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Recording Industry vs. The Music Performance Trust Fund
Biting the Hand That Feeds You
By: Frank Amoss, President,
Local #7 AFM Orange County, California (Used By Permission)
The profession of musician has deteriorated since the day that
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. This instrument of destruction
has been the source of billions of dollars in profit to those
who have embraced the industry which has promoted and developed
the technology by which the sounds of a live performance can be
preserved and sold over and over again. In some instances the
performer shares in these profits and in some instances he/she
does not.
It was in the early 1940’s that recording was recognized
as the danger it had become to the live music makers of the world.
Spearheading this awareness was James C. Petrillo. In an effort
to combat this encroachment, Mr. Petrillo, as International President
of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), led its members
on a ban of making records. From 1941 to 1943 musicians, making
a point for the salvation of their chosen profession, elected
not to participate in their own destruction. At this point in
history the overwhelming majority of musicians worthy of being
recorded were members of the AFM. Consequently, this unified “strike”
was effective in bringing the Recording Industry to the realization
that it could not survive without its basic ingredient, live music(ians).
With this realization came the admittance that phonograph recordings
were being responsible for the erosion of the general public’s
enjoyment of live musical performances. The Recording Industry
agreed that, in return for the cooperation of musicians in creating
their product, it would establish a fluid dedicated solely to
preserving this age-old human pleasure.
Thus, the Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF) was born. A small
percentage of the sales of recordings was dedicated to providing
free concerts to the people. Compared to the large scale displacement
of live music by recordings, which has escalated with the technology
of sound reproduction, this fund is but a drop in the bucket.
However, satisfied with this concession and resigned to the facts
of life, musicians resumed participating in the recording of their
music.
For nearly fifty years the MPTF worked for the benefit of all
concerned. Millions were treated to free concerts, musicians prospered
in the recording studios and the Recording Industry exploded into
corporate giants, realizing profits that stagger the average comprehension.
Still this did nothing to alter the path of technology and with
each passing year more live music was replaced by a recorded product.
People danced to records and were entertained by disc jockey programs
on radio and television. No longer were musicians needed to render
the Star Bangled Banner at public gatherings. Seats could be sold
to the performance of a Broadway show or a ballet with no need
for an orchestra in the pit. A more recent development is the
use of phonograph records as sound tracks for motion pictures.
Compare this use to the image of a studio orchestra as it creates
a sound track from a score by John Williams or Elmer Bernstein.
As much as musicians lament their displacement by recordings,
they recognize the inevitability and reality of progress. The
MPTF has been a small gesture to the onslaught of technology on
a human art form. Now, to add insult to injury, the Recording
Industry wants to eliminate the MPTF, claiming that this program
in no way contributes to the sale of its product, recorded music.
Their complaint is that they get nothing in return. Granted, today’s
Record Industry executives were not around when the MPTF was founded
in “reparation” to the damage done by the technology
that sucks the music out of the air and sells it to those who
could not be there at its creation. The Recording Industry has
lost sight, however so conveniently, of the reason that the Music
Performance Trust Fund was established. The reverence of the “bottom
line” has resulted in a blind spot for the principle of “giving
back”.
For the Recording Industry to resent its contributions to bringing
some measure of live music to a public who finds it a more rare
pleasure with each passing year is to paint of itself a picture
of hostility and greed. The Industry’s attempts to destroy
the MPTF are removing the enjoyment of live music from the lives
of multitudes of human beings whose exposure to these concerts
is the only remaining opportunity to witness the creation of music.
Some of their children have had no other opportunity. To so vehemently
oppose the expenditure which creates this source of enjoyment
is to attack the art which creates the product to be marketed.
Just as today’s marketers of recorded products were not around
when the rationale which created the MPTF existed, they will not
be around at the time in the future when musicians have been forced
into extinction and the Recording Industry executives will wonder
what their predecessors were thinking about when they mortally
wounded the goose that laid the golden egg.
Concerts in parks and malls are good things, as are those performed
in schools and health care facilities. The Earth is enriched by
these performances, paid for in part or whole by the MPTF. So
many basic human enjoyments have been eradicated by one form of
technology or another, resulting in one form of pollution or another.
Enough so that the government intervenes and dictates conservation
programs. The MPTF is a voluntary conservation program for which
the Recording Industry is due a large measure of credit. It is
sad that the Industry is willing to abandon this program and to
regard the credit as negligible. It has lost sight of the sense
of responsibility which guided it to contribute to the preservation
of the art upon which it feeds. As the Recording Industry discovers
more and more ways to electronically reproduce the sounds of music
it seems to develop a proportionate disregard for the value of
one of the basic human pleasures, Live Music! To threaten the
MPTF is to contribute to the extinction of the very product that
is being recorded. The sales of this product have created an industry
so vast and short sighted that it fails to consider the negative
effect that attacking the Music Performance Trust Fund will have
on the development of those who will actually make the music.
Musicians and audiences must be nurtured. Unless the Recording
Industry recognizes its part in this responsibility it will, one
day, find itself with technology capable of preserving the slightest
musical nuance but no one with the ability to create it.
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