Title I of the Music Modernization Act created the first US mechanical licensing CMO. This was an event that had been coming for oh, say 100 years round numbers. The first difference between the US and most other countries is that in the US there is not equal board representation between publishers and songwriters. This is an insult to songwriters.

Notwithstanding this inherent flaw in the governance, the promoters of Title I crowed about how wonderful it was that songwriters will relegated to a minority position on the board–even though they simultaneously bray that “it all begins with a song.” Well, maybe not, eh?

That’s right–in the rest of the world, songwriters have at least equal representation on their collectives. But not the MLC where the inequality is baked into the statute that created it, leaving nothing to chance. Just call it what it is, it’s an insult. And not a casual insult or the insult of low expectations. This insult is right in your face. (Assuming, of course, that the board does anything except rubber stamp what it is told by the nonvoting board members which is how it looks.)

During the comment period for the re-up of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, there no doubt will be a lot of rending of garments about the unfairness of the MLC’s board composition. That’s all fine, but know this: You will not change the board composition until you change the mindset that produced the board composition.

What is astonishing about how this happened is that before they get to Washington, all these publishers with a majority of MLC board seats have good relations with songwriters and value their writers. Do we have arguments inside the family? Sure. But something happens to these publishers when they get to Washington, DC and they go rogue or they are encouraged to go rogue.

So I would encourage these board members to come back to your values and what you hold dear and don’t listen to the bad advice. The bad advice didn’t build your companies; your relations with your songwriters did. Yet there is such hostility toward this board composition that it will take you years to overcome the insult and the distrust it produced. It didn’t have to happen that way and it should not be allowed to continue.