Composer Maria Schneider takes on Google and the “Data Lords”

“If everybody gets used to getting their music for free, nobody is going to pay for music anymore,” says the Grammy-winning bandleader Maria Schneider. She is hopping mad at YouTube and Spotify, and she wants you to be hopping mad, too.

Schneider describes the current system of digital music distribution as one in which huge corporate behemoths reap billions in revenue, while leaving a few crumbs – tiny fractions of a penny per play – for the creators, and then lie about what a great public service they’re performing. “It’s been nothing less than a massive redistribution of wealth,” she told me in my recent cover story on Ms. Schneider for DownBeat. Everybody who makes music or listens to it – that’s all of us – need to hear what she has to say, then get involved to force Congress to change the Copyright Law – or else musicians won’t be able to survive. That’s the subject of the first half of the interview. In the second half, we talk about her sublime music and her muse.