The New Music Economy (hyphenate wherever you like)

I recently met with the founders of a startup record label. I'm 44 and they're in their twenties. Their view of how musicians use the internet is radically different from mine. I'd heard that musicians were all hyped on MySpace. I figured that they used MySpace because it was easy, and that the look of the page was secondary to the ease of posting content. I was wrong about that too. I wasn't giving the kids enough credit. Their thinking's more sophisticated than I'd given them credit for. (Sorry for having ended that sentence with a preposition. See? Old School.)

I still think that most of MySpace looks like a slum full of row-houses with the style and quality of the graffiti being the only difference between one house and the next.

Facebook is neat, clean, uniform, and overall, has content more relevant to me. That doesn't mean it's better for everyone. The kids want a means of expression, and Facebook allows less of that.

Okay, fine. I'm capable of admitting I was wrong, and hopefully I'm capable of learning and changing my view of things.

They also explained that, in their view, MySpace is a great way for the bands to publicize their material. They said that MySpace gives them free exposure to a lot of music, so they can determine (without paying for it,or working too hard to find it) whether they'd like to see the band live.

There's a much bigger issue in Gen-X and Millenial kids' view of intellectual property (and of how to publicize music). The current twenty-somethings have become accustomed to stealing music, and have found rationales for stealing which have insidiously crept into their culture. The rationalizations seem so deeply ingrained that they almost don't see it as stealing.

They appear, as a group, to be more okay with pirating music than previous generations had been. With Limewire and many other "services" it becomes so easy to steal that the kids don't see it as wrong. [Limewire is so evil and full of harmful things for computers (viruses, spyware, malware) that I won't even link to it.]

Not like I'm so holy myself. I don't mean to come off as holier than ..whoever, but this is one area that's important to me because I create things, and would prefer that people not steal them.

Perhaps many bands want fans to spread the word through whatever means possible, including the music-stealing sites and "services". Perhaps some bands say on their websites "Feel free to download and spread our stuff. We want to get our stuff in as many ears as possible.". I've not seen that type of notice on any band's website. Doesn't mean no one's doing it. But, you can be sure The Rolling Stones don't say that. Their stuff gets pirated as much as any other music.

The rationale these kids gave me was that the artists already know there's no money in making records any more, which is why most of them spend less on production today than they would have twenty years ago (if they were even old enough to have been in the business then). Production and distribution are much cheaper now, after all. Tools for making a high-quality record are available for only a few thousand dollars, and someone can put together a "great" studio for very little money today. (Of course, your definition of "great" may vary from theirs.)

Electronic distribution costs "nothing", and it's available on the "file sharing" networks. So.."What are we (the kids) doing wrong?"

The kids I met with believe that when a band releases a new record/CD, it serves as the basis for a new tour. There is a lot of money in touring, and the artists make their "real money" on tour. As such, by spreading the music around, the twenty-somethings help the artists to sell more seats, thus increasing tour profits. Tour profits lead to merchandise sales; so, again, helping to "promote" touring helps to increase merchandise and ticket sales, which is ultimately where the artist makes money anyway.

They also posed a social justice rationale. The big, bad evil record company charges $17 for a CD, and they keep majority of the $17. Very little goes to the artist, and the artist must use their piece of the record sale pie to pay back advances made by the record company. The kids I met with believe that, more often than not, the record company treats an artist's advance as a loan, and charges interest on it..

Helping the artist get out of debt is not too high on the kids' priority list. The kids say they'd rather pay iTunes for the one or two songs they might want from the CD, than buy the whole CD. Also, the artist sees approximately 70% of the recording sale by iTunes, versus a smaller percentage than that which they'd get from sale of the big bad record company's release.

[The (original) last word of the following sentence was censored by Facebook. So, I changed it both here and on Facebook:] That's a load of hooey.

I respect the kids who are starting the record company. I'm sure they have a lot of talent, and an understanding of the record business as it exists today. But I take issue with their positions. I figured that maybe I got it wrong, that I misunderstood. So I asked a few teenagers about their music consumption habits. The ones I asked tell me that they do buy songs individually, or that they listen to songs on MySpace without ever buying them. I think that's fine. If an artist puts a song on MySpace, but did not mean to distribute it beyond MySpace, and the kids go where the music is, that's just a sign that the band's getting popular. By having put the song up on the internet without a price tag on it, the artist is encouraging people to listen.

The social justice argument runs counter to the "recorded music is a promotional item for selling tour tickets.". rationale, but let's come back to that.

