Hit songwriter Ross Golan, who has crafted smashes for Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, One Direction and Demi Lovato, has started a petition on Change.org asking the music community to stop licensing songs in Russia for as long as the nation wages war on Ukraine.
The petition, posted Thursday afternoon here, was put up for the purpose of allowing songwriters to make their voices heard in requesting that collection agencies sever ties with their counterpart orgs in Russia, to ensure that they won’t be profiting from the rogue-superpower nation while the bloody siege of its neighbor country continues.
“Currently, a portion of our royalties are going directly to the Russian government, which in turn funds their invasion into Ukraine,” Golan says.
The petition — credited to “And the Writer Is,” the podcast Golan started to spotlight writers and their issues — reads: “The global songwriting business stands with Ukraine. I refuse to have my songs licensed in Russia while their government invades Ukraine. I’m signing this petition asking that my collection society sever ties with RAO (Russia’s government mandated collection society) immediately. Join the fight against tyranny by signing up here.”
Other segments of the music community have looked at ways to cut ties with or at least not profit from Russia during the crisis. On Wednesday, Spotify announced that it was closing its offices in Russia “indefinitely.”
Yet the DSP stopped short of shutting down access to its service within Russia. “We think it’s critically important to try to keep our service operational in Russia to allow for the global flow of information,” a Spotify rep said in a statement provided to PvNew.
Green Day halted a tour date that was scheduled for Russia, and few other Western artists are expected to maintain the dates they have booked there. But so far, few artists or services have made moves to have the flow of recorded music to Russia halted, so Golan’s petition may represent a tentative step in that direction among at least the artist community.
Golan started the “And the Writer Is” podcast in January 2017, and its surprising popularity well outside the community of songwriters has been evident in millions of downloads for a show that features guests like Finneas, Julia Michaels, Benny Blanco, Bebe Rexha, Emily Warren, Daniel Lanois and Peter Frampton. His credits also include co-writing songs for Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban, Maroon 5, Selena Gomez, Celine Dion and the Chicks. Golan has been an activist on subjects ranging from the Music Modernization Act and the Copyright Royalty Board appeal to an ultimately successful effort to get the Grammys to overturn the so-called “33% rule” for songwriter eligibility for album awards.
Attn songwriters: https://t.co/cLOJrzt0tG
— Ross Golan (@rossgolan) March 4, 2022
