LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 14: Chair and Interim President/CEO of The Recording Academy Harvey … [+]
When people think of the Recording Academy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the Grammy Awards. The glitz and glamour of the annual ceremony, where music’s biggest names gather to celebrate their achievements, is hard to ignore. But the Recording Academy does much more than just hand out trophies. In fact, many people in the music industry would argue that the organization’s other efforts are far more important than the Grammys.
At its core, the Recording Academy exists to represent the voices of all music professionals, from performers to songwriters to producers and engineers and beyond. Through its programs and initiatives, the organization provides support for creators, fighting for their rights and interests, which sometimes means entering the political sphere. One such initiative is GRAMMYs on the Hill, an annual event that brings music to Washington D.C.
Over the course of two days–April 26 and 27–Recording Academy staff meet with legislators to encourage them to support or decline support to various music-related initiatives, depending on which position the group is taking. But it’s not all work. The organization also throws a party to celebrate those who have worked hard to better the lives of creators and the industry as a whole. This year, the 2023 GRAMMYs on the Hill Awards will honor several notable individuals, including Pharrell Williams, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D.
The funds raised at the event will help the Recording Academy continue its important efforts. While the Grammys may be the organization’s most visible moment, it is clear that the work done throughout the year is just as vital. By advocating for music professionals and supporting them in practical ways, the Recording Academy is ensuring that the industry remains strong and vibrant and that anyone can take part in making music.
This time around, while in DC, representatives at the Recording Academy are focused on four major initiatives:
1. The HITS Act – Proposes that artists and songwriters be allowed to deduct the entire cost of new studio recordings from their taxes, with a cap of $150,000.
2. The Restoring Artistic Protection Act – Seeks to reduce the use of lyrics and other creative expressions as evidence in court, which has been known to unfairly target the rap community.
3. The American Music Fairness Act – Aims to grant artists a performance right on AM/FM radio.
4. Efforts are being made to reform the ticketing marketplace for live events in order to provide better protection for both artists and fans.
Ahead of this year’s GRAMMYs on the Hill, I spoke with Recording Academy CEO and music producer Harvey Mason, Jr. about the organization’s specific legislative efforts, what is most important in music today and how the group’s programs will change the industry and make life easier for creators everywhere.
I love how much the Recording Academy is doing to better the lives of creators. How much of the Recording Academy’s time and effort is spent on legislative projects versus awards and other things?
There’s a group of us that work on legislative stuff 24/7, 365 days a year. Luckily, the organization is set up where we have a production arm and a group that works on the television show, and that’s an intense lift, as you can imagine. It’s really seven months of the year planning for our Grammy Week events.
But at the same time and simultaneous to all that is the work that’s happening in DC and state legislatures around the country of people fighting for creators rights, advocating for music legislation, intellectual property, bills and laws. So very, very excited about the work we’re doing simultaneously. And you probably know this, Hugh, but maybe some of the people that will be reading this, don’t:
[At] The Academy, our whole mission is to support music and music people. The show is but one of the things we utilize to generate revenue so that we can do the important work that we do, with the advocacy and the MusicCares work and education [and the] museum. The show is very important. It’s our showpiece, it’s our crown jewel, but it’s what allows us to do all the other work that the Academy does on behalf of the music community.
It seems like there are four real focuses this year for GRAMMYs on the Hill. Some of these things seem fairly timely and some are projects you’ve been working on for decades. Give me an idea of the life span of one of these efforts for the Recording Academy?
I think the one that is probably the longest-standing has been the American Music Fairness Act, something that we’ve been working on for quite some time. More recent is the live event ticketing reform, or maybe the Restoring Artistic Protection Act. It protects the First Amendment rights of artists around the country, because right now, lyrics are being used as evidence in criminal proceedings and they’re using it to prosecute young artists and young creators and it is unbelievably unfair. And it disproportionately affects the rap/hip-hop community. We’re working very, very aggressively to make sure we’re passing not only on the state side, but [also] nationally bills that allow people to express themselves and tell stories without a fear of being prosecuted or persecuted.
The HITS Act is something else we’ve been working on through the pandemic, making sure there’s some relief there.
The live event ticketing reform is something that’s come [up] as of late and it’s very important that we make sure we get that right. And that’s a good thing about the Academy–we are acting as a convener and as a body to bring people together and find solutions and to try and find places where everyone in the industry in the ecosystem can simultaneously thrive. We are not anti-one group or pro another group; we’re about music because we understand the power and the importance of music in our society.
I understand where there’d be pushback from people in the industry with some of these legislative efforts, while others, I can’t imagine anyone fighting. How often do you have to debate and really fight versus how often does something move smoothly?