My research indicates that many artists' advances are interest-free., and that a good lawyer can make any such clause go away. Also, since production costs have come way down (part of the kids' argument), artists don't need advances as much as they used to. Any contract with a record label that doesn't involve an artist's advance, negates at least half the social justice rationale.

Let's look at the kids' rationales from another perspective:

John Lennon ain't touring. I doubt his estate agrees with the philosophy of "benevolence" espoused by the kids.

Billy Joel is 60. I don't think he's too thrilled about having to tour as much as he does at his age. Maybe he's not recorded (in part) because there's no money in it any more. His last studio album (River of Dreams, CBS 1993. Available on Amazon, iTunes, and lots of other places) sold in the tens of millions. Yet he tours with Elton John a lot. Elton is still recording. He's in a different position than most recording artists today.

I grew up Orthodox Jewish. A lot of Orthodox Jewish culture looks down upon the less observant variants of Judaism, and jokes that they have "Turned 'The Ten Commandments' into the Ten Suggestions."

Let's not ignore the obvious: The artists are charging for the recordings of their music. They're outright telling their fans that this recording costs $10 or $15. Do the kids think that's just a Suggestion? Do the kids think "Oh, the artists don't really mean that."?

Billy Joel wrote a great song called Christmas In Fallujah. The proceeds from the song are going to an organization called Homes for Our Troops —a not-for-profit organization that builds and adapts homes for injured veterans. Are the kids saying "Oh, no problem. We, the kids will tell all our friends about it, download it, spread it around, and somehow, Homes for Our Troops will make the money back on tour."?

Back to the slightly less obvious:

A band/recording artist can only tour so many days in a year, and can only sell so many tickets per performance. As such the revenue potential is much more limited. With digital distribution, manufacturing costs for recordings are down to almost nothing. The profit margin potential for the artist is substantial enough that stealing deprives them of more income today than it would have before digital distribution existed.

Concert tickets are $50 to $300, versus $10 for the digital version of the original recording. So the twenty-something rationalizes they'll spend $50 to see the concert (risking the possibility of not getting tickets) versus spending $10 for the record. Hmm..something doesn't fly.

The Grateful Dead (see reference below) used to have a "taping section" at their arena shows. They encouraged fans to tape and distribute shows. They believed that spreading the word among "the faithful" of the "Grateful" would increase sales. They were right. But that worked for THEM, and THEY authorized the taping.

There's a joke: "How many Grateful Dead fans does it take to change a lightbulb?....Grateful Dead fans don't change lightbulbs. They wait till the bulb burns out, then follow it around for twenty five years.".

The Grateful Dead had groupies on a par with few other bands. The "faithful" of the Grateful would buy the records. The "Dead", and their music-sharing marketing strategy were a phenomenon before file sharing, and before piracy became as easy as it is today. But again, "The Dead" authorized people to tape the live shows. They never authorized people to tape the records they (the Dead) made for sale.

I do NOT long for the days when record companies had an iron grip on the industry. I believe that "big corporate" is not out for the interest of the recording artists (except perhaps the interest it charges the stupider among them them on recording contract advances). That doesn't take away from the companies' right to demand money for their product.

The kids starting the record label told me that the only real means of directly making money from recordings is via synchronization licenses–the licensing of a recording for use in a movie or television show. There are also Performance Rights Organizations such as BMI, ASCAP , SESAC, and (most recently) SoundExchange, which distribute money to artists and publishers whose works are played in broadcast media and public forums (such as performance spaces, and as background music in clubs).

Needless to say, I disagree with the kids BIG time. I respect their passion and entrepreneurship, and realize that their rationale IS changing the record business. But I believe that this change is working to the detriment of recording artists. If record sales were through the roof, the fears would be less founded. There are fewer platinum (million-selling) records today than there were a few years ago.

So, to make money, today's record companies have to retain a large majority of publishing income. (Publishers are song pimps. They are the agents representing a musical work, and try to promote it for use in movies, television, performances by artists, and anything else that will get the work to generate income.).

In years and decades past, many record companies required some artists (who compose their own material) to sign over to the record company a percentage of publishing income to which they—the artist—would otherwise be entitled, in exchange for the record company allowing them to record the song, and have the record company get it out to the masses. This practice is abhorrent, but was tolerated for a long time.

