Musicians Unions Avoiding Digital Rights Fight, For Now

The fight over digital royalty payments that tore up Hollywood late last year could soon come to the music world. While musicians unions like AFM and AFTRA help artists by establishing minimal payments, seeking health insurance and negotiating contracts, the unions have avoided getting involved in the fight over digital rights and royalties. As of now, artists negotiate separate digital rights contracts with labels outside of the unions, but that could change in 2010, when the current AFTRA contract expires. When a new contract is drawn up, the unions can then pursue introducing widespread digital rights details into standardized contracts. Such an action could help prevent many of the lawsuits going now concerning digital rights, including a class action suit filed against Sony BMG by acts like the Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick over digital downloads and ringtones. "This period of time between 2008 and 2010 is a window of opportunity for artists to come together through their union to address an issue collectively that heretofore they have looked at as an individual issue," says AFTRA national executive director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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