Sony ATV CEO Martin Bandier Makes Plea To Streaming Services For Equal Treatment Of Writers

Portraits of Martin Bandier, CEO of Sony/ATV

Sony/ATV Music Publishing Chairman and CEO Martin Bandier took a moment while receiving a Lifetime Service Award from Smokey Robinson at the National Music Publishers’ Association’s (NMPA) Centennial Annual Meeting on Wednesday to call streaming services to task about recognizing the contributions of songwriters. During his speech Bandier called upon Spotify, Apple Music, and others to fully and clearly credit songwriters like they do with recording artists.

During his speech at the industry trade association event in New York, Bandier lamented that writers were still not receiving an equitable share of the enormous amount of money being generated by the streaming services.

“The fruits of our labor are not being equitably rewarded and we are not benefitting from the streaming revolution as meaningfully as we should,” he said. “I’ve always believed that songwriters are not getting proper recognition. This is even more prevalent today on the leading music streaming services. Far too often the songwriter’s contribution is overlooked or even forgotten. I have no doubt that this lack of public recognition has played a major part in why songwriters are not treated on an equal basis as the recording artist. When I look today at the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, I ask: where are the names of the songwriters? They are either not there or so hidden that you would have to be a special prosecutor, or perhaps The Washington Post – to find them. It is as if the songwriters do not exist and the only people who matter are the recording artists. However, without the songwriters coming up with the words and music in the first place, there would be nothing for the artist to record and no music to stream.”

Bandier went on to urge the streaming services to prominently show the songwriters names just as they credit the artists names as a small step and show of solidarity to the writers who create the music.

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Lorie Hollabaugh

Hollabaugh, a staff writer at MusicRow magazine, has over 20 years of music business experience and has written for publications including American Profile, CMA Close Up, Nashville Arts And Entertainment, The Boot and Country Weekly. She has a Broadcast Journalism and Speech Communication degree from Texas Christian University, (go Horned Frogs), and welcomes your feedback or story ideas at lhollabaugh@musicrow.com.

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