The record label owners with whom I met want to write its artists' songs so that they can legitimately retain the publishing rights. That's fine. It's smart business. But if records aren't selling, why start a record label? Why not start a publishing company? Clearly these entrepreneurs believe they'll make money selling records. But with this new "understanding" of sales in the music business, how are these kids going to make a dollar with every would-be music consumer wanting to non-consensually barter their "promotion" services for the stolen music?

I like to think I understand the idea of promoting product versus selling it. Clearly I'm too stupid to understand "the new economy" as espoused by the Millen-Gen.

That's okay. Someone much smarter than me gets it. The great lyricist, author, and visionary John Perry Barlow beautifully and eloquently summarized the REAL new economy in his 1992 essay: Selling Wine Without Bottles . John was also a lyricist for many songs by the Grateful Dead—the SAME band who encouraged taping and distribution of The Dead's intellectual property.

Let's review: A new band distributes their product for free or cheap so that they can gain an audience. Check. Got it. I see the strategy.

Imagine now that the same new band tours, and word spreads about them. They work hard playing clubs for a few years, become bigger, develop a reputation, and they start wanting to charge for their intellectual property and product. They tell fans "Continue to download and spread our first two records, but the third one is for profit. You want it? You pay for it. This is what we do to eat, and we spent months making something from which you'll derive benefit. Please pay us the respect of not stealing our stuff.". What are the chances the fans will abide by the band's will after years of going by a rationale like the one above? Whether the kids steal it or abandon the band because they're charging for their work is, I suppose the kids' choice. But if they download the record when the band says it costs money, is that not stealing?

The new economy should be opening more doors for sales of music—every kind of music, in every imagineable form. CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, Sheet Music, MP3s, streaming media subscriptions...They should be thriving more than ever, given how easy it is to promote the work all over the world for next to nothing. But the kids are figuring that by distributing the music across a file "sharing" service like Limewire they might help to make a struggling songwriter in Brooklyn get a "cult following" in India, thus opening up tour possibilities on another continent, is very nice. But...if the guy's struggling and you like his music, you should pay for it unless the artist /owner of that music specifically requests that you distribute his music without compensating him. Stealing the Brooklyn composer's music would be like walking into a pottery shop, taking a nice clay bowl, and telling the shop owner "I'm not going to pay for this thing you made, but I'll tell all my friends about it, and they'll all come in and pay you for some other bowl. Or maybe we can organize some parties at which you can present your pottery. People will buy them there. But clearly you've put out this nice display table so that we could take the stuff.

Radiohead set up a "pay what you want" scheme for their most recent release. The kids with the record company admitted that they paid nothing when they'd downloaded the music. The official Radiohead website encouraged people to donate something, but allowed people to download it without paying. That was Radiohead's choice. They have the money to allow fans to take their music in the hopes that the fans will be come an extension of the band's publicity firm. Most artists who record their music in the hopes of selling it don't have those kinds of resources, and ask fans to pay a set amount.

Last point: Has this ever been done before? Is there a precedent for "come see my live shows, because that's where I make all the money"? Almost. Comedians have traditionally not sold very well. Lisa Lampanelli and Jeff Foxworthy are noteworthy exceptions. (Shameless plug: My company—Dragonfly Technologies—developed Lisa Lampanelli's website) Jeff Foxworthy's You Might Be A Redneck is the best-selling comedy album to date.

Most comics make their money on the road. Most make the CDs, distribute them electronically or in-person after shows, but don't expect the CDs to be a major source of income. I doubt they want their material stolen (either by other comics who use their jokes or by would-be consumers who steal tracks from CDs/DVDs), but it's not as big a source of income for them, and they (comedians) have almost always made more money on tour/performing than they do from CD/merchandise sales.

That there's a precedent doesn't excuse the kids' behavior or justify their position. Stealing music is just wrong, and taking food out of the artists' mouths (or a record company's coffers) isn't good for anyone. John Perry Barlow got it right. The real New Economy is about making it easier to sell intellectual property by not requiring it to take physical form. However well-intentioned the proponent of the opposite view may be, by promoting the idea of giving away the "wine" in the hopes that the gifts may some day promote trips to the vineyard, they'll perpetuate the old "starving artist" paradigm, leaving the artist drunk with only their own wine and AA to keep them company.

Rant over!

Comments?

Stand Up for Spoken Word Performance Rights!

The U.S. isn't doing so great economically. That's bad. Right? Maybe it's not all bad. Historically, entertainment has always done well during "lean" times. Vaudeville thrived during the Depression; "talking pictures" were only two years old; and people were lining up around the block to see Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, and all the other film greats of that era. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was President, comedy clubs opened all over the country.

