First half of the 20th century The NMPA was founded in 1917 as the Music Publishers' Protective Association, seeking to end the practice of publishers having to pay
vaudeville theaters for performing their music. The
payola was said to have reached $400,000.
Second half of the 20th century In 1966 the name of the Music Publishers' Protective Association was changed to the National Music Publishers Association. The NMPA lobbies federal legislators and regulators on behalf of music publishers and crafted guidelines for the
Copyright Act of 1976.
21st century In September 2001, the NMPA reached a settlement with
Napster, turning the company into a fee-based service with publishers licensing music to the users. The NMPA won a judgment against
peer-to-peer filing service
StreamCast Networks in September 2006. In 2007, NMPA joined a lawsuit against
YouTube for hosting user-generated videos containing music under copyright. The suit was dropped four years later. Along with the
Music Publishers Association (MPA), the NMPA has been responsible for taking many free guitar
tablature web sites offline. NMPA President David Israelite asserted that "[u]nauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing". The NMPA also pushed for rate hikes for legal downloads of music in 2008. In 2010, the NMPA represented
EMI,
Sony/ATV,
Universal and
Warner/Chappell, Bug,
MPL Communications,
Peermusic and the Richmond Organization in a lawsuit against
LimeWire. The suit sought $150,000 for each song that was distributed. NMPA is a member of the
International Intellectual Property Alliance, a business alliance which amongst others publishes the
Special 301 Report, a controversial list of countries that the coalition of
copyright holders feel do not do enough to combat
copyright infringements. In 2015, the NMPA sold the Harry Fox Agency to
SESAC. In December 2016, the NMPA announced that it had reached an agreement with YouTube to allow the distribution of royalties for musical works used in videos on YouTube where ownership was previously unknown. ==See also==