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Marty Bandier uses Grammys speech to call for more digital dollars to go to songwriters

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 9 February 2015

Marty Bandier, boss of the world’s biggest music publisher Sony/ATV, was presented with the President’s Merit Award at the Recording Academy’s annual Pre-Grammy Gala in LA this weekend, as part of the festivities that take place ahead of the main Grammy Awards.

And he used the occasion to formally state his widely known mission to secure publishers and songwriters a bigger slice of the digital pie, he being a leading name in the increasingly vocal debate about how the money generated by subscription and ad-funded streaming services is shared between the sound recording and song copyright owners (the former currently get way more of the loot).

Noting that he was the first publisher to win the President’s Merit Award as part of the annual Grammy Salute To Industry Icons, he said he’d like to thank the songwriters. Yes, all of them.

“This includes not only those songwriters I have worked with”, he told his audience. “But also those I have never met and those who came before me but whose words and music will nonetheless live forever”.

Positioning himself as a champion of those songwriters in the digital land-grab, he went on: “Unlike other forms of art – and to me there is no doubt songwriting is an artform – few people know who created a classic song, unless it is the performer. Everyone knows who wrote ‘The Great Gatsby’, or painted the Sistine Chapel, but if you asked someone about ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, while they would probably tell you Judy Garland sang it, very few would know it was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg”.

“That is why I have always felt that songwriters have never received the credit they deserve. This is particularly the case today when something like 95% of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart are written in whole or part by someone other than the performer. A songwriter doesn’t share lucrative touring revenue and they don’t do brand deals. Their entire livelihood is reliant on the income from the song and that proposition is now under threat in a way that it has never been before”.

“The music industry is changing in ways that I could never have imagined even just a decade ago; it is exciting for us that this has resulted in music lovers having new ways to listen to music as they move from CDs and digital downloads to streaming services. But it is also the case that songwriters are not being adequately compensated for their creations in today’s digital world. Their songs are the very reason these services exist; their songs are why we are all here tonight. As the saying goes, it all starts with the song”.

And finally, stating his intent for the year ahead, he said: “While I am honoured that this award is celebrating my own success, I would not be here tonight without the songwriters who I have cared for and worked with. They and their songs have inspired me all these years. And it is because of them that I have made it my number one priority to ensure they are fairly paid for what they do”.

And so there you go, mission stated. As previously reported, the British Academy Of Songwriters, Composers And Authors shared similar opinions about the way the digital dollar is being distributed when it launched its The Day The Music Died campaign on Friday, while Bandier joins an industry veteran from a different end of the American industry – artist manager and former Live Nation boss Irving Azoff – in his bid to secure songwriters more digital income.

Though in reality that means taking more money off the record labels as much as it does off the digital service providers, which makes this a very interesting debate indeed. It remains to be seen if any movement has been made on this issue by the time the US industry next amasses for a weekend of Grammy festivities.