APPENDIX C. 66 Re the Application of the Musical Copyrights Defence Association to the Board of Trade that a Public Enquiry "be held under the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1911, Section 19, subsection 3, to consider the revision of the rates of royalties payable to copyright owners by mechanical record manufacturers. OBSERVATIONS UPON THE APPLICATION ON BEHALF OF THE INCORPORATED SOCIETY OF AUTHORS, PLAYWRIGHTS AND COMPOSERS. An application to the Board of Trade by the composers, authors and copyright owners of musical works for an increase in the rates of royalties payable under Section 19, subsection 3, of the Copyright Act, 1911, by persons mechanically reproducing such works has long been overdue. The present application, however, while setting out most of the grievances against the royalty rates fixed by the Act, and while demonstrating many of the ways in which these rates have proved inequitable, does not sufficiently make clear the respective positions of the composer and author of musical works on the one hand and the sheet music publisher on the other with regard to the desirability of increasing the rates. As a result there appear to be a number of ambiguities and hiatus which need fuller and more detailed examination and explanation. 1. It is not made clear in the application, which professes to make the composers' interests the primary, and the sheet music publishers' interests merely a secondary or incidental incentive to the Musical Copyright Defence Association's action in attempting to obtain an increase in the statutory royalty rates payable upon mechanical reproduction of copyright musical works, that except in a negligible number of cases the composer of a musical work has ceased to be the owner of the copyright in such work before any question of its mechanical reproduction arises, and is therefore statutorily debarred from profiting directly from any increase in the rates of royalties payable thereon, and is wholly dependent upon the copyright owner for any share in such royalties. 2. It is not made clear in the application that, practically without exception, the sheet music publisher is the owner of the copyright of musical works which are mechanically reproduced, and, therefore, that it is the sheet music publisher who will benefit directly from any increase in the rates of royalties. The prevalence in this country of the insistence of the sheet music publishers upon the assignment to them of the composer's copyright in his work is evidenced by the fact that the printed forms of agreement used by the leading sheet music publishing houses contain a clause stipulating the assignment to them of the composer's copyright in his work, including all the rights of reproduction upon mechanical instruments of every description. 3. It is true that many sheet music publishing houses include in their printed agreement forms a clause to the effect that in the event of mechanical reproduction the publisher agrees to pay the composer a percentage of the royalties received therefrom, but the actual percentage is in the great majority of cases not printed and varies in individual agreements at the discretion of the publisher. This arrangement, however, is not universal and there is a recent example of an important sheet music publishing house refusing a composer any share whatever in the mechanical royalties of his work. 4. In return for the assignment of the copyright in a musical work the publisher usually gives no undertaking as to when the work is to be published, what measures he will take with regard to advertisement of the work, or that he will take any measures for its advertisement at all, or, indeed, that the work will ever actually be published. The retort that the remedy rests in the composer's own hands is not tenable, for, so long as the sheet music publishers remain unanimous in their insistence on these terms, it is impossible for the composer to obtain publication of his work unless he is willing to accept them. 5. It is therefore vital that for the purposes of this Inquiry the position of the composer in his relations with the sheet music publisher should be secured by means of a definite guarantee on the part of those publishing houses which are represented at the Inquiry that in all cases where a musical work in which they are the owners of the copyright is mechanically reproduced the composer shall receive a minimum share of 50 per cent. of the royalties thereby accruing to them, and that in all cases where there is both an author and a composer the composer shall receive a minimum of 40 per cent., and the author a minimum of 30 per cent. of all such royalties. 6. The argument raised in the application, that the composer is no longer able to make the income that he made before the introduction of musical mechanical contrivances, while true in a great number of instances, is subsidiary to the argument that the composer's financial returns for his work to-day, whether showing an increase or decrease when compared with his financial returns prior to the birth of mechanical reproduction by means of gramophone records, are altogether disproportionate to the enhanced value of his work. Whereas the value of the composer's work has increased to an enormous extent, his returns from his work have remained, at best, more or less stationary, and the whole, or practically the whole, of the increased profits has found its way into the pockets of the Gramophone Companies. It is inequitable that only a meagre portion of the enormous profits amassed by the Gramophone Companies should accrue to the composer, who is the goose that lays the golden eggs, and to the sheet publisher, who is the gooseherd who, under the present system, collects them. 7. If the Gramophone Companies wish to avoid the stigma of the charge of exploiting the composer and sheet publisher under cover of the statutory protection of the Act of 1911, there is nothing to prevent them from contracting directly with the composer of a musical work, who, in the majority of cases, would welcome any advance on their part for that purpose. With these additions and provisos the Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers supports and indorses the application of the Musical Copyrights Defence Association. (Sd.) GORELL, Chairman, April 2, 1928. Society of Authors, &c. Nineteenth Report of the Commissioners of Customs and Excise for the Year ended 31st March 1928. Being the 72nd Report relating to the Presented to Parliament by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury November, 1928. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. To be purchased directly from H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE at the following addresses: Cmd. 3172. 15, Donegall Square West, Belfast; or through any Bookseller. Price 3s. 6d. Net. |