The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is a

trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association partic ...

for the American music publishing industry. Founded in 1917, NMPA represents American music publishers and their songwriting partners. The NMPA’s mandate is to protect and advance the interests of music publishers and songwriters in matters relating to the domestic and global protection of music copyrights. The NMPA has pursued litigation against numerous organizations, including

Amway Amway (short for "American Way") is an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells health, beauty, and home care products. The company was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos and is based in Ada, Michigan. Amway and it ...

,Amway: The Untold Story: NMPA
(Press release), 25 November 2006.

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

, Kazaa,

LimeWire LimeWire was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated mus ...

Roblox ''Roblox'' () is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released i ...

, FullScreen including Napster and more.

History

First half of the 20th century

The NMPA was founded in 1917 as the Music Publishers' Protective Association, seeking to end the practice of publishers having to pay

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

theaters for performing their music. The

payola Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment. Under US law, a radio station must disclose songs they were paid to play on the air as spons ...

was said to have reached $400,000. The MPPA mandate went into effect May 7, 1917. Founding firms included: * Broadway Music Corporation * Joseph W. Stern & Co. * Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc. * Al Piantadosi & Co. * Leo Feist Co. * T. B. Harms & Francis, Day & Hunter, Inc. * Maurice Richmond (1880–1965) * Jos. Morris Co. * Charles K. Harris * Harry Von Tilzer Co. * Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. * M. Witmark & Sons * James Kendis (1883–1946) * James Brockman * Kalmar, Puck & Abrahams Consolidated, Inc. (

Bert Kalmar Bert Kalmar (February 10, 1884 – September 18, 1947) was an American songwriter, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He was also a screenwriter. Biography Kalmar, a native of New York City, left school at an early ag ...

, Harry Puck, Maurice W. Abrahams) * F.J.A. Forster Co. * McCarthy & Fisher * A. J. Stasny Music Co. * J.H. Remick & Co. * Church, Paxson & Co. * Karczag Publishing Company (Wilhelm Karczag; 1859–1923) *

William Jerome William Jerome Flannery, September 30, 1865 – June 25, 1932) was an American songwriter, born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York of Irish immigrant parents, Mary Donnellan and Patrick Flannery. He collaborated with numerous well-known composers a ...

In 1927, the NMPA founded the

Harry Fox Agency The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) is a provider of rights management and collector and distributor of mechanical license fees on behalf of music publishers in the United States. HFA has over 48,000 music publishing clients and issues the largest number ...

, a mechanical rights collecting society.

Second half of the 20th century

In 1966 the name of the Music Publishers' Protective Association was changed to the National Music Publishers Association. The NMPA lobbies federal legislators and regulators on behalf of music publishers and crafted guidelines for the Copyright Act of 1976.

21st century

In September 2001, the NMPA reached a settlement with Napster, turning the company into a fee-based service with publishers licensing music to the users."Early History of Napster"
by Moya K. Mason, 2010 The NMPA won a judgment against

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

filing service

StreamCast Networks StreamCast Networks, Inc., was an American corporation, specializing in peer-to-peer software. Formerly named MusicCity, it created Morpheus, which was one of the first major peer-to-peer Internet applications. StreamCast was a defendant in the ...

in September 2006. In 2007, NMPA joined a lawsuit against

for hosting user-generated videos containing music under copyright. The suit was dropped four years later. Along with the

Music Publishers Association The Music Publishers Association of the United States (MPA) is a non-profit music publishing organization based in New York City. Founded in 1895, the MPA is the oldest music trade organization in the United States which addresses issues pertain ...

(MPA), the NMPA has been responsible for taking many free guitar

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

web sites offline. NMPA President David Israelite asserted that " authorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing". The NMPA also pushed for rate hikes for legal downloads of music in 2008. In 2010, the NMPA represented

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

, Sony/ATV,

Universal Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal ** Universal TV, a ...

and

Warner/Chappell Warner Chappell Music, Inc. is an American music publishing company and a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group. Warner Chappell Music's catalogue consists of over 1.4 million compositions and 65,000 composers, with offices in over 40 countries. ...

, Bug,

MPL Communications MPL Communications (which stands for McCartney Productions Ltd.) (NAICS 512230, SIC 2741) is the umbrella company for the business interests of Paul McCartney and was established in 1969. In addition to handling McCartney's post-Beatles work, MP ...

Peermusic Peermusic is a United States-based independent music publisher. History Ralph Peer, a field recording engineer and A&R representative for Victor Records, went on a scouting trip to Bristol, Tennessee. For two weeks, he recorded artists such a ...

and the Richmond Organization in a lawsuit against

. The suit sought $150,000 for each song that was distributed. NMPA is a member of the

International Intellectual Property Alliance The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), formed in 1984, is a private sector coalition of seven trade associations representing U.S. companies that produce copyright-protected material, including computer software, films, televisio ...

, a business alliance which amongst others publishes the

Special 301 Report The Special 301 Report is prepared annually by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) that identifies trade barriers to United States companies and products due to the intellectual property laws, such as copyright, patents ...

, a controversial list of countries that the coalition of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

holders feel do not do enough to combat

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

s. In 2015, the NMPA sold the Harry Fox Agency to SESAC. In December 2016, the NMPA announced that it had reached an agreement with YouTube to allow the distribution of royalties for musical works used in videos on YouTube where ownership was previously unknown.Chris Cooke
"NMPA announces deal with YouTube over unpaid song royalties,"
''Completemusicupdate.com'', December 9, 2016

References

External links