Off the top of my head, I’d say it’s probably 50/50. Sometimes there are things like the PEACE through Music Diplomacy Act, which passed undisputed. We all knew it was a good thing, and it’s a positive thing for our country, for our industry.
Proposition 28 recently passed in California. I believe we had, I think more than 60% of the voters. There was really no opposition politically to that. We created a billion-dollar fund for arts and music education programs in public schools throughout California. So things like that are no-brainers.
There’s other issues where there are different sides of the coin as it relates to where you stand. There’s some streaming bills or publishing things that we’re looking at, that people feel that there’s one pie and there’s only so much to go around. Sometimes there [is] a discrepancy between a streaming platform and a publisher or a label or an artist. Those are the times when we try to utilize our reach and our relationships to bring people together to try and find common solutions, and that’s what excites me.
And it’s an easy thing to rally around. We all know the importance of music, we all love music. I don’t care if you’re an executive, an attorney, you’re on the label side, you’re an independent songwriter working in New Orleans…we all believe in music. We have to come together. There’s one music business, we [have to] solve it together, and we all have to co-exist. Those are some of the things we get opposition on, but it’s all out of the love of music. Everybody wants to either broadcast or stream it or create it and perform it. We just have to figure those types of things out.
So you’re going into GRAMMYs on the Hill at the end of this month. Do you have a sense of what you will be able to announce afterward?
We’ll announce some of the wins to Save Our Stages. Our honorees this year are Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senator Bill Cassidy. Both have been huge music proponents. We’ll announce some of the great things that they did during Covid and earlier efforts.
Right now, Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Schumer are working on trying to help musicians escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
We’ll also be honoring Pharrell Williams, who’s done a ton of work, philanthropic and social justice work in his community and around the country. We’ll talk about his Something In The Water Festival, which is hopefully bringing a lot of musicians and music people together.
So we have lots to share, we have lots to be excited about. And we also have a lot to work together on going forward in the future. That’s our hope that both sides of the aisle can unite around music to make a difference in the world.
So I’m going to pivot slightly to the specific things you’re working on. The RAP Act–to you and I, it sounds completely unfair and it’s a no-brainer, but I can imagine there are district attorneys and other people who are on the other side of the coin who disagree. So tell me a bit about the pushback you’re feeling as you’re trying to move this through.
I can’t understand the pushback and I can’t understand the DAs or prosecutors seeing this as fair any more that I see someone looking at a Jason Bourne movie and arresting Matt Damon for shooting somebody. I don’t see any rational way that you can look at this that makes sense.
Storytelling has been a part of our creative process from the beginning of time. We’ve written songs throughout history about things that have been imagined or stories that you’ve heard, or things that you’ve seen in other walks of life that you want to share. There’s no other side to this. You cannot use lyrics from a song to prosecute an artist, it’s just not fair. So unless somebody can give me a really great argument– I’d be open to hearing it–I just don’t feel like we’ve ever done that in the past, and I don’t think it protects the First Amendment if you allow someone to use artistic expression as a form of prejudice.
I didn’t mean I understand their point of view. What I was saying is I can imagine that there are people who use this tool and who don’t want it to be taken from them.
Sure. They’ve got to find a better tool, a different tool, a more fair tool–one that doesn’t potentially impact creativity across all of music. Because if we get into the slippery slope of using lyrics as evidence, it’s going to change the landscape of our creative and artistic expression. And that’s one of the hallmarks of our country, of our society.
Art is one of our biggest exports, it’s our diplomacy, it’s the insight into our country. Does a prosecutor believe that we should be able to take these lyrics and these stories and works of art and use them to criminalize the creators? I don’t think that that’s a great tool.
As you are working to craft language for this Act, how difficult is it to define what should or can be used as evidence versus what can’t?
Honestly, I will leave the fine-tuning and the semantics of the bill or the law, or how we want to craft this, to people that are in this day-to-day. I just know on principle and philosophically, using creative works in any fashion to criminalize the creator, it’s not something that I would support in music, in film, in books and in any form of art.
Moving on to the ticketing effort you’re leading. What is the solution that the Recording Academy is looking for? A lot has been said about fees. Is there some sort of cap? Or do you want some sort of an explanation of what those fees are? What are you actually hoping to achieve with this?
We want to achieve a fair ecosystem for everyone. We want to make sure we’re protecting consumers, we’re protecting performers, of course. We want to make sure the venues and the small business owners are also able to host our artists because without our venue owners and our small business owners, we would have no place to perform.
