After an intense lobbying effort that yielded the first changes to copyright law in two decades, the hard part begins.
The music industry now has less than 90 days to agree upon a board of directors for a new licensing collective mandated by the Music Modernization Act. The board will comprise 10 music publishers, four songwriters who own their publishing rights and three nonvoting advisers, including one to represent the digital music services.
Nomination discussions are underway, and sources expect that half of the publishing seats will be filled by executives from the three major publishers, BMG and Kobalt Music Group, while the other five will come from independent publishers. Meanwhile, the Nashville Songwriters Association International and Songwriters of North America are working to nominate candidates for the songwriter board seats.