After Portfolio.com reported that Warner Music Group was exploring the idea of adding a monthly fee to consumers' internet-access bills to pay for music downloads, the digital music community rose up to ask: What about us?

"It's the talk of the industry right now," Phil Crosland, the marketing chief of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, said.

Crosland added that he doesn't care if it's Warner's plan or anyone else's. "Let's just make sure we have the songwriters, composers, and music publishers covered in any solution," he said.

Across the internet, the nascent fee proposal put forth by Warner Music executive Jim Griffin was denounced as an authoritarian "culture tax" that would fatten industry coffers even as it was praised as a visionary solution that treats music like a utility and spreads the cost across the entire population.

But amid all of the sound and fury over the concept—which Griffin emphasizes is still in the earliest stages of development—one key constituency has been largely overlooked: independent musicians.

Griffin said he wants to create "a collective society for the digital age" to work with ASCAP and other industry groups like Broadcast Music Inc. and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers. These "performance-rights organizations" collect royalties from radio stations, restaurants, malls, and podcasters, then distribute money to artists and rights holders.

Many independent musicians, however, say they have serious reservations about Griffin's plan.

One of them, singer-songwriter Samantha Murphy, said she fears that any collective licensing model will shortchange independent artists like her—musicians who are not affiliated with a corporate music publisher—unless they are granted "a seat at the table" to help shape the plan's contours.

"Artists need to be brought into this process," said Murphy, adding that both ASCAP and B.M.I. had repeatedly stiffed her. "If you're trying to serve someone, you go to them and ask them what they need, you don't shut them out. And that's what has happened in the past."

Murphy said she has little faith in the major performance-rights organizations to fairly compensate independent artists who might not be accurately represented on the surveys that ASCAP, B.M.I., and the other performance-rights organizations use to determine royalty payments.

Despite having the No. 1 record on a California college radio station for six months, Murphy said she never saw a dime because the station was too small to be included in ASCAP's sampling survey.

Crosland, the ASCAP executive, acknowledged that "it is possible that she got missed," referring to Murphy. He added that ASCAP is committed to improving its sampling model.

As evidence of the effort, he cited ASCAP Plus, a program that paid out about $3 million last year to writers whose work is performed substantially in media not surveyed by ASCAP.

Murphy, however, has moved beyond haggling over a few lost dollars. She's taking a stand on behalf of all independent musicians.

"Right now is when we need to establish a fair system," Murphy said. "If middlemen sit in a room and discuss how everything should be decided, the artist is inevitably left out of the equation."