The guilds representing the creative talent that captivates wireless audiences as they enjoy mobile films, television and music are focused on securing fair compensation for their artists in future contracts and licenses.
The Screen Actors Guild has its sights on contract negotiations scheduled for 2008; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is negotiating new licenses; and the Writers Guild of America has set mid July as the start date for negotiations on a contract set to expire on Halloween.
As guilds aim to strike forward-thinking deals, the fast-changing pace of new-media platforms and their delivery methods is challenging them.
“Mobile represents another opportunity for member’s rights to be exploited in ways that hadn’t been available to them previously,” ASCAP executive Christopher Amenita said. “These new methods of exploitation are coming into play and the assumption is that there will be new revenue opportunities for songwriters and publishers and other copyright owners that didn’t exist 20 years ago.”
Current model outdated
The entertainment industry employs a complex distribution system when it comes to paying the creative minds whose talents are delivered to our TV screens, speakers and headphones-guilds merely want to ensure those same rules apply in the mobile environment.
“We’re trying to license those new forms of exploitation,” Amenita said.
The complexities reflect the whole creative process, which by its very structure is rarely if ever accomplished by one entity. Artists’ rights are sought based on that understanding.
ASCAP is also keenly aware of the need for exposure; without it there’s no money to be shared anyway.
“What we’re trying to do is strike a balance,” Amenita said. “For any up and coming artist . there’s a balance that comes with it.”
Mobile in new model
ASCAP is currently involved in numerous licensing negotiations that would cover the work distributed to mobile devices.
“You have all these different ways music is being used and exploited based on a mobile platform,” Amenita said. “The mobile space, and now we’re talking about ringtones in particular, has probably been the most successful part of the delivery.”
Listeners will continue to access digital music tracks via legal and illegal means. But, more importantly, the money ASCAP currently collects from the entire digital space still pales in comparison to what it receives under traditional distribution and business models for media.
“We collect close to $800 million per year . the amount of money that we’re getting from the digital space . is less than $20 million,” Amenita said.
“It’s a steady growth, but the growth reflects the industry itself,” he said. “We’re beginning to see all of this come together slowly.”
Actors in similar bind
SAG finds itself at a crossroads similar to the one it navigated more than 20 years ago in response to the advent of basic cable television.
SAG has successfully hammered out some individual deals with studios creating content made exclusively for mobile while it gears up to negotiate for pay schedules for all forms of content when its contract expires on June 30, 2008.
“I think that the key is that we’re looking for fair compensation for our performers wherever their work is used,” said Ray Rodriguez, deputy executive national director of contracts at SAG. “This new media is bringing all of that into play.”
Networks and studios routinely claim they are using SAG members’ work in mobile for promotional purposes to skirt the additional payments required for the use of that work, but SAG argues money is being made thanks to that use.
“Certainly I think that there is difficulty in describing a promotional usage of product where revenue’s being generated as a result of the usage,” Rodriguez said. “These are all issues that are going to be on the table in 2008 during our negotiations.”
