All I want is to Drink a Nice Glass of Wine, Enjoy a Beautiful View of Seneca Lake and have Mozart Playing in the Background
Anthony Road Wine Company Owner John Martini Shares his Story with the MIC Coalition
Lured by the beauty of the Finger Lakes and the potential joy that could be found in grape growing, my wife Ann and I moved to Anthony Road in 1973. We left behind my corporate career at WR Grace in Baltimore, loaded up our 2 young children, Peter and Sarah, and set up a farming life on the west side of Seneca Lake. Although neither of us had an agricultural background, unless you count John’s youthful summers at his grandparent’s farm in Melvin, Illinois, with the help of family and friends we planted our first 5-acres of grapes.
Our vineyard grew to 30-acres, as did our family, adding 2 more children, Maeve and Elizabeth. And the whole family’s love for the Anthony Road Wine Company, the Finger Lakes, and winemaking, also grew. In 2013, the family met over dinner to discuss the future of the vineyard and winery. We decided to keep everything in the family and currently operations not only include our four children, but also their spouses and our grandchildren. It is truly a family affair! And it is mine and Ann’s greatest gift — we are blessed to share this experience with our families, 3 generations operating the company and vineyards together, day in and day out.
With so much to be grateful for, I don’t have much room for complaining. But one thing is missing from our idyllic setting overlooking Lake Seneca — the ability to play live music. At one time, we could host a dinner with great wine, an unparalleled view and music, like a small 3-piece band playing jazz like Chet Baker or Etta James in the background to enhance the ambiance.
We understood that when we wanted to play music or hire a local musician, we needed to buy licenses from performing rights organizations (PROs) that offer blanket licenses covering millions of songs within their respective catalogs. And, while we have always been happy to purchase these licenses and pay PROs what we reasonably owe based upon our use of music, we often end up paying for access to more songs than we need or paying over 100% of the value of the musical works we use.
As a venue owner, I try to cooperate with the PROs, but that spirit is a one-way street. In one of the last conversations I had with a PRO, I told them I had to stop playing jazz and was only going to play classical music at the winery — only Mozart or Beethoven or Tchaikovsky — thinking that the need to pay royalties to artists dead for over a hundred years would not be necessary. To my surprise, the PRO told me it had the rights and would see me in court.
A quick Google search would show you that no one has the right to those musical pieces. For example — “Why can I find free works by old composers like Mozart but not contemporary ones like Philip Glass? Musical scores and recordings are protected by copyright law, but many classical composers, like Mozart and Beethoven, no longer are covered under the laws (because they died long ago); their works are public domain. This means you can freely use their compositions however you want.”
But I also know that no one in my family has the time for that, and we certainly don’t have spare money lying around to fund a lawsuit either, not even a frivolous one.
A lack of transparency has been a longstanding problem within the industry. The first PRO was established in 1914 — over a century ago — and the music ecosystem continues to evolve in its complexity as new technologies transform the music marketplace. The lack of transparency provides PROs with an unfair advantage, and it forces venues and other small businesses to purchase the rights to more works than otherwise necessary while often requiring other music licensees to overpay for the rights acquired or risk copyright infringement lawsuits and statutory damages.
I would encourage our nation’s lawmakers to introduce legislation that will protect and benefit small business owners like me and my family. There must be some way to bring greater transparency to the music marketplace. Is it possible to create a comprehensive and authoritative database to finally provide a transparent, accurate, and fully searchable record of music ownership and licensing information to everyone? If we did that, we could also celebrate at the winery with a beautiful view, incredible wine and a quartet softly playing our favorite jazz artist.
John Martini is the owner of Anthony Road Wine Company in Pen Yan, NY.
