Only drug dealers and Big Tech refer to their “customers” as “users.”

We really appreciate how Trichordist readers have stuck with the story we have been telling about the treachery afoot at the Copyright Royalty Board in the current review of statutory mechanical royalty rates. This is kind of dry stuff but it sure has resulted in a lot of passion from the songwriting community.

That passion is directed at the frozen mechanical–the collaboration between the big publishers and big record companies to “freeze” the statutory mechanical royalty for physical goods at 2006 levels despite the current inflationary crises and debasement of the value of even the frozen rate itself. We will have more to publish on that subject to call your attention to the voices of songwriters and publishers opposing the freeze.

Ask yourself this question: Is there any reason that a songwriter who opposes a freeze on mechanicals–the only question they were asked to respond to by the Copyright Royalty Board–would ever support a reduction in the streaming mechanical? Would anyone say, oh, well if Spotify is asking for a reduction, then by all means? If you thought the passion against frozen mechanicals ran high, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

But in one of the great acts of self-sabatoge that they are so good at, that passion is currently being hijacked by some of the biggest companies in commercial history to somehow convince us that less is more. Remember–these are the same people who benefit from the sick mass manipulation and addiction practiced and normalized by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.

And now they are trying to use that trickery and psychology on songwriters to gaslight them into ignoring reality and supporting the chaos at the Copyright Royalty Board.

We will be posting a series of excerpts from public filings in coming days. If you want to skip ahead, you can read this letter from Chris Castle to the Copyright Royalty Board roasting the services for twisting the words of Helienne Lindvall, David Lowery and Blake Morgan.