Calif. Passes on Album Contract Limit
Benefit concerts and star-filled promenades to Capitol hearing rooms have proved a failing cause for California’s recording artists, who have lost their yearlong bid to cap their record contracts at seven years.
On the verge of an Assembly committee hearing last week where their idea lacked the votes to pass, Sen. Kevin Murray, a former music agent, withdrew the bill, promising to try again next year.
“After months of negotiations on the seven-year-issue, the RIAA and the recording artists were at an impasse on several major points,” singer and Eagles drummer Don Henley said in a statement.
Henley and others who testified for the artists’ campaign, including Courtney Love, Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, said standard multi-album contracts bind singers for much of their careers to the same label, greatly limiting their musical and financial options.
Record industry officials maintain they must hold their successful acts to long-term recording contracts that help cover losses from the majority of acts that fail.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which led the fight against the bill, declined comment.
Categories