In Monday’s (6/25) New York Times, Margalit Fox reports the death of Frances Preston, 83, at her home in Nashville on June 13. Preston, who served as president and chief executive of Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) from 1986 to 2004, “helped usher performing rights across the electronic threshold… Ms. Preston, who spent nearly half a century with BMI, saw her mission as impressing on Congress, consumers and the diverse array of enterprises that offer music—including bars, funeral parlors and the purveyors of ring tones—the idea that a song is a piece of intellectual property for which money must be paid. Her testimony before Congress was widely credited with helping ensure the passage of the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, which extended protection for many works originally copyrighted in the 1960s and ’70s.” Hired in 1958 to establish a BMI office in Nashville, her hometown, Preston “helped foster the careers of many artists who became marquee names” including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Barry Manilow, and Isaac Hayes. “In 1985, on being named BMI’s senior vice president for performing rights, Ms. Preston moved to its headquarters in New York.”
Posted June 25, 2012
