My weekly verbose concerns about the seemingly unstoppable deterioration of decency and civility and fairness, (as eloquent and equally inconsequential as they may be), globally, but no place more than the former United States of America, are spawned by my fear of the bleakness of my remaining future, but more so, way more so, by the longer and woefully bleaker futures of my daughter and grandchildren.  Yet, rather than take one more weekly tilt at that exponentially growing windmill, I want to rant about something that, on the surface, seems a bit more personal…but, maybe not.

I have worked my entire life at the one thing that I thought I could do better than anything else…making music.  In my sixty-year professional career as a performer, composer, lyricist, engineer, producer and presenter, I have been luckier than most at being able to find my way to a sustainable, (often way more than sustainable), career.  All but three of those years, I have been an independent contractor.  On the surface, that designation seemed perfect for me…no bosses, no hours of employment, coffee breaks, lunch hours, etc., etc.  In retrospect, I really had thousands of bosses, (kind of like a life-long temp), but without participating in many of the enticements and benefits that employees are duped into believing to be magnanimous perks.  What I did expect, (the carrot at the end of the stick that most artists reach for), was the too often elusive, or mysteriously unavailable royalty share, as artist and/or writer and/or producer, which resides at the very, very far end of a rainbow of challenging contractual mumbo jumbo.  I have participation in thousands of projects, the gross revenues of which have exceeded their production/promotion costs by hundreds of millions of dollars and yet, with very rare exception, the royalty dispersement has been minimal if not invisible.  Inquiries to the giant corporations that administer such things are either stonewalled by silence or the too-often accounts payable mantra, “If you have further questions, please have your attorney contact our attorney.”  (This phrase would actually be more acceptable and straightforward if was changed to, “Please…the ‘please’ being optional…go fuck yourself!”)  There is really no way to claw through the layer upon layer of protection that creative industries have normalized over a hundred years to skew profits from the labors of artists, heavily, (close to 90-10), in the favor of the administrators.  And, in the InterNet age, for most of the last fifteen years or so, the streaming of music, (once basically known as ‘radio play’), has reduced the artist/writer share of downloaded/streamed music from radio’s seven cents per play to something in the neighborhood of $0.00000003 per play.

It’s easy to take this all personally when you’re consumed by the maddening and demeaning need to beg for what’s rightfully yours, but suddenly, the outrage by many in my position has become a louder rallying cry. Personally, I have little faith that changes, fair by any reasonable standard, will be coming soon, and with this week’s passing of the Queen, I’m reminded that Aretha never received a penny for more than 7,000,000 radio plays of “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”, (respect, indeed). In other, not-dissimilar contexts, this would be called usury or some other derogatory or illegal practice. In the music industry, it’s called business-as-usual or, have your attorney…