DISSED IN SACRAMENTO

As it turns out, artists like Sam Moore and Montell Jordan aren’t the only ones who feel they’re being treated unfairly. Indeed, the RIAA is none too pleased with how Tuesday’s hearing on record-industry accounting practices before the California Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Arts and Entertainment went down in Sacramento.

According to an internal RIAA memo obtained by HITS, the trade group feels it was “subjected to a very unbalanced hearing” despite promises from committee chairs Senators Martha Escutia and Kevin Murray that the proceedings would be even-handed.

The hearing ran for six hours, but little of that time was allotted to RIAA reps, according to the memo. “Our witnesses, Steve Marenberg and Steve Marks, testified at noon for 20 minutes and were cut off by the chair and asked to return later...[they were] the only witnesses who were cut off all day.” Meanwhile, other witnesses piled on the labels, the memo notes with apparent distaste, including attorney Don Engel, “who for over an hour called the record industry ‘one of crooks and thieves.’”

During Marenberg and Marks’ 20 minutes in the spotlight, they “tried to answer some of the misstatements presented” while at the same time presenting the RIAA-sponsored study on the fairness of recording contracts. After they were cut off, however, they did not come back. “Our witnesses did not return to testify,” the memo says.

The RIAA apparently does not expect that the accounting-practices issue will just go away: “We are faced with a potential for legislative activity on this issue before the end of session on August 31st, and [it] will more than likely be an issue next year, regardless of what happens on the seven-year statute,” the memo surmises. “We have a lot of work to do in crafting a strategy and message that will resonate with legislators in our favor.”