INTL: ‘What good looks like’ - Songwriter advocate Crispin Hunt on BMG and fairness

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Among the tens of thousands of social posts hailing BMG’s signing of Rita Ora, one stood out dramatically – “I find it no surprise @RitaOra has the sense to sign with @BMG, thus keeping her master rights. BMG’s reformist ‘creator service attitude’ is streets ahead of the rest in the ‘Music Fairness Arms Race.’”

It’s not the first time Hunt has posted approvingly of BMG.

In October 2020, when BMG announced it would abolish the controlled composition deduction, Hunt declared, “BMG’s abandonment of this regressive practice is a huge step on music’s journey to dignity.”

And last month when BMG CEO Hartwig Masuch delivered a keynote address at the NY:LON conference, Hunt posted a string of tweets declaring “Bravo, Hartwig!”

What makes these positive words all the more remarkable is that for some within the music industry Hunt is Public Enemy #1, slammed for “washing the industry’s dirty linen” in public.

The reality is that alongside #BrokenRecord founder Tom Gray, Hunt is the most effective lobbyist for songwriter and artist rights the UK music industry has ever seen, provoking first a UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Music Streaming and now, potentially more significantly, an investigation by competition regulators into the activities of the three “majors” and streaming services.

BMG met up with him in London this week to find out more about his passion for delivering justice for artists and songwriters…

First off, thanks Crispin for your support. It means an awful lot to the team here when one of the preeminent songwriter voices in the world recognizes what we do

You’re welcome, and it's I who should be thanking you. What I’m about more than anything is a fundamental rebalancing of the music business, away from the business and towards the musicians. The digital paradigm shift is a watershed opportunity for the music industry, and BMG has very publicly in word and deed put itself in the artist and songwriter camp rather than the old world music biz camp. That is why I believe BMG is a demonstration of what good looks like right now.

Some people in the industry talk about you very critically. Do you hate the music business?

Not at all. The music industry is a wonderful thing, but it needs to realise it’s there to serve the needs of artists and songwriters. They are not there to keep music companies in business. We live in a world in which top music executives seem to benefit disproportionately while the people who create the music often struggle to make a living. The song in particular is criminally undervalued. About 70% of artists are songwriters too, so addressing the market value of the song, bringing it somewhere closer to parity with the recording would rebalance the whole creative community, and benefit global cultural diversity accordingly.

You are of course a songwriter and musician yourself. How has your personal experience of the music industry shaped your perspective?

I was first signed as a member of the Longpigs to a UK offshoot of Elektra Records at the end of my teens. I fell for the dogma that you needed a major label deal to be a proper pop star. I knew the odds were stacked against me but like every musician, I thought I’d be the lottery winner, and at the age of 19 I would have probably sold my grandmother into slavery for a chance to play on (legendary BBC music show) Top Of The Pops. It’s precisely those hopes and dreams, and leverage of them, which leads to people signing bad deals that last forever. As Prince put it “ If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you”: There is no place for feudalism in the 21st century.

So what happened with Elektra?

It was a classic music business ego story. We were about to release our debut album, but the head of the company in the UK fell out with his counterpart in the US and we became pawns in that power game. Our album was shelved and we were told we would have to find another label to pay them half a million pounds before they would let us go. That wasn’t happening so we had to pretend we had broken up for 18 months until we could escape.

You finally signed to U2’s Mother Records. How did that go?

They were good at some things and awful at others. The big issue was timing. If our original Elektra album had come out as planned, it would have come out alongside Radiohead’s & Oasis first album and we would have been in the vanguard of what became known as Britpop. By the time we’d remade it for Mother it came out in ’96, so we were at the back of the queue rather than the front. On the bright side, we got to tour with U2 and we went round the world. It’s not a bad way to make a living ending your working day with a thousand people screaming for more. That’s what Music’s all about: connection with others. Something in the current system disconnects fans from Music they (might) love. We need to put that right.

Despite the success of The Longpigs, you’ve been open about the fact you still don’t earn any royalties – and it’s all because of a video?

Yes, our biggest track was ‘On and On’. It was a hit in the UK and we already had an award-winning UK video, but Island America decided they wanted to make their own video for MTV. Unfortunately it cost £250,000 and MTV didn’t even like it so the net result was we owed the record company for a video we never wanted and we’ve been paying that off ever since. Plus we’re hilariously still paying three percent to Elektra for wasting our time. Maybe the Major’s amnesty on historic debts will make a difference, maybe not?

The Longpigs split in 2000 and you made an interesting career change?

I went to work in the House of Commons. I’d grown up around politics and it has always appealed to me. At the same time I started working more as a songwriter and had hits with Florence and The Machine, Natalie Imbruglia and Newton Faulkner. Still I was struck by the imbalance of the industry. I’d see my friends, young A&R guys, who couldn’t play a note, buying palatial flats in areas I couldn’t afford to live in. I was writing hits but was scrabbling around to buy a secondhand Mercedes for £3,500. So, I decided it's time to fight the creators corner.

All of these themes came together when you became Chair of the UK songwriters’ organization in 2015, renaming it the Ivors Academy and giving it a more campaigning agenda

Obviously it wasn’t only me. I was elected to do a job, but I think we really managed to move the dial. We have managed to mobilise songwriters in a way never seen before (BMG writers including Joan Armatrading, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Madness, Marianne Faithfull, Massive Attack and Mick Hucknall signed a letter to the UK Government demanding more fairness for musicians), and we have put the music industry on notice that this ’ noise’ (as they disrespectfully infantilise it) is not going away until it reforms.

Do you have any message for the BMG team how they can help?

First of all, keep on doing what you’re doing. BMG is an example of how music companies can turn their back on the old ways and flourish in the new. I understand that’s a collective effort at every level of the organization and I’d just say to everyone, never forget that you hold the fate of artists and songwriters in your hands. What might just seem like another day in the (home) office could make a real difference to a musician’s ability to make a living and so keep creating the music we all love. Any music company which wants to survive needs to put musicians first. Without them, there is no music business.

Source BMG

February 15, 2022 7:00am ET by Pressparty  

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