Variety (January 1958)

MUSIC 215 January 8, 1958 Fifty-second J^SrIETY Anniversary Indies’ Inroads on Major Diskeries’ Pop Singles; $400,000,000 Record Mark By HERMAN FINKELSTEIN ( General Attorney for ASQAP ) Five years have passed since the intergovernmental meeting Geneva, Switzerland, in 1952' where the Uni¬ versal Copyright Convention was drafted. The chief of the American delegation to that conference, Luther; Evans, has become the Director General of UNESCO; twO mem¬ bers of the delegation, Arthur Farmer, arid Joseph Bry¬ son, have since passed on; Shepard Crumpacker gave up his Congressional seat to return to his private law prac¬ tice in Indiana;. ; two remain with the Federal Govern¬ ment— Arthur Fisher, Register of Copyrights, and Roger C. Dixon, Chief of Business Practices and Technology Staff, Office of Economic Defense and Trade Policy, De¬ partment1 of State; the remaining three are in private practice; ih New York-hJohn Schulman, Sydney Kaye and the writer. The United States adhered to the Convention in 1954; Great Britain during the past year. All told; 26 countries, have adhered to the Convention to date: Andorra, Aus¬ tria,. Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, France, German Fed. Repub., Great Britain, Haiti, Holy See, Ice¬ land, Israel, Italy, Japan, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, USA. ' • / The Convention provides that there shall be no formal¬ ities as a condition for enjoyment of rights other than a copyright notice, consisting of the symbol ©, accompanied by the name of the copyright owner and the year of copy¬ right. This provision made: it necessary for the United States to abandon— as to foreign works protected under the Universal Copyright Convention^the requirement that works in the English language must be manufactured in the United States from type set in the United States. That clause had been the main stumbling block to our adherence to the older Berne Convention, which provides for automatic copyright without any formalities whatso¬ ever In other words, countries subscribing to, the Berne Union may not decree a forfeiture of rights^as is per¬ mitted by the Universal Copyright Conventiqn-^if a de . f ective copyright notice (or no notice) appears oh; the . work, br if the: work is not registered; 1 2 International Treaties ; 1 The question to which we must now address ourselves is: Is there , any need of two international copyright con¬ ventions? Is there any possible basis for merging the Berrie and Universal Conventions? What = are the stum¬ bling blocks to such a merger? The Berne Convention was first formulated: in 1886. It now is effective ainong.44 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Benmark, Eire, Finland, France, Germany, .Great Britain, Greece,. Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia; Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco (Fr.j, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pak¬ istan, Philippi , . Roland, Portugal, Rumania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Tunis,. Turkey, Berne ; and Universal 'Conventions?' What are the stumUnion of South Africa, Vatican City, Yugoslavia. As between, two. Countries which are members of both the Berne and Universal Conventions, in Case of conflict between the provisions of the two conventions, the former governs. What is the possible area of those Conflicts? Bfieflly there is the notice provision discussed above: Berne bars all formalities; Universal permits member States to require a specified form of notice. The term of protection differs: Berne requires a term equal to. the life of the author plus 50 years after his death; Universal permits a 25-year term, measured from the date Of publi¬ cation or the death of the author as "may be provided iri each case by existing legislation. Berrie provides for the protection of the ; so-called “moral rights’’ of the author (the right not to have his work distorted; to receive ap? propriate screen credit, etc:) in spite of any contractual provision to the contrary— a subject which is not covered by the Universal Convention. Further, the provisions of the Berne Convention have retroactive effect as cpmpafd with the wholly prospective operation of the Universal. . Convittion. . If these provisions can be reconciled, it would appear possible to effect a merger between, thetwo conventions. First, let us consider the requirement of a copyright no¬ tice. Such a. .notice is. not . necessary, uhder bur law. irithe case. of unpublished works; it need not appear on. phono¬ graph records or tapes; it is rarely seen on the television screen. The result is that in those fields in which the greatest commercial use of iiterary and musical materials is itiade, the notice means nothing. On the other hand, if the wrong form of notice appears On a printed Work, the author’s property may be forfeited even though no user has been actually misled. This fate was suffered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Autocrat Of the Breakfast Table’’ and “Professor At the Breakfast Table.” The law reports are full of more recent examples. But most, of these cases never go to court because the author or publisher does not want to advertise the fact that his work has accident¬ ally fallen into the public domai If, as in Berne countries; copyright protection com¬ menced on creation of the work and continued until 50 years after the author’s death, ho form of statutory notice would be necesary, It would also avoid much , litigation; . arising out of the diffcult question of decidingwhether or hot a work has been “published.” The courts are divided as to whether the release of a phonograph record' before statutory copyright is obtained/ amounts . to a “publica¬ tion’.’ which destroys all common . law rights and . forfeits the right to secure statutory copyright. In addition, a term of life plus. 50 years would have the (Continued on page 217) By MIKl The continuing impact of new labels and new artists on the pop market has: raised anew the question of just how far out is left field. There’s no telling where the hits are coming from or by whom and the doors are still wide open to all comers. Small disk companies and performers Who.heretofore, had been confined to; their own. bailiwicks spread into national prominence; giving theyets and the majors a hard rUn for their money. A push by a local dee jay in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago or iSari Francis¬ co was enough to start a disk winging around the Coun¬ try. And the spread of the indies on the. national scene has further helped eliminate musical categorizations such country music, rhythm’ & blues, rock ’n’ roll and pops. The breakthrough and countrywide acceptance of all the styles has made it hard to tell just which is which and,, for the m°st part, they are all now being referred to as straight pop records.. This integration of regional, musical forms may well be part of the building of an . authentic musical Americana. The stylerblending also has given the pop music. busi-; ness a diversity that it’s, not had before. The pop single record buyefs: seem more willing tb accept a greater vari¬ ety of musical forms and they’re, not being bound to any particular artist, either: Along with the rock 'n’ roll clicks like “You Send Me,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Wake Up Little Susie” arid “Silhouettes,” substantial ballad entries like “Tammy,” “Chances Are,’’ “It’s Not For Me Tq Say,” “All The Way,” ‘i April LOve” and “Old Cape Cod” have beeri able to share the public’s interest. Even reworks of such standards as “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write My¬ self A Letter” arid “So Rare” came to share the, Spins with the r’ri’r beat. 1 It’s Still That ‘Beat’ f It’s stiir primarily and r’n’r disk world, though. The teenagers, who cbihprise the bulk of the pop singles buy¬ ing market, are continuing to call the beat. Major record¬ ing execs, who’ve watched the indies take the lead in. the . T’n’r sphere, however, are taking a lorigrange optimistic view of the trend: According to. them, the r’n’r platters are serving as an incubation for future packaged goods customers. The. passion for r’n’r, they say, Will diminish as the teeners grow, older but it will have conditioned them to music and record-buyirig which will rub off on their ppp albums, jazz arid classical product. SO it’s the' left field labels, they contend,: with their quick-buck clicks that are building an audience for the major’s long-buck Album catalog, The riiajors, though, are pot exactly being completely shut out of the indie boom: They’ve been picking up plenty of cash: by takmg on, the production, chores for the small outfits through their custom record division. The custom record divisions have been making it comparatively easy for anyone to take a crack at the disk business. All a disk impresario ’has to do is get a master, line up some dis¬ tributors and potent deejay contacts and ths majors will do all the mechanics of pressing and shipping. | . . . .. Custom Dept. Windfall ; ...... j Occasionally the custom record operation Jias caused spme unuSUal oCcufences; One of the most popular is the instance of RCA Victor's manufacturing plant being so tied up pressing for Dot Records that Victor's platter product had to be farmed out to MGM Record’s Bloomfield (N.J.) plant. Another aspect, of the indie breakthrough is its free¬ wheeling operation. Working without the problems Of a fixed overhead and a “loose” bookkeeping system, the indies have been able to knock the majors out of the box in key areas. Working with hustling freelance distributor setups, the indies have been able to kick off their product in the areas that serve as a springboard for nationwide prominence. It’s on the local level, particularly, that the. indies have been putscoring the majors with giveaway deals and “special” considerations: for deejays but this is all the start the,vask. And, as has been evidenced by the mppup during the past year, it’s all; they need. Since it’s open season in the disk business all year rOurid, more sinall labels than ever before have been abl, to climb on the national hit lists. Soine of the labels, in : fact, weren't even around tfie year before. The market became wide open for such left field diskery. entries as: Keen, Phillips; International, Cameo, Imperial, Chess, Aladdin, Roulette, Sun, Specialty, Gone, Ember, Checker, Ebb, Lance, Paris, Class, yee^Jay and Argo. Big indie companies /such as Kapp, Dot; Jubilee, arid Liberty: have long been giving the majors hard competi¬ tion. ; And just as therefore labels that weren’t around last year so are there artists who quickly climbed to the top on their first time out. Sam Cooke, Bill Justis, Everly Bros., The Rays, Johnny Mathis,’ Thurston Harris, Jimmie Rodgers; Buddy Knox, Danny & The Juniors, Margie Rayburri' Crickets, Shepherd Sissters, Bobby. Helms, Bobettes and Paul Anka are just a few who’Ve been riding the disk wave..’ However, the newcomers have been giving the industry a . new headache. In many instances they’re in-and-out performers, unable to follow up with a clicko side. The one-shot nature of ..the business has caused, plenty of. anguish with the record companies, distributors and publishers. Each in his own way goes all out on the followup platter only to find that the teenage fans have switched; to a new flash-in-the-platter. Despite the left' field inroads made by the indies, there’s ho crepe hangirig oyer the riiajors. RCA Victor, Columbia, Decca and Capitol fe running way ahead 2 GROSS in their sales take. They’ve gotten their share of the pop pull and have been cleaning up with the packaged product. It’s the mushrooming package field, in fact, that tradesters figure inay be the undoing of a lot of indie operations. After having picked lip some coin with the pop clicks, quite a few of the indies have been going after larger game in album field. It’s this splurge into the packaged fqods market that’s been making the indies nervous.^ At the $3.95 tag for a pop LP, the profit margin is pretty slim considering . the rising Costs in recording, art work, promotion, etc. The majors get by on volume sales while iridies; with a small; LP catalog to work with, have found . it tough sledding, to pull their line into the profit column. They’re not running scared yet, though, and are hold¬ ing the fort despite some nifty buyout offers/ They figure the market’s big and getting bigger and that they’ll even¬ tually' get their share. . And With the growing interest of motion picture, com¬ panies in the disk biz, the indies can. .afford to sit it out until some irresistabie offer comes up. Something like the Paramount buy of Dot Records, for example. Report¬ edly 20th-Fox and Warner Bros, also have been eyeing a disk operation of their own. Loew’s . has reshuffled its MGM Records division and United Artists kicked off its. own UA diskery label towards the end of the year. The film companies want in to the record business for moire than just pic tie>in: reasons. They realize its. a booming business and they want a share. Contributing factor to the disk sales boom is the emer¬ gence of platters as a hot supermarket item. In 1956 a total of 4,000 supers handled records. For 1957, 11,500 supers were in the disk business accounting for 16-18% of. all records sold. In '56 the supers accounted for $14,000,000 in disk sales. The figure for ’57 jumped to $40,000;000. With the supers concentrating mainly lowprice product, label’s concentrating on $1.49 to $1.98 LP product have come to the fore and such majors as RCA yictor .and Columbia have been driving on their lowprice Camden and Harmony lines, respectively. In the race fpr profits and clicks the companies have been developing new plans and sales structures. Follow¬ ing Columbia’s lead, RCA Victor and Capitol are now in the club business which figures to further broaden the record audience^ And starting in February, RCA Victor is raising its classical LP price to $4.98 following moves already made by Capitol and Mercury. Columbia, for the tirrie being, iS staying with the $3.98 tab. And in the singles field, RCA Victor has upped the price of it 45 rpm disks: to 98c from 89c with a 100% guarantee. I Arid also in an effort to win disk prominence the com¬ panies have been reshuffling their artists & repertoire setup. Steve Sholes took over at RCA Victor replacing Joe Carlton who formed his own company. Loew’s brought in Arnold Maxin to head up MGM Records with Morty Craft as his a&r chief, with Frank B. Walker and ‘Harry Meyerson exiting. Former went over to the parent Loew’s company as consultant While latter joined the a&r depart¬ ment at Decca Records. In a move, to get a part of the rock'n’roll business, Victor tapped cleffers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller as. freelance a&r men and songwriter-arranger Joe Sherman took over the a&r helm at Epic from the exiting Arnold Maxi On the longhair, level; Capitol begins the new year, with the Angel line in its pocket. Both Capitol and Arigel are owned by EMI (Electric & Musical Industries) and the switch was made to give the Angel line a stronger distribution setup. The record Industry’s shifts and switches are all being made with one goal in yiew. Everyone, majors and left field indies alike, is looking for a heftier cut of that predicted $400,000,000 take for ’58. Disques D%o & Other Data Oh The fallit Music Biz Paris. French version of “Gold Disk” toppers: Nri. 1 here Is still the romahticp, sugarbeet warbler, TinoRossi, who has sold 10,000,000 records in his career, about 450,000 annually. Other bigtime sellers are Charles Trenet, Edith Piaf, Luis Mariano, Georges Guetary, Yves Morilahd, Jac¬ queline Francois, Lucienne Delyle and the Italo Marino Marini. Slated for this category soon are Georges' Brasseris, Gloria Lasso, Philippe Clay, Dario Moreno, Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Becaud. Already in it, of course, Eddie Constantine. Though SACEM (the French counterpart of ASCAP) refuses to give out figures, the song setup seems to be in good shape fob. Over 30,000 neW ditties are still registered every; year, . and the licensing society shells out over $9,000,000 to its members every year. SDRM has been In ex¬ istence since 1901. It handles the. mechanicals, of. which the disk is now the inairi outlet. Songwriters' and music publishers now get 4% of the disk sales with 50% to the publisher, 25% to cleffer arid 25% to lyricist.. Top vocalists get about $500 to do a song Usually, but many do not go in for the payola activities. With disks arid radio time the main plugs, it usually costs a publisher about $2,500 per song to get it off the ground..The orie hit is counted on to cover the costs that the more than 20 pubs shell out fpr their myriad of entries. . With music hall and disks big, the song is again big show biz property here, and, along with the other facets of show biz, reflects and sums up the times and tastes.