The Ike Jackson Report: M. William Krasilovsky

BRM: For those who aren’t familiar with your background, explain who you are.

M. William Krasilovsky: I’m Bill Krasilovsky and I’ve been in the music business since 1953. Before 1953 I went up to Alaska to be a pioneer. I was working as an assistant to the federal judge of Alaska. The judge asked me when I applied for the job, “Why are you coming from Brooklyn all the way up here to take a job with me?” and I said “I want to be a pioneer and this is the last frontier.” Well three years after having won some plaudits in Alaska I got a job with a civil liberties law firm in New York. Arthur Garfield Hays was the head of the legal part of the American Civil Liberties Union and I found pioneering opportunities in the music business.

What made you write this book, The Music of Business?

I find it to be very much like the blueprint for today’s actual music business. If you turn around in my office, you’ll see a picture of Fats Waller. This civil liberties law firm gave me the assignment of straightening out the rights of the son of Fats Waller, who had been taken advantage of by music publishers. One of the worst examples was a person who gave $500 to this great jazz pianist for his rights in “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” a song which achieved worldwide success and is worth so much money that when I overturned the giveaway of the $500 deal, I was able to recommend that my friend - the son of Fats Waller - write a will, because he became very successful owning rights to his father’s catalog. The money was pouring in fast and furiously and he had a heart attack - because of the excitement when a Tony award winning show was given for the show Aint Misbehavin’ - and every week they were paying 4% of the box office for the rights to use the song from Fats Waller. That’s fun and games. That’s better than mentoring a 16-year-old.

I know you don’t agree with sampling. How much of your job now is dealing with copyright laws and sampling?

Well there are many lawyers out there looking for the opportunity to pay their school loans and sampling has been a wonderful happy hunting ground for lawyers. I looked up just the other day a song called “Yay Boy” from Africa, and I made $39,000 in legal fees that was honestly earned because I was able to go after a sample which could have been a lot cheaper if they had knocked on our doors saying, “We like the song ‘Yay Boy.’ We’d like to have permission to do it. Will you please tell me if $10,000 will be enough?” But if I got $39,000, obviously my client must have gotten well above $150,000.

Now that’s the happy hunting grounds for lawyers. Now, I don’t think that creative people should be stupid, and they shouldn’t just jump in saying, “Maybe they won’t catch me.” I don’t think they should necessarily have a lawyer by their side in the studio, although many people prefer it if they are executive producers. I’m not vain enough to say that everyone has to ask my permission before they make a mistake.... I’m also honest enough to say I’m old fashioned. I’m 82 years old; I like the songs of Porgy and Bess. I like the songs of Ain’t Misbehavin’. I like the songs that Quentin Marsalis uses in jazz. I am very happy to represent the widows and children of the great standard songs.

What other legendary artists have you helped?

I did a job for ‘My Funny Valentine’ for the estate of Lorenz Hart that takes in a million dollars a year. That’s awfully nice. It all goes to a favorite charity of this early deaf individual, Lorenz Hart. Now, today’s hip-hop generation, I think, are full of opportunists almost taking as bad advantage as Fats Waller was suffered when he died at the age of 41, having given away all his copyrights. Fortunately we have statutes that protect against improvidence and that’s what I specialize in.

That’s what I write about in my book - how to protect against improvidence, that means a lousy deal, how to unwind a lousy deal. In England I discovered you can unwind a lousy deal. Any deal that was made before 1956 can be unwound 20 years after the death of the composer. My god, the widow will be starving like 25 years after her husband died but nevertheless the statute in England was very concerned they said wait 25 years and then we’ll give you your copyrights back. We arranged under my guidance over $750,000 to be spent going up to the House Of Laws in England fighting the entire music industry of England and we got 40,000 songs back against improvidence. In America, we do it under the Law of Termination and again, I love having that in my book where I can educate people like you of how to get rid of a lousy deal.

How do you feel about people being subjected to a 25 % overall compulsory sample fee?

See, I know that you are educated. You know that there is a 9.1% license called a statutory rate for mechanical licenses and you’re trying to tell me that if Congress, in its wisdom, said that anybody can make a song into a record and say, “Screw you, I don’t want to have to beg anymore. I'm gonna give you 9.1% take it or leave it,” that’s the statutory thought about mechanical licensing, and what you’re suggesting is “Hey, lets go one step further, lets protect hip-hop,” and say everybody can say “I wanna take your ‘My Funny Valentine’ or your ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ and I want to sample it and I’ll give you 25% and I get as much as 50%. So thank you very much”…get outta here.

