The Concert Trust

For years, two agencies have divided a glutton's share of the nation's concert business between them. They are: Columbia Artists Management, Inc., among whose contract stars are Soprano Lily Pons, Pianist Rudolf Serkin, Violinist Jascha Heifetz; and National Concerts and Artists Corp., which books Violinist Nathan Milstein, Pianist Alexander Brailowsky, Baritone Robert Merrill, et al. The agencies' power lies in their subsidiaries--Columbia's Community Concerts, and National's Civic Concert Service--which between them have organized local civic associations in some 1,200 communities in 48 states. These groups act as local sponsors for the big agency artists, thus providing a huge reservoir of regular prepaid music consumers. Columbia's artists take about $3.2 million and N.C.A.C.'s about $1.3 million a year from the operation.

Last week the U.S. Government filed civil and criminal antitrust suits against all four organizations, charging them with conspiracy to refrain from competing with each other 1) for the management of artists, and 2) in the organization and maintenance of audience associations. The complaints specified that artists were practically forced to join one agency or the other to get interstate bookings, since independent agencies were all but excluded from the business.

Columbia President Frederick C. Schang Jr. said the practices charged had stopped seven years ago. Nevertheless, in a New York U.S. District Court, the agencies pleaded nolo contendere to the criminal suit, and entered into a consent decree with respect to the civil. The decree restrained them "from allocating or dividing territories" and from "interfering with competition." The court also administered a judicial slap on the wrist: fines of $10,000 for Columbia's Community Concerts, $2,000 apiece for the others.

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