This is not a combative position that the Academy is taking. It’s a position of, let’s be fair. Let’s be transparent. Let’s open up everything so that we can see what it is we have to work with. Let’s try and remove some of the bots and predatory practices. The live performance environment is critical. It’s critical to our industry and to our society, for that matter. You see how popular live music is right now, coming out of Covid. You see more people going to shows than ever before. I’ve gone to more shows in my life in the last year than ever.
We don’t want to do anything that affects that business, we only want it to be fair and make sure that artists and consumers are able to connect and tickets are sold in a fair manner. There are things in the retail market we need to look at. There’s bot practices, there’s fees and overages. We need to make sure that it’s consistent and it’s fair across the board for all parties.
I’m glad you brought all that up because a lot of what I was reading via the Recording Academy’s articles about this topic was about fees. That’s important, but I think the issues the ticketing industry is facing are about more than fees. Do you have a sense of how many bills you’re working on regarding this issue?
It’s all very nuanced. There are different layers and levels to this. I won’t profess to say exactly what it’s going to be yet, but what I do know is there needs to be reform. My hope is that we can use our platform to bring people to the table in a way that makes sense and have really honest, open conversations and also make sure that we allow or help to encourage Congress to listen to the artists and listen to the people that this is affecting–the consumers, the performers–and make sure that there are bipartisan ticketing reforms that can protect all the parties involved.
To answer your question. I don’t know if it’s one bill or multiple bills, but I know that there needs to be reform and we need to bring people together to do it collectively, because, again, it’s not combative. It’s a lot like the streaming and publishing [issue]. Everyone’s like, “Why are you mad at streamers or the artists?” None of us are mad. We all co-exist and we all win through each other’s success. If the streamers grow, the music industry grows, and if the music industry grows, streamers can grow. And the same can be said for a lot of things.
We want live venues to thrive. We want them to have a healthy business. We want them to be able to make money, because that way they can make more venues for us to play in. But we also want to make sure that artists are protected.
I was discussing the Taylor Swift ticketing fiasco with someone recently, saying the fees are too high and it was a mess. They said, “Yes, but A, it’s been this way for a long time and B, it didn’t stop the tour from selling out, it didn’t stop people from buying tickets.” Is there an argument to be made that yes, people are unhappy, but do we have to legislate against it because people are unhappy if they’re still doing it?
I can understand that. And it’s a great question, and it is the society we live in–capitalism, supply and demand. I only know that there are many artists that would like to have some say and some control over the price of their tickets so they can reach specific fans.
I will tell you an anecdote that just happened to me yesterday. The guy who’s working on my house recognized me. His name was Cory, he was doing cabinet work in my house. He said, “Harvey, it’s really incredible to meet you. I have to tell you a story about my daughter. She wanted to see the Taylor Swift concert. I know all that stuff was on the news about the tickets, I signed on to get tickets, and while we were online, the tickets went from like $250 to over $1,000. I install cabinets for a living. We live in Ohio, my daughter’s a huge Taylor Swift fan. She’s been dreaming of going to Taylor Swift since she was in the fifth grade. And my daughter was with me and as the ticket prices were going up.”
“I was sitting there, a hardworking, blue collar worker, I was watching the price go up and I was watching my daughter get more excited and I was watching the money fly out of my wallet and I was nervous. I was upset. I was scared to tell my daughter, ‘I’m sorry, honey, we can’t buy two tickets.” Because now it’s $2,500 for a pair of tickets that I thought we were going to get for $400.” And I said, ” Well, what did you do, Cory?” And he said, “My daughter was too excited, I couldn’t say no. I ended up buying the tickets for $2,500. That’s about what I make in three weeks.” So he’s going to spend that money because his daughter had to go.
So yes, the concerts are going to sell out, but is it worth it? Is it fair? And I know capitalism. I’m all about trying to make sure people can make a buck, but there’s certain things in life that are important–making sure fans can enjoy these artists and artists can have a say in what type of people get to go to the concert.
Cory’s example hit hard for me yesterday because it was sad. I watched how hard that guy works. He was in my kitchen for like 12 hours, and he’s doing that for three weeks to buy a pair of tickets for his daughter. So there’s something that we need to do. Again, I don’t have every answer, I just know it would be great to pull people together and see if we can find a fair solution.
How often is the Recording Academy bringing tangible specific solutions to politicians versus jumping in and adding your brand and your support to ongoing legislation that someone else has developed?
I’d say probably 50/50. There are a lot of times where lawmakers and members of Congress reach out to me and say, “Harvey, what’s your take on this? How do you see this?” Just two weeks ago, I met with the Library of Congress and we started talking about AI and what that means for copyright protections. They had their staff come to my studio, we sat for two hours and we talked about it. There are a lot of instances where we can be called on as a trusted source. We are not biased. We’re impartial. We can give information that could relate or translate to any politician, either side of the aisle. We only want fair treatment and fair outcomes.
