You may not have heard of MoZella, a songwriter and performer from Detroit, but you absolutely know her work. She co-wrote “Wrecking Ball,” a smash for Miley Cyrus that has over 1 billion views on YouTube and became a No. 1 hit for the singer — thanks, in part, to its notorious video of Miss Cyrus riding the titular implement of destruction in the nude.
The song has been streamed on Pandora 250 million times, for which Miss Cyrus has made big bucks and MoZella just three grand.
“It’s wrong,” MoZella told The Washington Times at the “We Write the Songs” event on Capitol Hill hosted by ASCAP, which is lobbying Congress to change laws so that those who write the songs aren’t so unfavorably treated.
Even apart from the song proper, Miss Cyrus also took in millions for touring behind “Wrecking Ball,” but due to the current state of affairs, MoZella saw not a penny of those earnings.
“It was the biggest song three years ago. [Miss Cyrus] made money on the artist side for sales, but she also toured on the song, which writers don’t participate in,” MoZella said. “I don’t think people realize [songwriters] are all independent business owners. And this business wouldn’t exist without songs.”
The Internet has turned the music industry upside down since the turn of the millennium, when programs like Napster and other with file-sharing sites no longer required consumers to visit the record store.. While iTunes and other legal services have since gotten some money back into the pockets of the artists, the old model — touring to support the album versus the other way around — has ended.
For songwriters it’s even worse.
“We’re not trying to take away from” the recording artists, MoZella said, adding that Miss Cyrus and others she music writes for, such as Madonna, are sympathetic to her dilemma. “On top of the [record] labels making a 14:1 ratio to publishers and writers, they’re also participating in touring and merch and perfume deals and clothing deals. So they’re making hand-over-fist more money than we are.”
The problem can be traced to a consent decree from the 1940s that essentially prohibits songwriters from engaging in collective bargaining and setting their rates for compensation. Envisioned as an anti-monopoly policy, the seven-plus-decade-old copyright decree prohibits publishers from examining fair market price ranges to pay songwriters.
“There’s a piece of the copyright law that says they’re not allowed to know what everyone else is doing, so they can’t look at fair rate market to give us a rate,” MoZella said. “So they can’t look and see, ’oh, labels are making this much.’ They just say ’that’s what you get.’”
The issue has drawn bipartisan support in Congress, chief among them Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and himself a songwriter.
At “We Write the Songs” Mr. Hatch, accompanied by ASCAP president and music legend Paul Williams, spoke about the need to update federal music licensing laws for the digital marketplace. Mr. Hatch related how he himself wrote gospel songs as a young man, and he remains an ASCAP member to this day.
SEE ALSO: Stephen King vs. Donald Trump: Literary community demands ‘forceful response’ to campaign
Mr. Hatch and MoZella were joined by such other scribes as Desmond Child (“Livin’ on a Prayer”), Brian McKnight (“Back at One”), Jennifer Higdon (“Our Beautiful Country” from the film “Cold Mountain”) and Monica (“Before You Walked Out of My Life”).
MoZella points to the even grimmer reality that she is, paradoxically, one of the lucky ones. “Wrecking Ball” was a runaway smash, which she said is every songwriter’s dream, but she is not “flying on a private jet” by any stretch.
“I drive a Prius,” she said with a too-knowing laugh.
“To get a top 10 hit is like winning the Lotto; it doesn’t happen every day,” she said. “If you do get it, then you split it with your three or four co-writers, and now producers come in and take a piece of the pie. Writers are giving up percentages of publishing to producers just to get a hit.
“Then you finally get a hit [but] then you have to pay managers, lawyers, taxes. We’re not living the life that people think the record industry is.”
MoZella co-wrote 11 of the 19 songs on the recent “Rebel Heart” album for Madonna.
“I love Madonna, I wrote songs on her album, we had an amazing time,” MoZella said of her fellow Michigander. “I’m guessing she grossed $200 million to $300 million on [the ’Rebel Heart’] tour. But we don’t participate in” that revenue. “So your songs could be sung live every night, but you don’t really make that much.”
In addition to her songwriting revenue, MoZella supports herself by performing and touring, where singers increasingly must turn with the rapid decline of record sales.
Of the current picture of the business, now on life support, MoZella is blunt, declaring that without she and her fellow music writers, there would be no content on Spotify and Pandora — and far less on YouTube.
“They’re not going to pay us more money because it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “The law has to be changed. This consent decree has to be lifted so that we can negotiate a fair right for our copyright.”
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.