News & Events

Chicago, May 29, 2019

Becker Quoted in The Verge on Metadata in Music Industry

Partner Jeffrey S. Becker was quoted in The Verge regarding metadata and the music industry.

The article, "Metadata is the Biggest Little Problem Plaguing the Music Industry," explains how lack of synchronization of underlying information tied to a released song or album, including titles, songwriter and producer names, publisher(s) and record label, across industry databases leaves potentially billions unpaid to musicians.

According to the article:

A label’s database is likely different from Spotify’s database, which is likely different from the databases of critical collection societies, like ASCAP and BMI, which pay public performance royalties to musicians. “Part of the problem is the fields everyone has chosen to write into their software to populate these credits are all different,” says entertainment lawyer Jeff Becker of Swanson, Martin & Bell. “So if a credit is sent to a database that says ‘Pro Tools engineer,’ but that database doesn’t have that field, they either choose to change it or ignore it altogether. Typically they ignore it, and that credit has nowhere to go.”

Please visit The Verge's website to read the full article. 

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