Sinatra Heads Group Seeking Legislation for Performers’ Royalties

Frank Sinatra is heading up a group tentatively called the Performers Rights Society of America that plans to renew a decade-old effort to pass federal legislation securing royalties for performers. Broadcasters, long opponents to the plan, say they are still opposed and don’t want the singer to have his way on this issue.

Sinatra’s new group of singers and musicians--like composers or lyricists--want to receive residual payments when their renditions of songs are broadcast on radio or their records are played on a jukebox or in a disco.

“I’d hazard a guess that most people think (all four of) the Beatles get paid every time a Beatles song is played on the radio,” said Robert A. Finkelstein, Sinatra’s Los Angeles-based attorney and co-founder of the performers’ society. “It’s simply not the case.”

As composers and songwriters, the individual Beatles, or any other artists, do receive payments for the public playing of their records through blanket licensing groups such as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) or Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI). But there’s no such payment for a performer.

So, no matter how many times you hear Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” on the radio, he doesn’t get paid for its performance since he didn’t write the song.

Opposition to the performers is most likely to come from broadcasters who have opposed legislation in the past and who would have to pay the new royalties.

“We are opposed to performance royalties on the basis they have already been paid for recording the performance,” said Bob Hallahan, director of the news bureau of the Washington-based National Assn. of Broadcasters, the major trade organization of the U.S. broadcasting industry.

Hallahan also feels that air play is an intrinsic form of royalty, in that artists benefit from it. “Playing records on the air, that also promotes the record, which stimulates record sales, which increases the popularity of an artist,” he said. “That way, an artist can command more money when he records something else.”

When Congress overhauled the nation’s copyright law in 1976, it did not grant performers a royalty. But Copyright Office officials later recommended a performers’ royalty on sound recordings, and a bill was introduced in 1978 by then-Sen. Harrison Williams (D-N.J.). It died in committee.

“However, in 1976, Congress did enact a compulsory jukebox royalty payment (for composers and lyricists),” said Finkelstein, who pointed out the inequality of such a payment. “When people play a jukebox, they’re selecting what they want to hear and who they want to hear it by .”

Performance royalties are paid in some Latin American countries as well as in Great Britain, West Germany, France and Denmark, said Finkelstein. “Those countries are signatories to the Rome Convention, a treaty which recognizes performance royalties amongst nationals of different countries. If I make a record in Great Britain and hope to get royalties when its played in Italy, that’s covered by the Rome Convention, if Italy is a signatory.”

While Finkelstein feels that legislation for performance royalties in the United States is long overdue, he and his organization have yet to establish a master strategy to get a bill through Congress, and, at least for the moment, don’t plan to engage in a lobbying contest with any opposition.

“This isn’t something where we line up sides and go at it,” he said. “It’s not a spear-throwing campaign. It’s not a march on Washington. It’s a wrong that exists that should be redressed. This isn’t something that’s just getting started in 1989. It’s an issue, a paradigm, that’s existed for years.”

To get his organization’s ball rolling, Sinatra has sent letters to several top entertainers, asking for their backing, “but for the time being, I feel it’s inappropriate to reveal any of those entertainers’s names,” said Finkelstein. “(The royalty) is something we anticipate the entertainers will support, especially when someone like Frank Sinatra is willing to step forward.”

One group that endorses Sinatra’s agenda is the Los Angeles-based Society of Singers. “We support what he’s doing,” said Ginny Mancini, president of the society and wife of composer Henry Mancini.

Once information about the proposal is disseminated through the music and broadcast industries, Finkelsten thinks the rest should be almost easy.

“If an industry consensus is developed--that industry being broadcasters, record companies, artists, unions and various guilds--then things should fall into place naturally,” he went on. “If Congress recognized there was an industry consensus, and this is something Congress has looked at sui generis before and it should look at it again, then I don’t think there would be any impediment to legislating a proposal. There have have been senators and congressmen interested, looking at the copyright law to see if it’s a modern document that serve needs of the citizens.”

One such congressmen is Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D.-Wis), who was the House author of the 1976 copyright law and longtime chairman of the House Judiciary committee’s subcommittee on copyrights. The new congressional session, he noted, has just begun and committee or subcommittee assigments and agendas have not been decided on.

“The subcommitte has always been interested in the issue,” Kastenmeier said. “But, at this point, we cannot anticpate what will be done. The issue is clearly under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction, and once a bill is introduced, I will take a good look at it.”

Ultimately, Finkelstein feels that the performance royalty is simply an issue of equity.

“The performers have to have some type of parity with other copyright owners,” he said. “The copyright law should benefit everyone. There’s such logic and such symmetry to this that I don’t see it as morally or legally debatable issue.”