This time around it's not much different. People want escapism. But there is one huge difference between the '80s and today. We have exponentially more mass-media now than we had in the '80s. Many entertainers and performing artists are getting paid right and left because mass-media are using their intellectual property. But one important group of artists is getting shafted.

Some opinions may differ. BUT, we should all be able to agree on a few points:

Anyone who creates works of art must be compensated when those works are bought, sold, or otherwise used for the benefit of the general public.

One of the intended uses of commercial recorded works is broadcast—performance over mass-media.

One of the rules of commerce has always been (and will continue forever to be) that the greater the number of people who benefit from something, the greater the compensation to its creator/owner should be. Sound about right so far? Good.

Let's apply that to the arts and entertainment industry. Paul McCartney has been selling records for forty six years. He has probably sold more records than any popular music artist. He should be, and has been compensated accordingly.

Lucky for Paul he's also a music publisher (song pimp). He owns a lot of music. (If you want to find out just how much, go to that last link, and under "Browse All Titles", choose "All", then click the "Search" button). Every time a work he owns is played on the radio, or on TV he gets paid. He is a genius of music publishing. There was a time during which Sir Paul bought every college "fight song" he could get his hands on. Seem like a dumb move? Remember, college football is often televised. When Notre Dame plays football on TV, their "fight song" is played in the background at least once during every game. (Cha-ching!!) If Notre Dame plays a college whose "fight song" McCartney owns, he gets paid for use of both teams' songs. (Cha-Ching, Cha-Ching!!). Even if the game isn't televised, Paul still gets a smaller check (Cha!)

Funnily, and ironically, Paul doesn't own the music that made him most famous. He wrote it, but he doesn't own it. Michael Jackson does. Michael's been pimping out Paul's Beatle songs for use in TV commercials, stage shows, and LOTS of other stuff. Hello Goodbye has been used in at least four major national ad campaigns in the past two years.

When a song gets broadcast to millions of listeners, the listeners benefit, and so does the broadcaster. Accordingly, the creator /owner of the song should be paid. The U.S. Copyright Act as amended in 1909 says so. Although broadcasting as we know it didn't exist in 1909, those who amended the Copyright Act were looking out for the long-term interests of intellectual property owners. Yay! Well, it's time to look "long range" again.

(SPOKEN-WORD ARTISTS: We're comin' to the good part now. We've established the premise, now we're goin' for the setup.)

You might want to know who sees to getting copyright owners paid. Well...

In the USA, there are three Performance Rights Organizations (or PROs)—BMI, ASCAP , and SESAC. (SESAC is commonly pronounced "sea sack", by the way.) Their mission is to license the rights to broadcast music over mass-media and other public forums. They collect money from license fees, and disburse a large percentage of it to the composers and publishers whose work is broadcast/used in public forums. A composer or music publisher can sign up with any one of these three agencies. The agencies' respective payment and collection schemes/schedules vary from one another, and of course, change for those whose music is broadcast or played in public more.

If you look carefully as you walk into a club, bar, or performance venue, you'll likely see stickers with the logos of ASCAP, BMI, and/or SESAC around the front door somewhere. The sticker's an indication that the establishment/venue had been assessed a blanket fee for the year (to play music licensed by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC). It's like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for composers. Those stickers tell the venue's patrons that composers/publishers of the music they're hearing are being paid for the public use of their work. But the mass media pays a nice chunk too. Every radio station, TV station, or cable network pays the PROs. When the agencies start monitoring internet media for use of copyrighted material, the pie will get even more huge. Gazillionaire Google hasn't been asked to chip in yet. And Google owns YouTube. Nice, huh?

Well, it's nice if you're a composer of music. What if you are a professional public speaker? What if you've recorded audiobooks and hundreds of speeches that are broadcast on mass media or performed in public? Don't you deserve to get paid for the broadcasts and public performances of your work? We established earlier that anyone who creates works of art must be compensated when those works are bought, sold, or otherwise used for the benefit of the general public.

That should be the beginning and the end of it.

Can you think of a group of public speakers whose copyrighted work is regularly broadcast over mass-media for the entertainment of the general public? I'd like to name a few of my favorites, if I may:

George Carlin
Chris Rock
Judy Gold
Jeffrey Ross
Greg Giraldo
Lewis Black
Lisa Lampanelli
Eugene Mirman
Jonathan Katz
Demetri Martin
Laurie Kilmartin (pictured below)

Yup, standup comedians! They don't write music, but they do compose. (Actually, Demetri Martin does compose music, but it's a very small part of his act. That makes him an interesting case. More about him later. Maybe.) Their works are copyrighted, performed and broadcast just like any other creative work. The public benefits from hearing the works, and many radio stations, internet streaming sites, and television networks benefit from the public performance of standup comedy. And the comedians don't see a dime of performance royalties! Why the hell not?

