Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights takes on BMI and ASCAP

Former artist manager Irving Azoff has lured songwriters with the promise he can get 30% more for them from radio stations and online platforms than they’re getting from US performing rights organisations ASCAP and BMI.

With his new rights management venture, Global Music Rights, Azoff has allegedly already signed on acts like Pharrell Williams, Megadeath, Smokey Robinson, Bruno Mars, John Lennon and the Eagles to the enterprise.

The company is a direct response to the industry’s concerns that artists are being misrepresented in the digital space, with ASCAP and BMI controlling around 95% of songs in the US. Earlier this year Sony/ATV Music Publishing CEO Marty Bandier told the publisher’s US songwriters he intended to withdraw completely from the two PROs.

Global Music Rights Executive Randy Grimmett, who was previously ASCAP’s EVP of Membership, said a #1 track with around 40 million plays on Pandora would collect just US$2,200 in royalties under ASCAP and BMI.

Azoff said he will demand higher rates from radio stations and online services and pay less in administration fees.

“I vowed when I started this company that I was going to take care of artists,” Azoff told the NY Times. “So I tried to identify places where I felt that artists were not getting a fair deal, and the performance rights area jumped out at me. It was a place where I felt I could help our writers.”

Azoff exited from Live Nation and Front Line Management Group in January last year after three years as Executive Chairman. Global Music Rights is part of his Azoff MSG Entertainment (a joint venture with the Madison Square Garden Company).

BMI president and CEO Mike O’Neill commented on Azoff’s venture: “BMI stands behind its royalty payment methodology, which values music across a wide and diverse range of uses and media and which applies equally and fairly to all writers, composers and publishers.

“We believe the departure of certain affiliates for such new organisations is driven not by any concern with this methodology but, rather, by the latitude that these unregulated organisations have to address the needs of the modern rights marketplace.”