But for a way of commerce? I’m looking at it from the mechanics of hip-hop work. To produce a lot of records, the actual basis of hip-hop is sales.

Now listen to me on this. There was this song called “Pretty Woman” and it’s a song that was featured in a movie that launched the career of lots of important actors and actresses. And in “Pretty Woman” they say, “Tell me about the glories and wonders of the lovely hair and complexion of a pretty woman.” I was called in for “Ugly Woman” - that was a parody, making fun of the country folks who were wanting the pleasures of beholding a pretty woman. That was 2 Live Crew. Now that’s ancient history in your world, but 2 Live Crew were [popular] in the days of yesterday. The United States Supreme Court accepted my affidavit and the expert I brought in saying this is justified. You don’t have to pay one penny to make a parody, which is free speech. However, what you people wanna do is get on the back of a successful song and sneak it in there as the underlying theme song or the key part and say, “Hey, I’ll give you 25 cents on the dollar, aren’t you happy?” The answer is no, I’m not happy. You’re taking my child and adopting it for a weekend. Thanks a lot. Get outta here.

If I make a rap record or my brother makes a rap record, after that record hits the air commercially not only does the original record play, which I don’t get a part of that copyright, any remixes play on other stations, the artists themselves are actually allowed to restart their career. I feel there is an indirect price that would help both parties… because you have the digital age and because the inventory usage is much higher than a regular record. So they may consume 100 records a month in purchasing versus buying maybe one or two records in a month, which would be an old business model.

Now, you’re allowed to insult, if you’re gonna turn “Pretty Woman” into “Ugly Woman With You Hairy Legs.” That’s what they did for 2 Live Crew. That’s free and clear. You’re allowed a 100% to make fun of or to criticize or to write a music report in which you quote portions of what you’re criticizing…that’s 100% free. You’re saying to me, “It’s all money. Why doesn’t everyone get in the marketplace and peddle your soul into the rap audience because you’re discriminating against us young folks for not letting us have “As Time Goes By”? Now “As Time Goes By” is the trademark for Warner Brothers pictures and I’ve arranged for my clients to get paid every time that song is used and also to get paid when it’s not used - that’s the deal. If you want to make this into your trademark you have to give us a $50,000 year penalty if you don’t use it. I’m saying don’t adopt my children. I’ve got four of them. I like them very much.

Now, about mixtapes, at all radio stations, the promotional departments and actual music directors - not the programmers - turn a blind eye to mixtapes. Don’t you think the radio stations are required to at least pay something to help?

What you’re saying in your generosity is touching a sore wound of the music and radio industries. Radio and television contribute 8 billion dollars a year to ASCAP, BMI and CSAC for the right to have access, without kissing ass, to each of the owners of the songs. But they don’t pay one penny to the record companies for all of the Frank Sinatra or Ludacris records that are being played. They pay only the publishers and songwriters. It’s a sore wound, so congress has said, “Oh yeah, we have to do something about that.” So within the last few years they said, “Oh boy, we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna give money for digital broadcasting.” That’s when radio and television will pay artists and record companies, but artists and record companies are left high and dry on the billion-dollar payoff to ASCAP, BMI and CSAC. So what your saying is something where you could spend the rest of your life lobbying in Washington but so far it’s nickels and dimes going in for digital radio. How much digital radio have you seen so far that’s serious? It’s small time. And it might be growing but they’re saying we can’t book the establishment but we can insist that new media of digital has to perform a fair and honest shake. They pay ASCAP, they pay BMI, and they pay CSAC for publishers and writers. Always remember, the music industry consists of a sound -which is the master recording- and a song, which is the songwriter’s contribution. Arrangers don’t get paid.

If the RIAA and everybody knows mixtapes are an open wound, what you’re doing is encouraging copyright infringement instead of perhaps licensing it and saying “Okay, if you’re going to do a mixtape and DJ, then you can pay a certain rate and put it on the mixtape and maybe it goes through the actual government for watermarking.”

I’ll tell you, if I were hired at a couple hundred dollars an hour to consult with you I’d say, “My God, you seem to be right.” The movie industry has billions and billions of dollars and they are completely taming the music industry to allow cue sheets. Every time a movie is made they have a cue sheet for 23 seconds of “As Time Goes By” and 1 minute 4 seconds for “Ain’t She Sweet” and they go down the entire list so that that list is official. Now why can’t the mixtape people stop their jive-assing and write down or get a secretary to write down what they’ve mixed? And then they can inform them at BMI and CSAC what share of the broadcast billion dollars should go to the publishers and writers that are encompassed within the mixtape. Then, if it’s going to be a mixtape that’s on the digital then maybe they can tell SoundExchange, which is the equivalent of ASCAP and BMI, CSAC, for the artist and get a cue sheet. That’s my answer. Prepare a cue sheet. Do the homework. I don’t want to do it for you.

