What do you think of when you hear the term “lobbyist?” Personally, I think of a slick-talking lawyer type representing an oil company. Earlier this week, I got to play that role for a day. The dictionary definition of a lobbyist is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest. My fellow lobbyists and I were on Capitol Hill representing the interests of artists and musicians. Every special interest group has an Issue, so let me explain ours.

When a song is recorded, there is intellectual property created that belongs to both the writer and performer of the song. In my case, I write my own songs so those two roles are one in the same. But quite often in commercial music, artists are not the writers of their own songs. For example, Beyonce’s song “Irreplaceable (To The Left)” was actually written by Ne-Yo, and the classic Aretha Franklin song, “Natural Woman” was written by Carole King. In the US, performance royalties are collected by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC from companies like Clear Channel and are then distributed to songwriters and publishers. These royalties represent a small fraction of the ad revenue generated by radio stations for playing all those annoying commercials between songs. The Issue is that when songs are played on the radio, songwriters receive a performance royalty and the performers of the song do not. Carole King gets paid when “Natural Woman” is played, Aretha doesn’t. There’s really no good reason for this other than that the legislation is outdated. This system was originally put in place back in 1909 before vinyl records become ubiquitous, and there was really no such thing as a commercial sound recording. Back then, when you heard music on the radio, it was actually being played by a live band in the studio. Since then, the strength of the broadcasters’ own lobby (Clear Channel et. al.) has kept the legislation from being updated (for more detailed explanation, check here: http://www.musicfirstcoalition.org/ ). Currently, the US is the only developed nation that doesn’t pay performance royalties to artists. Other nations with our setup include China, North Korea and Iran.

And so I was asked to join a group of over 100 artists and music producers on Capitol Hill to lobby for this Issue. The night before the “fly-in” on Capitol Hill, we had a briefing session at the Capitol Hilton in DC. To be honest, I wasn’t intimately aware of the Issue until that night. As a songwriter, I’ve always registered my songs with BMI, gotten my (very modest) performance royalty checks and never really thought twice about it. But that night at the session, it was interesting to hear from artists like Duke Fakir (the last remaining member of the Four Tops) who’ve had hit numerous hits on the radio and have never been compensated for them as the person whose voice you actually hear. After the briefing, I went back to my hotel room and studied the packet of material of they gave us. I wanted to make sure I really earned my stripes as a lobbyist.

The next day we got up early, and ventured through a clear, cold morning to Capitol Hill. The large gathering from the previous night had been broken into smaller groups so we could hit as many congressional offices as possible. My group consisted of three artists (myself, a soul music producer, and a Scottish Fiddler), a lawyer and an actual full-time lobbyist. We hit five congressional offices that day beginning on the “Senate Side” of the Hill at the Hart Senate Office Building. The Hart Building had a line out the door waiting to get through the metal detector. I imagined that everyone in line was a lobbyist of some sort, eagerly awaiting their chance to advocate on behalf of their Issue. Although we had appointments at all of the offices we hit, I noticed that there was really no checkpoint at the door to these congressional office buildings other than a metal detector. This means that technically anyone with an Issue could actually walk into these buildings. Of course, getting in isn’t the same thing as actually having an appointment. Still, you could always walk in and harass anyone recognizable you saw in the hallways and elevators. That’s probably why they had “Senators Only” elevators.

I should point out that of the five meetings we had, exactly zero were with the actual congressperson. The only member of congress we met was Russ Feingold, and that’s just because we ran into him the hallway (after we were introduced to Russ, he hurried into the “Senator’s Only” elevator). As it turns out, congressional “Staffers” are the real force behind a lot of what goes on in congress. We met with Staffers representing Senators Mikulski and Cardin on the Senate Side and other Staffers presenting Members Norton, Goodlatte, and Forbes on the House Side. The Staffers we met with ranged from uninformed to very informed when it came to our Issue. When they were uninformed, we were more than happy to start at the beginning explain our side of the Issue. When they were informed, we tried to address their specific concerns. The responses from these Staffers ranged from seeming ambivalence to being squarely on our side, to being on the other side of the Issue. Each time we made our case, and promised to follow up. When they asked us to “follow-up” that seemed to mean “please remind us about your Issue in a few weeks – we intend to forget all about it in the meantime.”

During my time on Capitol Hill, I noticed a few things that I hadn’t expected. The “Senate Side” and “House Side” of the Hill are actually on different sides of the Capitol Building. There’s a subway that runs between them, but only members of congress can use it. In the congressional office buildings, the clocks on the walls have lights by all the numbers. They light up to indicate when the next floor vote is going to be. Since floor votes can’t be cast by proxy, if a congressman misses the vote, they miss their chance to weigh in on that Issue. Bells also go off in the hallways – kinda feels like being in high school. Lastly, I figured with everything going on in the world – wars, economic recessions, etc. – the members of congress would have no time focus on our Issue. To paraphrase one of the Staffers – “There’s always stuff going on in the world, if we waited for it to get quiet, we’d never get anything done.”

There's currently legislation moving through the House and Senate now that would fix the artist royalty Issue. I'll keep you posted.