I asked this question of representatives from all three USA-based Performance Rights Organizations. Two of the three (ASCAP and BMI) gave me the exact same response. They said they are set up to collect money for musical works only. They added that if there were musical accompaniment behind a spoken word performance, the composer/owner of the music, and only the music can be paid by a Performance Rights Organization.

How about an example that has nothing to do with standup comedy? Okay.

A few people over the years have performed /recorded Allan Ginsberg's Howl with musical accompaniment. Howl is perhaps the most famous poem of the past 50-75 years, and Ginsberg's estate doesn't see a nickel of performance royalties when those recordings are played on the radio, or used in a movie. (He probably gets a license fee for use of the poem, but his estate deserves every consideration that musicians get.) Were it not for Ginsberg's poem, there'd have been no foreground to which the musical accompaniment had been a background!

BACK TO COMEDY! George Carlin performed his written work Braindroppings as an audiobook. When the audiobook (which runs about two hours) gets broadcast over satellite radio, the radio station is filling its airtime with George's copyrighted material. Subscribers pay to hear it (on the ALL-COMEDY satellite radio stations); XM Radio or Sirius keep their subscribers happy. If George had done a straight reading of the book (no background sounds of any kind—just his voice), he wouldn't get paid for the broadcasting of his work. If a musician composed (for the audiobook recording) a little 6 note interlude to aurally indicate that George is moving on to the next chapter of the book, "Mr. Six-note" gets paid, and Mr. Conductor (that's George...See the link) gets zilch. That's horribly unfair, and it gets worse. (By the way, a lot of Braindroppings is repurposed excerpts of George's wonderful standup material. )

Demetri Martin is a wonderful standup comedian. He incorporates music into his act, which makes him eligible for performance rights royalties today. He may be able to open an interesting door toward income streams for standup comics. But that'll come later.

Venues from the size of Madison Square Garden, down to small clubs all over the country, pay ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC for annual blanket licenses to play music represented by those agencies. Any time a represented work is performed live, the composer/publisher gets paid a tiny bit. Billy Joel playing 25 songs at 30,000+ seat arenas for a year will get a bigger "taste" than the punk band playing at a 50 seat club on the Lower East Side. Billy and the punk rockers get paid twice (once for their performance, and a second time by the Performance Rights Agency), and the standup comic gets paid once—by the club/promoter, but not by a PRO.

George Carlin did 14 HBO specials, Billy Joel did two. George and Billy both got paid by HBO. Both George and Billy composed copyrighted works that were performed on television. Billy got paid twice by BMI. Once for the live performance of the works, and a second time for their broadcast on HBO. George didn't get paid at all by a PRO.

You're not a multi-million seller? That's okay. This can still make a small difference to you if you compose (and/or perform) spoken-word pieces for a living. Some comedians perform 10 minutes of copyrighted (and possibly published) material three or four times a night. Why can't a PRO represent the comics too? The comedy clubs are already paying blanket license fees to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC (for the radio and other music they play over loudspeakers/between shows). Why would 100% of the fees collected from a comedy club by PROs go exclusively toward music? 90% of what's performed or played at a comedy club is COMEDY—spoken word comedy.

Wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest to let spoken word performers in on the action? Most comedians get paid bubkes for their work in the clubs. Performance Rights money won't pay for a house in the Hamptons, but it might help a comic make the rent one month in a tight year.

But it's not about need. It's about what's right!

That the PROs aren't factoring in the spoken word artists' contributions to a given venue is just dumb—especially when that venue is a COMEDY CLUB. The ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC license fees for a comedy club are based only on the music that's played there. By not factoring in spoken word as the lion's share of the Performance Rights assessment for a comedy venue, BMI and the other PROs are saying that comedy is insignificant to a comedy club. BMI charges several thousand dollars a year to the average comedy club, based only on the music. That's crazy!

ASCAP is an acronym for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Aren't standup comics authors? (Actually, ASCAP meant to say lyricists, but the word Lyricist doesn't sound as good as Author; nor does the resulting acronym—ASCLP). Makes you want to put a CAP in their AS, doesn't it?

