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MODERATOR: -- Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. I'd like to introduce Daryl Friedman, the Vice President, Advocacy and Government Relations, for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Today, he will be speaking on the 50th annual Grammy Awards ceremony that will take place in Los Angeles, California on February the 10th. I now introduce to you and present to you Daryl Friedman.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here to speak to you today about an event that is obviously very important to us during a year that's very important to us. This is, as was mentioned, the 50th anniversary of the Grammys. So what I would like to do is talk to you a little bit about the Grammy Awards themselves and also the history of the Grammy organization for the past 50 years and what else the organization does that you may not be aware of and maybe connect to some of your interest areas as well.
I brought a prop with me. This is an actual Grammy award. There's a great clip of, from 1957, of Frank Sinatra holding this and he says, "This is the payoff." And for many artists, that's exactly what this is for their careers. It's an award based not on what the normal awards are based on. It's not based on sales, it's not based on popularity, and it's not based on consumer taste. This award is given as a peer award, so it really is recognition by artists for artists. No other award in music is in this category. Other awards track to Billboard charts or top sales or popular culture. This is actually a peer award.
And this idea was founded in 1957, so we're coming up on the actual 50th Grammy Awards. In '57, a group of recording executives got together and said, "There really is no way to recognize artistic excellence in our industry. This is the Grammy Awards." And so they created this award and that's been going on now. The first one was in 1958 and as I said, we're about to celebrate our 50th.
Now the show itself is what people know us as being responsible for. It's the - obviously, over 20 million people in the U.S. watch it, it's broadcast internationally, and it's sort of the hallmark of our organization. But it's only really the tip of the iceberg of what the Recording Academy is responsible for. But this year, the show is taking on almost a life of its own with a number of ancillary activities that are going to make this really the biggest Grammy Awards ever.
So there are a number of things that we're doing that are special this year for the 50th anniversary. We have launched a series of CDs, compilations of great music from the past 50 years that have won Grammys, some classic recordings that you all are familiar with, recordings from R&B and country and jazz, each format, each genre has its own collection as well as a 2-CD compilation of the best of Grammy Award winners. And there's a coffee table book that we're selling at Borders Books and other locations that really gives a great history of the - not only the Grammys over the past 50 years, but also the culture over the past 50 years and how it reflects who the stars were at the time, who the sort of leading artists were at the time.
Quincy Jones is our 50th anniversary ambassador; he, the great producer, songwriter, musician, jazz musician, one of the top Grammy winners of all time. He is actually someone who is helping the public understand the importance of the Grammys and kind of shepherding through this 50th celebration.
Two nights before the Grammy Awards, we have a special charity dinner honoring Aretha Franklin. That's for our MusiCares charity, which I'll speak to in a few minutes. And of course, the Grammys themselves on February 10th will be a very elaborate affair and we think it'll be the most exciting Grammys we've ever had. But that's not the end of the 50th celebration. There will be activities going on throughout the year and actually, the last one will be in the fall of '08. The Grammy Museum will be opening. This will be based in Los Angeles as part of the new L.A. Live complex next to the complex next to the L.A. Convention Center and it'll be a way for tourists and citizens of Los Angeles to experience the Grammys and the history by attending this very unique museum.
Now this year, we also are doing something that's a little bit unique and that's a consumer component to the Grammy Awards. There's a band that's been nominated for several awards called the Foo Fighters. You may be familiar with them. It's a rock band. They'll be performing on the show. And there's a contest for unsigned musicians to be in the backup band of the Foo Fighters on the Grammy Awards onstage. So it's an amazing opportunity for a young artist to have any instrumentation that can qualify if they put their audition tapes up on You Tube. The public has a voting component of this as well as the series of a panel of experts. And the Foo Fighters themselves will choose the winner and those three or four people will play on the Grammy Awards with the Foo Fighters and their backup band. So you can imagine the exciting opportunity for young musicians.
And that's really a great segue into what it is the Recording Academy is about, because while the Grammys are a hallmark event, the Recording Academy, which produces the components of the Grammy Awards, actually is a year-round organization that's involved in many aspects of betterment for the music community, this -- Grammy moments where the people can audition for the show, which is one example of this. But really, music education is one the lead initiatives of the Recording Academy. We work with leaders in Congress and leaders in the states to make sure that music education is maintained in every school district in the country. We'd like to see that happen. We are responsible for, I think, in large part for a large increase in California's music education budget of over $100 million just the year before last.
We also have members. It's a membership organization. You may not think of it as such, but being a peer award, we have 18,000 members of the Recording Academy, working musicians from all over the country, artists, songwriters, producers, engineers. And they are responsible for picking the winners of the Grammy Awards, but also they are our connection to the communities in each of these twelve chapter cities, where the Recording Academy has a presence.
