Event 2022

Kapa Photgraphy

On a more holistic level, several panel conversations touched on the FOMO-fueled rat race many artists and others in the scene are experiencing as a function of social media. “Perception is the new reality,” noted Jori Lowery of management agency Conflux during a Wednesday afternoon panel discussion, observing that many artists in the scene struggle when comparing their careers with other acts who appear to be busier. 

During a Friday afternoon conversation between veteran producer Seth Troxler and journalist Joe Muggs, Troxler observed how the internet has fueled the dance scene’s growth during the last decade, but not always necessarily in a good way. “That switch from the club culture and the localization of culture to these really large events and this kind of FOMO culture, where it’s like, ‘I want to go to a big-ticket event, see everyone, get the picture,’” Troxler said. 

“Maybe the party’s not even good,” the DJ continued, “but there’s loads of people there and no dancing, whereas you go to a small party with 100 people and it’s a great vibe, and that’s cool too. It doesn’t have to be this mega thing all the time, even though the mega thing is cool, or it’s accessible, at some point it grows our culture, but also kills our culture.” 

A Wednesday afternoon conversation with Ultra Records founder Patrick Moxey — at ADE to speak on the launch of his new label Helix — emphasized that the real necessity for artists to be online, and particularly on TikTok and Instagram, is because both platforms can be powerful tools for fanbase development, even as these platforms present new challenges. One member in the audience observed that while many artists are reluctant to put themselves online, thinking that a heavy digital presence is uncool, it’s necessary for acts to “get over their egos” to gain real traction. The observation drew applause from the crowd.  

The audience was quieter during a Thursday afternoon panel on doing business in conflict areas — both in the U.S. and around the world. Panelists discussed if and how artists and brands should work in U.S. states that have banned abortion and in regions with a records of human rights violations like Saudi Arabia. (Members of the team from MDLBEAST, the Riyadh electronic festival launched in 2019, were on the ground at ADE, with many delegates pondering if and how to do business with the fest, with some keen to participate and others remaining more reticent.) While some on the panel and in the audience expressed reasonable ethical qualms about hosting events and sending artists to play in such controversial regions, others argued that it’s unfair to advise on best practices in any area that one hasn’t personally traveled to.  

If there was a consensus from this conversation, it was that it’s vital for each sector of the scene to first acknowledge and work on its own issues before engaging in finger-pointing, particularly with respect to the scene’s consistent allegations of sexual misconduct amongst DJs and others involved in nightlife culture and a pervasive lack of diversity. (“It’s still a systemic issue of most agents and managers being white men,” observed one delegate who spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity, in regards to why inclusivity isn’t happening more quickly.) 

But while ADE demonstrated the scene’s varying challenges, it also highlighted the many people working to solve them. A variety of panels focused on fostering greater diversity in the scene and featured leaders in the dance music space, including Black Artist Database (B.A.D.) co-founder NIKS and BEAUTIFUL label founder SHERELLE, who spoke to how B.A.D., a crowd-sourced list of Black artists, producers and creators, is helping Black artists form community outside of traditional power structures. There was also a full day of ADE Lab programming designed by She.Said.So, an organization that works to connect and empower underrepresented communities in electronic music and beyond.  

At a Friday night mixer hosted by Spotify – which ended with a drone show soundtracked by Tiësto — one longstanding ADE attendee noted that in terms of inclusivity, ADE 2022 felt like a legitimate shift. This attendee noted more diversity among attendees and lineups and how delegates also generally seemed more open and interested in chatting. “There’s been a temperate change in the event overall,” they said.

Amsterdam Dance Event 2022

Tom Doms

Meanwhile, a full day’s worth of programming about sustainability initiatives in the scene offered glimmers of hope in the face of climate change. One longstanding attendee noted that in this part of October the canals of Amsterdam used to be frozen over, while last week it was often possible to walk around without a jacket. (A weekend festival by Dutch festival producer DGTL, which has a strong sustainability program, demonstrated that even large-scale events can operate with reusable cups and meat-free food vendors.) 

And of course, several conversations turned to Berlin’s iconic techno club Berghain, which has been rumored to be shuttering soon after the closure of both its in-house label and management agency. One source well-connected in the Berlin scene noted that the venue may be converted into residential lofts, and that given the potential revenue of this project, the building’s current owners “are struggling to reject the deal.” 

Elsewhere during the week: Tomorrowland premiered its 25-minute after-movie of its 2022 festival at the elegant art deco Royal Theater Tuschinski. (The film’s lessons about the power of community and catharsis in the dance world elicited a few actual tears.) Eric Prydz blew peoples’ minds while performing his much-lauded HOLO shows — a few delegates called the performance the best they’d ever seen. Honey Dijon headlined a buzzy Back to Black showcase with a lineup including Kerri Chandler and TSHA. Claude VonStroke announced that EMPIRE had acquired his previously independent and much-beloved Dirtybird label and Diplo gave a keynote address about his career trajectory, noting that his musical history in Jamaica began when he was booked to play the seafaring Jam Cruise festival and just got off the boat on the island nation because he wasn’t enjoying himself onboard.  

Delegates also buzzed about Pioneer DJ’s acquisition of DJ Monitor — the software that tracks what songs artists play during their sets will soon be integrated directly into Pioneer hardware, which many feel will be a big step forward for royalty collection. (ADE is itself sponsored by Dutch collection agency BUMA.) 

Ultimately, after a long absence of togetherness, ADE 2022 functioned as an industry show and tell, a four-day reunion and the dance scene’s prevailing place to dissect, solve and celebrate the incredible number of issues, sounds and scenes that exist within it.