If you're read this far, I'll bet you have a few questions:

So how much more money do spoken-word artists/performers stand to make?

It's a good question, and I don't have the answer. The PROs use statistical sampling as the basis for how any of their members gets paid. There are technologies available that allow for a more accurate count of what's played where, and how often. But that's not in place yet.

Is it really that simple? Just get the PROs to factor in spoken word, and get a check?

Nope. It's not even close to that simple. It's a system, and ya gotta work the system to make something from it. Musicians have been working the system for decades. Spoken-word artists and their representatives should be in on this, and I'd like to help beyond simply writing a blog post.

Are you saying it's right to squeeze small businesses harder just to pay the standup comics?

Absolutely not. A restaurant that has a video jukebox full of Tammy Wynette, The Judds, and reruns of Hee Haw should not have to pay one penny toward a standup comic's performance royalties. But what if the jukebox has a little "Git 'R Done" or "You Might Be a Redneck"? Shouldn't Larry The Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy (respectively) have a tiny taste?

I don't even think that restaurant should be charged any more than they're being charged now. I think the BMI pie (mmm) should be carved just a little bit differently to give the standups their fair share. Who deserves more performance rights money from a comedy club, Jeffrey Ross or Britney Spears?

Isn't this a little pie-in-the-sky? Aren't you just dreaming?

Nope. History's on our side in this fight, folks. ASCAP was founded in 1914 by, among others, Irving Berlin—the Jewish guy who wrote White Christmas. Irving was a prolific songwriter, and wanted a central agency to monitor (and collect money for) public performance of his many works. Other songwriters were in the same boat, and wanted in.

ASCAP was considered "elitist", as it didn't acknowledge the legitimacy of country and folk music, it didn't allow membership to black composers, and excluded lots of other people, for reasons passing understanding. BMI was formed to meet the needs of those whom ASCAP didn't see fit to represent. SESAC was founded in 1936, BMI in 1939. Over the years, PROs have ventured into many new territories to see that their memberships expand, that more musicians are getting a taste, and that they all make more money. Inclusion is within our reach. But we haven't made our case yet.

How do we get started?

I have some of the broad strokes. It has to start with one PRO. Which one?

ASCAP is still snotty, and BMI is still a lot better for big-timers. SESAC is the smallest of the three, the most open minded, and therefore may hold the most potential for spoken-word performance rights. I don't know yet. It's still early in the game. I believe that if they're approached the right way, all the PROs will want the spoken-word creators in eventually.

Conclusions:

It's way too early in this game to determine with any accuracy what the real performance royalties numbers could be for spoken-word artists/writers. I asked some knowledgeable people to help me "do the math". If we took all the comedy being performed live in clubs and theaters all over the United States, added to that all the comedy broadcast over terrestrial radio and satellite radio, added to that all the standup comedy and other published, copyrighted spoken word that's broadcast on cable TV (that's BET, HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, and on and on and on), the comedians stand to bring in tens of millions of dollars a year (collectively).

And the "Wild West" of the Web is hardly regulated right now. BMI has plans to turn the internet into a serious source of performance rights revenue. But execution is a lot more difficult than making a plan. The spoken-word people's time is now—while the PROs are still figuring out how to collect and fairly distribute all that internet money. Statistical sampling may not even be necessary anymore, because it's so easy to track how many times a copyrighted/published work has been streamed on the web.

Let's get in the door now, before the internet media get really monitored, so that we can be counted. When Google starts kicking in as they should; when Apple becomes one of the world's largest media "casters", there will be more money for everyone. All you authors have to do is claim your fair share.

Comedians, please weigh in. Could you use a tiny slice of the millions of dollars the PROs stand to collect from registered spoken-word works? Are you ready to work for it (or set your people to work for it)? Will you join me in helping you (and other spoken word artists) get paid for the broadcasts and public performances of your material? This will be a herculean effort, is likely to take a decade, and may not result in big money to the average spoken-word performer. But it opens the door to greater possibilities where there is now nothing. That door's going to close pretty soon. Google hasn't really been told to pay up yet. Neither have most of the website owners exploiting intellectual property without paying for it.

Let's talk to the WGA. Maybe they can help in this battle. Let's talk to all the people we know with the connections to make things happen. I'm your sister-in-arms, and will do whatever I can to help. If you've found this helpful, have a question, or just want to insult me, leave a comment, or drop me a note. If you really liked it, forward it to a friend who might benefit from it. Thanks for your attention.