Un-unrecouped

Three proposals for righting decades of economic wrongs to music's Black creators/pioneers, all from June 2020, when the industry was pausing for a day to ponder the systemic racism within. "Give Black artists their master recordings back instead" of taking that day off, producer WHOAREI wrote in a since-deleted Tumbler post that made the simplest and, all things considered, most radical argument of all. "Those that want out of their contracts, let them out." USC professor JOSH KUN went viral with a similarly bold suggestion that labels and platforms "start with amending contracts... and retroactively paying back all the Black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on." Music lawyer RONALD E. SWEENEY drilled down into specifics, as if he were writing record companies' own business plans for them, in a 12-point plan that proposed, among other things, that labels "zero out [the] unrecouped royalty balances" of "Black artists signed to you prior to 2000, that are no longer signed to your companies." A slightly smaller ask but still a big one. It was easy to believe, as recently as 12 month ago, that none of these ideas would get past the front doors of a major record company, no matter how often they were tweeted, retweeted and otherwise cheered. Record companies aren't normally in the business of ripping up contracts and renouncing royalties they believe they're owed.

But last week, SONY MUSIC sampled generously from Ronald Sweeney's proposal with a surprising—shocking even—decision to stop counting unrecouped royalties against the earnings of any artist "signed... prior to the year 2000" who hasn't received an advance since then. Sony isn't zeroing out the debt of the exact group of artists Sweeney was targeting; it just isn't going to use the debt to garnish the earnings of that exact group of artists anymore. Sony's new policy affects any artist who meets the criteria, not just Black artists, but it addresses specific complaints that Black artists and their advocates have raised over the years. It doesn't retroactively pay back lost royalties and it doesn't return their masters, but it will immediately change—and improve—the way many of them are paid. And it kicks a door open in a way that invites followup questions: Why not do those other things, too? Why not keep going? Why not wipe more slates clean? Do retroactive pay and returning masters sound as radical as they did a year ago, or even a week ago?

Sony's move, revealed in a letter to artists that was leaked to various sites Friday, also answered a challenge from indie giant the BEGGARS GROUP, which several years ago started zeroing out the unrecouped debt of artists 15 years after their "active relationship" with any Beggars label ends. (Artists' debts to labels, unlike contracts, normally have no expiration date.) Beggars, which also raised the streaming royalty rate for its catalog artists, challenged major labels to do something similar. A laudable challenge. But it's clear Sony was directly responding to a year of record industry reckoning intersecting with Black Lives Matter protests. The reckoning and the protests are by no means over and there are plenty of specific asks still on the table, including concrete improvements to diversity in record company hiring and equality in pay. Change will take time, #TheShowMustBePaused co-founder BRIANNA AGYEMANG told Rolling Stone's ELIAS LEIGHT recently. But "we can't slow down." Ronald Sweeney, for now, is "actually smiling. Something really good finally happened for the people who need it most."

Dot Dot Dot

TANIA LEÓN wins the Pulitzer Prize in Music for "STRIDE," commissioned by the NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC as part of its 2020 celebration of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which cemented women's right to vote... Chicago is giving away LOLLAPALOOZA passes as incentives for residents to get a Covid vaccine.

Rest in Peace

JUAN NELSON, longtime bassist for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals... RICHARD ANTHONY NUNNS, New Zealand musician and scholar of traditional Māori instruments.