December 02, 2009

By By Chris M. Walsh, N.Y.

Tim Quirk, the singer for early '90s alternative band Too Much Joy, lit up the blogosphere this week by pulling back the curtain on an aspect of the music business that doesn't lend itself to transparency - artist royalty accounting. After receiving what he considered to be an incomplete accounting statement from the Warner Music Group, he detailed the experience on his blog in a post titled "My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement."

Quirk has unique insight here, as his full-time gig is at Rhapsody, where he is VP of music programming (a statement from Rhapsody is included below). His issue is not about money - even though Too Much Joy released three albums on Giant Records from 1990 through 1992 and is a staggering $395,000 away from being recouped - and more about the process of reporting.

"As a matter of policy, we don't comment on specific terms of artists' agreements," said a Warner Music representative in an e-mailed statement. "Accurate accounting to our artists is a high priority for WMG. We take these issues seriously and Mr. Quirk's implications to the contrary are flat-out wrong."

We talked to Quirk this morning about his statement.

What were you hoping to accomplish by posting the royalty statement on your blog?
Two things. The first was, I?m tired and frustrated from having to ask for something that?s contractually obligated ? accurate accounting. It was silly to me that I had to push so hard for something that should come naturally. And then when I got it, I was so underwhelmed and depressed. So, partly I?m trying to prod them into giving me what they?re obligated to, which is a statement, not money. Just an accurate accounting. Secondly, this is complicated stuff that most people don?t have a lot of insight into and I figured being as transparent as possible would do some good.

You said Warner wasn?t "being evil, just careless and unconcerned" in your blog post. Has anyone from Warner contacted you with an update?
About five minutes ago I got an email from the unnamed business affairs guy, who didn?t reference the post, but it says [reading email]: "Folks are running a special report. I think some additional sales activity was located. Trust you?ll get something soon."

Is this going to affect your gig at Rhapsody at all?
I don?t believe so. I don?t see why it would.

In the post I think you mentioned that you helped build the database that manages royalties at Rhapsody. Is that true?
I wouldn?t go as far to say that I built the database that manages royalty payments, but I helped build the content database that the royalty database keys off of, and I?m intimately involved to make sure everything is up and running properly, that we?re reporting to labels and things like that. I have a comprehensive understanding of what is and isn?t complicated about this.

One of the important things to me is that IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) can do this easily. IODA tells me exactly to the penny each month how much I?ve earned from multiple services. Whether its Rhapsody, Ecast, Verizon, Nokia ? there?s dozens. And if IODA can do it ? clearly the problem isn?t that Apple isn't reporting, because Apple is reporting to IODA, and IODA is reporting to me on Apple activity. Services, such as the one I work for, are reporting to thousands of labels. If the services are reporting to the labels, and other labels are reporting to their artists, there?s no reason why a major can report to all of their artists.

Why do you think they are slow reporting to you?
One, its hard. Second, it?s expensive. Those were good excuses five years ago, maybe four years ago. They?re not good excuses five years running. IODA got something up and running in a year. Yes, its an investment, but its an investment you make once and it's one you have to make. If they can report to REM and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they could and should be reporting accurately to everybody.

The things on the statement that didn?t make sense to me were three-fold. One, it was so hard to get. Second, it completely failed to account for any domestic downloads. That?s unacceptable and inexplicable in my mind. And third, it was missing one of my albums.

What?s been the reaction to the post?
Kind of overwhelming. It broke our sad little site (laughs). I had to purchase some additional SQL connections from the host last night. It?s 8:30 AM here in California and its already done more pageviews today than all of yesterday.

What's the pageviews total?
Yesterday was 29,701 and today it?s 34,276 [at 11:30 AM eastern]. It got picked up by Village Voice blog, the Stranger blog in Seattle, the Daily Swarm, and one of the biggest drivers has been the Onion AV blog. Lefsetz tweeted it last night. Hypebot picked it up this morning.

Anything you?d like to add in?
I?d like to stress, and I tried to in the piece, that none of my frustrations should be taken as saying anything against the two people [at Warner] who have been politely responding to my requests and trying to get me the information. I don?t want them to regret actually helping me.

Rhapsody Update:
"Tim Quirk?s views are his own and do not reflect those of Rhapsody management," read an e-mailed statement from a Rhapsody representative. "Rhapsody and our label partners are focused on ensuring that artists and copyright holders are compensated appropriately. After years of working together with Warner Music, we believe the company has made every effort to provide accurate accounting to its artists and copyright holders. The number of parties involved makes this a very complex problem to solve, but one that we, as an industry, are committed to solving."

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