For several years now, Sony/ATV has partnered with Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University, where I adjunct, to sponsor a songwriting contest called the Sony/ATV All-Access Program. Students submit two songs and these are reviewed by Sony/ATV’s creative team. The winners have the opportunity to perform their songs live [...]
Shrum & Associates’ very own namesake, Barry Neil Shrum, Esquire, was recently appointed to serve as general counsel for the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, and to serve as a non-voting member of its Board of Directors. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation (NaSHOF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and preserving [...]
Editors Note: Today we begin an intriguing series of articles regarding the relevance of intellectual property concepts in an age in which the likes of John Perry Barlow, founder of the EFF, have declared that because everything can be reduced to digital existence, the need to protect creations of the mind is irrelevant. We [...]
Our founding partner, Barry Neil Shrum, was recently interviewed for Episode #12 of Inside Music City podcast, which is available on iTunes, Stitcher and Tunein. The one-hour episode delves into Mr. Shrum's reasons for becoming an intellectual property counselor and overall guru, as well as various tidbits of advice for the upcoming songwriter, artist [...]
By Lucas Evans* Back in mid-July, when streaming giant Spotify was slammed with two new major lawsuits totaling a whopping $366 million, we all tho ught they would try and settle. But the dispute, instead of heading towards an end, seems to be ramping up. The July complaints, filed by Nashville music publisher [...]
UPDATE - Since this article was written in 2017, the CLASSICS Act was incorporated in the Music Modernization Act, passed in December 2019. The plight of the “starving artist” is timeless and history is replete with stories of songwriters and artist being exploited for their intellectual contributions. In the mid 1800’s, when Stephen Foster wrote The [...]
About 130 miles or so south of Memphis, Tennessee on Route 61 is what we used to call a “wide spot in the road” named Nitta Yuma, Mississippi. There is a small building with one rusty gasoline pump and a tire changing machine, surrounded by a chapel and a few other small buildings which [...]
By Drew Harris How delicious are those 11 “secret herbs and spices” assembled by Harland Sanders in 1930 for his popular “Kentucky Fried Chicken” sold at his local service station? It was so “finger lickin’ good” popular that the Governor Ruby Laffoon proclaimed him a “Colonel” and he started franchising his chicken business. But rather [...]
By Erin Thiele and Barry Neil Shrum, Esq. In the mid-1980s, Donald Trump approached Tony Schwartz to ghost write his autobiography. At this point in time, Trump was in his early 30s and did not have a great deal of life experiences about which to write a personal biography. So, according to Schwartz, he [...]
The first of the month (August 2016), the Department of Justice issued a summary of findings with regard to two court orders that govern the operation of two of the U.S. performing rights organizations (the “PRO’s”), ASCAP and BMI. If it stands, the decision will also affect the third PRO, SESAC.Songwriters and music publishers around [...]
