Thursday, May 15, 2008
A 1960s-era recording artist says he can't get Sony to pay royalties, so his psychedelic pop might as well be free.
Apr 23, 2002 | Joseph Byrd recorded a pair of experimental psychedelic albums for Columbia Records in the late 1960s. Since then, he says he's earned a few thousand dollars in composer's fees but hasn't received a single penny in artist's royalties.
It's not for lack of trying. Byrd says he sent his first letter of complaint to the label in 1976, and over the years he's repeatedly asked for financial statements on album sales and royalties. Letters have been sent, phone calls have been made. But even as his recordings -- "The United States of America" and "The American Metaphysical Circus" -- began to reappear on compact disc, Columbia and its parent company (Sony) continued to ignore Byrd's pleas.
On Feb. 27, the mild-mannered professor -- Byrd teaches music history at the College of the Redwoods in Northern California -- decided to take his case to Marilyn Hall Patel, the federal judge overseeing the labels' lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement. He wrote Patel a letter detailing how Sony had been giving him the cold shoulder for decades. His situation, he added, was hardly unique.
"I am not alone," he wrote. "Literally thousands of musicians like me, who are purportedly represented by record companies and distributors in the current Napster case, are in my situation."
"The record companies' representation that they are legitimate agents for their artists is false," he continued. "The only payments they make are to those who have the means to force them to be accountable; to the rest, a vast majority, they pay nothing. Therefore, allowing them to collect fees in our behalf does not serve the public interest. I personally would prefer to allow my music to be freely shared, to the present situation, in which only the corporations stand to gain. Until this is changed, the record companies and publishers deserve nothing."
Byrd is hardly the first artist to express his distaste for how record companies do business. But Byrd's letter comes at a time when the music industry is in a crisis. Record sales are down for a variety of reasons, and consumers are in open revolt. While KaZaa and other free file-sharing services continue to grow, the Department of Justice is investigating whether the industry colluded to undermine pay-for-play competitors to its own online services. Meanwhile, artists of all stripes, from Byrd to Sheryl Crow, are challenging the status quo.
Some, through nonprofits such as the Future of Music Coalition and Don Henley's Recording Artists' Coalition, are uniting and testifying before Congress. Others, like 1950s pop star Peggy Lee, who led a class-action settlement that restored unpaid royalties just before her death on Jan. 22, have gone to court and won. Even bruised and battered Napster, shut down since last July, has helped shift the balance of power away from the industry by persuading Judge Patel to issue an order that forces the major labels to prove that they own the songs that were once available on the file-trading service.
All of these developments "give you a keyhole view into the way the industry works or doesn't work," says Steve Cohen, one of Napster's lawyers. The music industry's crisis, he argues, is bound to have an effect on the way that artists are treated. "It's like someone has taken one of those snow scenes in a bubble and shaken it up."
Byrd, having been ignored for decades, doubts that the entertainment industry will alter the way it does business. File-sharing and legal scrutiny can only go so far because, he says, "very few people can afford to turn down the exposure you get from a major label or film distributor." As long as the big labels and media companies are big enough to launch careers, he says, they'll have the ability to relegate artists to near-servitude status.
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