And the number of educational, very groundbreaking opportunities exist for these members all over the country, including programs where they can meet other artists, network, learn from other artists and other educational events. There are also two charities associated with our organization. One is called The Grammy Foundation. That charity is geared primarily toward music education and preserving and archiving America's rich cultural legacy. So the foundation is involved not only in ensuring that music education is presented in schools throughout the country, but also making sure at-risk recordings, at-risk motion picture clips that have music in them, all of these treasures of the United States are maintained and preserved and archived, so they'll be available for generations to come. We work very closely with the Library of Congress here in Washington to establish a preservation board and work with Congress to actually establish the program and the funding for the Library of Congress Preservation Board.
But the last and most significant, from a Washington standpoint, program of the Recording Academy is advocacy on behalf of music creators. Our job here in Washington -- and you have some materials that were handed out to you -- our job here in Washington is to make sure that music creators are protected and that their interests are heard in Washington by policymakers. We are the only organization here in Washington representing every aspect of music creator - artists from superstars to background singers and session players, singers of all kinds, record producers, recording engineers, anyone involved in the creative process. We're not the business part of the organization. We're the creators. Anyone involved in the creative process of making recordings is our member and they are represented here in Washington.
And there have been a number of key battles that we've fought on their behalf here in Washington with Congress. Recently, I mentioned the music education funding, which is important to ensure the next generation of music creators has opportunities to become successful in this field. We've also been involved in advocacy on behalf of freedom of speech. Two years ago, there was a law introduced in Congress - a bill introduced in Congress that would have increased fines for artists if the lyrics were unacceptable and that was performed on the radio. We removed that because we believed it would have a chilling effect on artists to be able to - to have to be censored and to have to self-censor or be fined if the FCC determined that a lyric was deemed offensive.
We've been on the forefront of copyright fights on behalf of artists, including an amicus brief at the famous Cropster case which determined that file-sharing was, in fact, not legal and that people need to purchase music and not just duplicate them on their own, given this new internet world. We created with Congress a caucus for members of Congress who are interested in recording arts issues. It's called the Recording Arts and Sciences Congressional Caucus. They look to us to advise them and to educate them about issues that are important to musicians.
And we created the industry's only Recordings Arts Day, an actual advocacy day where hundreds of professional music creators come to Washington to speak face to face and let their legislators about issues that are important to them.
The one issue that was probably the top of our priority right now and one I wanted to mention to you, especially this being an international audience, is the fight for a royalty for broadcast radio. In almost everywhere else in the world when broadcasters perform a song - a record, they have to compensate the artists and the producers and the background players and session players with a simple royalty payment. And the United States is the one developed country in the world that doesn't have this system when you hear a song on the air, the artist is not compensated by any royalty. Radio can play that without permission. They don't need the artist's permission and they don't have to compensate them.
This has been a struggle really for decades to change this. We are the only country left that really has this system in place where the broadcasters have a free pass. And we've been fighting for the last year very aggressively to do this. In December, bills were introduced in the House and the Senate that would change this. And we have a very bipartisan group of cosponsors on this legislation that we think will want to move this forward. Again, House and Senate and the sponsors are the chairmen of the Judiciary Committee in both the House and the Senate so we have the lead people working on these types of copyright issues advocating for us now in Congress on this bill. If we do this, it will be really the culmination of an almost 50-year dream of artists to finally be compensated on the radio.
So all that, kind of gives you a general overview of what the Recording Academy is really about. I hope you can see that it's more than just that one night a week of that television that we'll watch, but I hope you will watch. And this February 10th, we know there are issues surrounding this year's show that are unique given the writers' strike. But we will be going forward and have offered actually a deal to the writers that it was similar - actually identical to deals they've accepted from other organizations. And we anticipate a great show on February 10th of the Grammy Awards.
So thank you very much for your attention and I will be happy to answer any questions.
MODERATOR: Please identify yourself and your organization.
QUESTION: Christine Xie, Phoenix Satellite Television. Just now you mentioned about the - I mean, it's in Los Angeles this year. I kind of want to focus on - in D.C. You mentioned the Grammys on the Hill. Could you elaborate a little bit about what kind of events or initiatives are you going to put forward for 2008?
MR. FRIEDMAN: In Washington, we have, as I said, the Recording Arts Day and Grammys on the Hill. And what these two events are really, the recording community's day to showcase itself before Congress in Washington. It has two parts: Recording Arts Day is an afternoon - an all-day event each September when hundreds of music creators come to Washington and participate in activities at Capitol Hill, in Congress, have one-on-one meetings with their members of Congress from all over the country and really establish our presence and sort of remind the members of Congress they have constituents at home, they have their bosses at home who vote to put them in office are music creators and their interests should be taken care of.
