When the 60th annual Grammy Awards open at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 28, among the stars and luminaries present will be a New Jersey attorney with a few music credits of his own.

Terence Camp, a shareholder at Budd Larner, P.C. in Short Hills, is a board member of the Entertainment, Arts & Sports Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association. He is a trial attorney with broad experience in everything from consumer fraud to construction to estates and toxic tort. He is also a member of the Recording Academy.

A visit to his Short Hills office makes his passion for music clear. His walls are covered with photographs of Jersey recording industry greats, particularly a certain rocker from Asbury Park who got him hooked on the industry in the first place (more on that below).

This past fall, as part of District Advocate Day, Camp visited Congressman Leonard Lance's office as part of an effort by the academy to convince local representatives to the federal government to support the Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2017. (The NJSBA does not have a position on the bill, and Camp's advocacy was purely on behalf of the Recording Academy.)

We spoke a bit with Camp about the music industry today. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

How did you become a member of the Recording Academy?

I've been a member of the Recording Academy since 2003. I qualified because I had been an associate producer on a number of released records, mostly for Nashville-based singer/songwriter John Eddie. John was actually born in Virginia but grew up in New Jersey. He's become an accomplished songwriter for country stars and Kid Rock, and still packs The Stone Pony (the legendary music club in Asbury Park) on tour stops. I've worked with John dating all the way back to the late 1980s.

One of the bills you are advocating for is The Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2017, which would essentially require AM/FM radio to compensate music creators through royalties. Tell us a little more about it.

Historically, AM/FM radio has not been subject to paying performance royalties to the owners of sound recording copyrights, whether they be the artist and/or a record label. This bill would correct that and it would also put terrestrial radio in line with satellite radio. When satellite radio arose, boom, they imposed royalties on the satellite radio owners.

How does this fit into the broader shifts going on in the music industry?

Since Napster, the music industry has changed dramatically. What you find today is that the music creators are far less compensated than they had been in the past. And a large part of the reason for that is it used to be that somebody like Kid Rock would release a record, it would sell multi-millions of records and Kid Rock and anybody who wrote songs for Kid Rock would do very well on those sales. For instance, Kid Rock's 1998 release has sold over four million; his 2015 release has sold in the range of 350,000.

So today, overall sales of a new record are well below 500,000 for the most part—probably more in the 100,000 range, even for very well-known acts.

With the dawn of downloads of individual tracks, the purchase of entire records is much, much lower. People are buying the songs that they like (and royalties for downloads are very low) but not full-length records. Musicians are simply making a lot less money based upon the release of their works.

What is the overall impact of this shift on music being released today?

Record companies in general are far less well off than they were. Record labels are far less willing to ride it out, if you will, to develop and build an artist. And it's this context in which Congress, as a matter of public policy, should continue to support music creators, and thereby ensure that we as a society continue to be enriched by new musical works.

Entertainment law is one of your specialties at Budd Larner P.C. How did you find your way to this area of expertise?

Passion, interest and patience.

After my freshman year in college at Drew University in Madison, on Aug. 15, 1982, I convinced two high school buddies to join me for my first show at The Stone Pony (the legendary music club in Asbury Park). Bruce [Springsteen] showed up. I was hooked. I thought, “I'd really like to be a part of this someday.”

Out of law school, I did know that if I wanted to dive into entertainment, I'd have to work full time in NY or LA. I wasn't committed to that idea. Instead, I built up my career over the years.