Big Music robs Aussie musicians
p2pnet.net News:- The PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia) bills itself as a national, non-government, non-profit organisation representing the interests of record labels and Australian recording artists and its web page has a question from a fictitious performer asking, “I’m an artist, what can PPCA do for me?”
The factual answer is: Not a lot.
Australian performers, many of them top names, are being robbed of royalties because Big Music claims it can’t find them, says Australia’s Herald Sun here, going on that $A11 million is collected each year by the music industry from radio stations, nightclubs and bars playing recorded music.
The PPCA charges 38,000 nightclubs, bars and cafes 7c a person a night for the right to play recorded music and wants to increase the fee to $1 a person, says the Sun, but of the $11 million collected annually, only $1.5 million reaches artists.
And unless performers register with the PPCA, the cash goes by default to the Big Four record labels – Sony-BMG, EMI, Warner and Universal, none of whom are based in Australia. On top of that, six of the nine directors of the “non-profit” PPCA are senior record label executives.
Last year, artists directly received $683,000 of their share, says the Sun story, quoting an industry insider as saying, ‘The fewer artists that register with PPCA, the better the result for the record companies, who can pocket their nice little swag of booty for as long as they see fit”.
“Not all of the artists entitled to receive a direct payment had elected to register with PPCA,” said a statement.
About 2.5% of PPCA money goes to the Performers Trust Foundation.
Play it again, Sam
Failing to pay artists seems to be a Big Music theme.
The Big Four labels have also been welching on payments to all too many of their artists and writers in the US.
An investigation by New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer found star entertainers with numerous hit recordings as well as “obscure musicians who may have had only one recording,” were affected and the labels were ordered to pay $50 million.
And one of them – Warner Bros – apparently tried hard to block elderly Sam Moore of ‘Soul Man’ and ‘Hold On! I’m Comin’ fame from his pension.
Not at all incidentally, in California, recording artists will soon be able to conduct annual audits on any record company doing business in the state.
Back in Australia, the PPCA takes about $3 million for administration, $5 million goes to overseas artists, $1.5 million goes directly to record companies, and the rest is put aside for artists, says the Sun report, adding:
“The PPCA refused to reveal how much money individual artists were entitled to. The group is pushing to charge nightclubs and bars $1 a person each night. Nightclub and Bar Association head David Butten said the increase would bring struggling clubs to their knees. ‘It is a legal protection racket,’ Mr Butten said.”