In the evening, that same evening, is Grammys on the Hill, which is an award dinner where we have leading celebrities come and perform and the audience is members of Congress, two of whom we give an award to - one House and one Senate member each year. And these are people who have really championed the recording arts in Congress, people who really have been strong copyright supporters and really, you know, been akin to the recording artists needs.
In 2008, because it's an election year, we will be - instead of Grammys on the Hill in Washington, we're taking Grammys on the Hill actually off the Hill and to the two cities where the political conventions will be happening. So in both Minneapolis for the Republican Convention and Denver for the Democratic Convention, the recording artists will go there and meet the candidates and meet the delegates from all the different states and really just create a different kind of presence for the two parties. And we think that will be something a little bit different but something appropriate for an election year.
QUESTION: Could I follow up - a different election year for the arts education. What kind of legislatures are you working on right now in Congress?
MR. FRIEDMAN: In arts education we've shifted our focus primarily to the states because most of the budgeting for U.S. schools, public schools, happen at the state level. So we're utilizing our 12 chapters that are spread out throughout the country to do grassroots lobbying for their state houses, their state capitals. They've already been very successful in California and New York and we anticipate that we can expand this as a model. And California, as a result of a Grammy industry roundtable became a very strong grassroots lobbying campaign that resulted in a $105 million increase for music education. We're trying to replicate that in every state and we think we can be successful doing that. We have a very strong grassroots membership that can do that.
QUESTION: Nestor Ikeda, Associated Press. Would you please make some kind of historical reference to the Grammy organization involvement in the non-U.S.-born artists, especially with Latin America? I understand you also have a Latin Grammy branch, and if you are planning to establish a kind of Asian Grammy or European Grammy or do you have that kind of thought? Thank you.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, the Grammy Awards are, of course, open to artists from all over the world. The record has to be commercially released in the United States; but of course, almost every recording, because we are the largest market, is released here in the U.S. So we really do have a wide - if you look at our list of nominations - and I should give you our website, which is grammy.com - the list of nominations are right there on the home page. And you'll see a real variety of international artistry from all throughout the genres.
One of our largest fields is the Latin field. We do have a number of categories. In fact, that category became so strong and so prominent within the organization that we created a separate awards show called the Latin Recording Academy, the Latin Grammys. And that now takes place on an annual basis. We've been doing this for about nine years.
The Latin Grammys will continue and that is showcasing just music released in Spanish and Portuguese to show - that's shown on Univision in Spanish and Portuguese. So it's not a show that we broadcast in English, so we have a sister company, the Latin Recording Academy, that tracks along with many of the same activities as the Recording Academy does, servicing throughout the world in the Latin countries.
As far as further plans, it's always a discussion to expand further and have a greater international presence. At this point, I can't say anything definitive about our plans, but I think if you watch our organization in the next couple of years, you'll see a very aggressive interest in at least expanding our distribution of our telecast throughout the world and maybe it's possible that we would have an expansion of other academies if our trustees deem so to do so.
QUESTION: Yes. Can you also make a reference on how was the Grammy organization experience with the Latin Grammy which was established around ten years ago?
MR. FRIEDMAN: I'm sorry. Just to clarify, between the two organizations?
QUESTION: Yes. Well, how the Grammy organization would qualify or would term the experience that this organization had with the Latin Grammy -
MR. FRIEDMAN: Oh, all right. Yeah, it's very positive. We have a great relationship. The president of the Latin Recording Academy is Gabriel Abaroa, who's one of our own. He comes to our meetings. He comes to our board meetings. We have a lot of integration between the two academies in terms of staffing. And our staff often works - lends our support to the Latin Grammy show. They, of course, lend their support when we need it. And they've been - it's just been a great partnership so we're just very proud of the Latin Grammys and the Latin Recording Academy, what it's become over the course of those ten years and we just see it growing even more. So a very positive relationship between the two.
MODERATOR: New York, do you have questions for us?
MODERATOR: Okay, no questions from NY.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Okay. So an electronic press kit of some kind, a compilation of - yes, we have something, actually, that's a great historical review of the last 50 years of Grammy performances. We can certainly get that to you. Would I do that through - you or a Foreign Press Center contact?
MODERATOR: All right.
MR. FRIEDMAN: I saw a hand waving in New York.
MODERATOR: That was letting us know, no questions.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Oh.
MODERATOR: Well, once again, we thank you for coming and participating in the briefing today and thank you Mr. Friedman for coming as well. And we will have a follow-up interview afterwards. Okay. Thank you again.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Thank you.