But shouldn’t the industry then create a mixtape cue sheet and make it available?

There’s a philosophic issue going on right now as to whether CDs should be outlawed more or less - not outlawed as much as law - but should be forgotten about as we go into the digital single song business. So that the costumer can pick the singles song and not have to buy ten more songs in order to listen to all the songs. That’s a major issue in today’s music business. Whether we should police singles as sort of ransom, trying to get people to buy the total album with all the money. And you’re saying the mixtape is supreme albumizing of the music industry because they have 20 mixed masters and 20 mixed songs and you just get a cue sheet? Do the job. Then you have to kiss ass and get permission.

But kids don’t get permission because they’re breaking records. That’s why I said they need a license, like a blanket fee that you can charge and make a place where you can actually print the cue sheets out and say, “Okay, here’s my cue sheet, these are the songs I’ve had to press on it. I’m giving you a copy of it, here’s my $150 that will go towards this copyright stuff for blanks in my community.”

Once again you’re saying that you think that the statutory rate should be carried over into the mixtape world. It’s the same thing you talked about recently on sampling. Please don’t take my children. Irving Berlin was one of the world’s greatest songwriters and he wouldn’t allow people to take his songs for compilations that would make a combined song with other people’s songs, which was like an early version of what sampling is. A mixtape is now the same thing. So again, don’t adopt my children without my permission.

How do you feel about hip-hop having additional tax benefits or tax breaks because there are so many unemployed young black men. Like, what they do for the music industry, what about something in the hip-hop community to help unemployed black men?

I have a young nephew who left the United States to become a citizen of Holland. He told me that he is very fortunate because in Europe they have something better than our National Endowment of the Arts. We have a nationally funded National Endowment of the Arts, which pays money to American jazz musicians, for example, to help support culture. In Europe, he got $100,000 for exploring and suggesting how they could have better video production for international cooperation of culture. In the United States, it used to be a happy hunting ground for young people to look for a grant on a National Endowment of the Arts. I call your attention to the fact that the conservative Republican majority in congress has severely cut back the budgets for the endowment of the arts. I’m 100% in favor of what you’re saying. Let’s have a cultural tax so that we can enhance more opportunities. I will say both ASCAP and BMI and CSAC do help young black jazz artists and I think maybe hip-hop has an element maybe similar to jazz.

Wouldn’t it make sense to put a tax on the actual carriers online? I would tax Verizon and all the telephone carriers an estimate of what we would lose. If you manufacture CDs, the people who manufacture this stuff, there will be a tax placed on the CD so even if the CD is out there, no matter who made it, there’s a tax on it. Wouldn’t it make sense to collect it from the actual distribution lines?

What you’re saying is an excellent idea and it’s already in the law. Blank tapes, blank CDs, pay a tax. Now, what you’re saying is, “Who the hell is getting it?” I think that money is probably put through SoundExchange. I’d have to explore it. Maybe I could find it in The Music of Business - in the 400 pages of my book, I think I do cover the tax.

I understand the blank tapes but for digital recordings, it doesn’t exist. When I put my copies online, the telephone companies become complicit in the crime. They should just add a fee, because they’re gonna pass it on to the costumer anyways. So add in $3 or $4 in tax to whatever the telephone user would bring in yearly.

I notice that you came to my office with an Apple computer. I have one too and I’m very interested, being an old man, in observing new technology. I pop in a CD that I get and my computer identifies not only who wrote the song but also the artwork. So we live in an age of computer technology where all of this can fed into a data bank and what your saying probably is, “Who’s gonna do the feeding, but lets get the money.” Let’s have that tax that you’re talking about and properly allocate it. You might have an excellent suggestion and I think maybe a little more investigation might show that it’s already available if we get people who are smart enough to use the technology of computers to split up the money. I know I was once an arbitrator for BMI and somebody said, “My songs get played in country fairs and in stadiums, and I don’t get my share,” and BMI said it would cost them $2 to count every song that was played at every country fair and that they couldn’t afford to pay that cost. Therefore, they take the country fair money and put it into the radio group saying that’s a fair way to allocate. And the poor jerk who was appearing in that particular matter was not being played on the radio he was just being played at country fairs and he didn’t get anything. Well, ASCAP has something where when you have a plea of poverty because of situations like that they do have an allocation of something like 2% of the right of money that’s available for special awards for - not needy - but deserving, special exceptions.