There’s also times when we will hear from our people and they’ll say, “This isn’t fair, I can’t take my instrument on a flight and I can’t put it in the overhead.” Okay, let’s figure out how we fight for the rights of our music community.
The whole reason we do this, Hugh–maybe you believe this or maybe you don’t–but I personally believe in the importance of music and the importance of this artform in our culture, and like we got to talk about earlier, the storytelling and the mind-changing, the heart-opening and the perception-altering power of music. So when music people come to me or come to the Academy with issues that prevent them from being able to do what they do, which prevents us from being able to enjoy music, that’s when we take action, and that’s when we figure out who we need to reach out to. What type of legislation do we need to create? Who do we need to convene to make a difference?
You just said that the Recording Academy can be unbiased, that you can give fair information, but I would argue that in instances you are the exact opposite–but that’s not a negative thing. You are fighting for the rights and the betterment of a certain group of people.
Well, when I say unbiased, I tried to make it mean we don’t lean in one direction politically. We do take personal positions and interests in groups, depending on the issue, but we will always represent our community, our members, our industry. We have loyalty to our 24,000 members in making sure we’re advocating in their interests. But what I like to do and what the Academy tries to do is not be so rigid and stiff that we don’t understand and realize we are but a piece of a larger puzzle. Us advocating so strongly for one group to the detriment of someone else might not be the best position.
We tend to try and think, how can we find solutions that bring all the groups together and find the equitable outcome as opposed to, “We care about songwriters, that’s it.” Because all this stuff intermingles. Songwriters work with artists, artists work with publishers, publishers work with labels. It’s all part of a delicate balance, and if you come in like a bull in a china shop, wrecking the relationships and throwing things out of balance, you’re not going to accomplish the outcome that you want.
So it’s our philosophy that, yes, we advocate on behalf of our members, which are made up of songwriters, producers, engineers, artists, and run the gamut of music people, but we do it in a way that we hope is in partnership with the rest of the industry.
The American Music Fairness Act is something that when I explain to people that performers don’t earn that royalty, they’re shocked. Why do you think it’s taken this long to make the progress that you’re making?
That is the question of the decade. I don’t know why it takes that long. I can only say that there’s a strong opposition to this from our AM/FM groups, I guess we’ll call them, but they’ve enjoyed a decades-long loophole that’s enabled them to exploit music performers and producers without paying them
I truly believe in the importance of radio. The success of my songs has been dependent on radio up until the last six or seven years. I’m not trying to make light of that, but we have to come to some kind of conclusion that is fair to the creators. We’re one of three countries in the world that does not pay this royalty. We’re with the likes of Iran and North Korea–some pretty bad company. I don’t see how people can justify this.
I also explain to people when I talk about this, the hundreds of millions of dollars annually that we’re leaving on other shores because we don’t have the reciprocal royalty back and forth. So there’s a tax play here, there’s a GDP play here that I think the government needs to pay attention to. But it’s also unfair, and we can’t allow music people and creators to be taken advantage of continually under the arguments that we’ve heard in the past from AM/FM radio groups.
Just last year, it passed one hurdle, and the language I was reading was, “And should it make it to the floor for a vote.” Why might it not get there?
If I knew that answer, I would protect against it. If I don’t know why it wouldn’t get there. We could run out of the clock, we could have a turnover. Here’s the thing…we’re very reasonable with this. We don’t want to adversely affect radio stations. We don’t want to put people out of business. In fact, we have protections for small and non-profit broadcasters to make sure that this isn’t overwhelming for them and financially undoable. This is something that’s fair, it’s reasonable, and it’s right, and it’s long overdue.
Anything else you want to throw out about this year’s event?
The event is gonna be amazing. We’ve got great honorees. It’s going to be exciting to have Pharrell in the building. It’s going to be exciting to have tributes of other artists that are going to happen and take the stage on his behalf.
I feel like the Academy is really coming into form as it relates to the other things that we do beyond just the show. I believe we had a great show this year. My hope is that the momentum from that show and the excitement and the energy carries over to a huge GRAMMYs on the Hill event. And I’m excited to be back out there. I’ve made some great friends with lawmakers and people that can make the difference for us, so I’m excited to see them and see what kind of progress we can make together.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2023/04/24/recording-academy-ceo-talks-grammys-on-the-hill-legislative-efforts-and-taylor-swifts-ticket-fiasco/