MUSIC INDUSTRY TALKby CHRIS GREEN
HEREFORD COLLEGE OF ART
3rd December 2013
My background
City of London Festival
Poetry Society
Tower Bridge Centenary Celebrations
Music Exchange Group Project
Jazz Development Trust
Music Business Forum – broadcasting Chair - led team on last BBC Charter Review
BASCA
Delius 150th/Porthcawl International Jazz Festival
Courtyard Arts Centre/Delius Society/Learning Skills Foundation
Let’s take a Walk around the Music Business:
COMPOSERS & SONGWRITERS without whom there is no music
British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors
Over 50,000 composers and songwriters registered with PRS in the UK across all areas of music – pop, rap, classical, film and TV, Jazz, World, computer games, advertising etc
How many of you write music as well as perform it?
Copyright – what is it?
Economic rights and moral rights
Do you know how to register copyright of a new work?
Post it to yourself in a sealed envelope
register your compositions with the PRS/MCPS Alliance
you or your descendants will receive royalty income from any live performances, sales, recordings or broadcasts of your work whoever performs it for up to 70 years after your death or the death of the last surviving writer of each individual composition.
So What is PRS – Performing Right Society
PRS is the biggest of the three UK collection societies. PRS collects royalties for live performance and from broadcasts
There are 50,000 music writers and 4,000 publishing companies registered with PRS
Where a writer has a publisher, PRS royalties are split 50/50 between the publisher and the writer, otherwise the writer/s gets the lot after a 9% deduction by PRS for their services..
And who are the big earners in PRS top 500?
Paul McCartneys and Elton Johns with world wide cd and internet sales and endless covers
Less well-known songwriters whose songs are heavily covered – Roger Greenaway – ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’, Barry Mason Delilah
David Lowe – BBC news theme over £1/2 million
Film and TV composers with big overseas sales – George Fenton (Frozen Planet), Debbie Wiseman, the late John Barry, David Arnold, Chris Gunning
Sister organisation MCPS – Mechanical Copyright Protection Society
Collecting as above for mechanicals – recordings, ring-tones on-line etc – owned by Music Publishers Association
Then there is a third Collection Society PPL – Phonographic Performance Limited.
This is the royalty collection society that is most likely to be of interest to you as performers. PPL collects money on behalf of record companies and performers on the sales of recordings – including all the digital sales and on the playing of recorded music in public and from broadcasts. Until November 2013 royalties were due on recordings up to 50 years old from the time of their first release. Since November 2013, as a result of European legislation and amendments to the existing legislation in each member state of the European Union, that period has been increased to 70 years
Copyright Disputes
There have, of course, been many copyright disputes over the years of which the most famous is probably related to ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, the debut song by the British band ProcolHarum, released on 12 May 1967.
The single reached number one in the UK Singles Charton 8 June 1967, and stayed there for six weeks. It is one of the fewer than 30 all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) copies worldwide. The original writing credits were for Brooker and Reid only.In 2005, former ProcolHarum organist Matthew Fisher sued Gary Brooker and his publisher, claiming that he co-wrote the music for the song.
Fisher won the case on 20 December 2006 and was awarded 40% of the composers' share of the music copyright but was not granted royalties prior to 2005.
Gary Brooker and his publisher were then granted leave to appeal, and a hearing on the matter was held before a panel of three judges in October 2007. The Court of Appeal upheld Fisher's co-authorship but ruled that he should receive no royalties as he had taken too long (38 years) to bring his claim to litigation. Full royalty rights were returned to Brooker.
In November 2008, Matthew Fisher was granted permission to appeal this decision to the House of Lords - the first time the Law Lords had been asked to rule on a copyright dispute involving a song.
On 30 July 2009 the Law Lords unanimously ruled in Fisher's favour. They noted that the delay in bringing the case had not caused any harm to the other party; on the contrary they had benefited financially from it. They also pointed out that there were no time limits to copyright claims under English law. The right to future royalties was therefore returned to Fisher.
UK MUSIC INDUSTRY
Overall the UK Music Industry employs over 100,000 people working across a wide range of disciplines - musicians, publishers, record companies, managers, agents, promoters, the collection societies, recording studio technicians, software developers, internet service providers, broadcasters, photographers, designers, accountants and lawyers!!
This is big business
UK music sales contribute some £3.9 billion to the UK economy – the creative industries as a whole contribute £19 billion to the UK economy – 7% of our total national earnings
The UK is one of only three countries in the world which is a net exporter of music – who can tell me who the other two are?
RECORD INDUSTRY
BPI and AIMrepresent the record labels
Have struggled because of cost of illegal downloads and the slow demise of the cd market..
In 2008 95% of music downloads were illegal – that’s 40 billion songs!!
Record industry survived for years because of new methods of delivery:
Vinyl records – cassettes – cds – dvds
With no solid product many record companies are an endangered species. The situation is slowly improving with an increasing number of internet providers getting tougher on copyright protection and more new models for payment in the digital environment – subscription schemes, advertising (Wee 7 etc)
Pop Music - Technically anyone can record a song these days, market it, distribute it and do everything a record company used to do – except for need for funding.
This is of course not quite so much the case with Classical music depending on the size of ensemble etc.
The bulk of the earnings of the record industry come from their long catalogues of recorded music. Many key recordings were close to going out of copyright – the early Beatles for example. On the classical front Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams and Holst are all out of recorded copyright while Walton, Malcolm Arnold , Britten and Tippet will all benefit from the extension of copyright - – hence the big push to get the life of copyright on sound recordings extended
Now three big companies – the majors – own 70% of all copyright in recorded music – Sony/BMG, Warner Chappel, Universal/EMI. Over the years the majors have bought up vast numbers of the independent labels to swell their treasure chests.
MUSIC PUBLISHERS
Music Publishers Association
Because of the tight market music publishers are having a very hard time. They depend for their existence entirely on the success of composers – they get up to 50% of the royalty split on live performance and from broadcast.
Music publishers are especially vulnerable to the pirating of sheet music over the internet
Nearly all established composers will have a publisher – a Faber, EMI, Boosey and Hawkes, Music Sales etc. However many composers self-publish.
The publishers’ job is simply to promote their writers, to find opportunities for them in the form of commissions, broadcasts, record deals etc
MANAGERS/AGENTS/PROMOTERS
Music Managers’ Forum, , Classical Agents
Like actors, many musicians have a manager and/or an agent. The manager’s/agents job is to create opportunities for their musicians – performances, recordings, broadcasts etc
Concert Promoters’ Association
Concert Promoters are usually independent companies or individuals who create programmes of events for Festivals, Concert Halls and other venues. They take responsibility for financial as well as artistic control and consequently share in the ‘risk’ for their ventures.
RECORDING STUDIOS
In the ‘60s there used to be a major recording studio in practically every City we are now down to a handful – the most famous of which is Abbey Road Studios in London. Places like Rockfield just over the border outside Monmouth are now struggling to stay afloat. The studios are losing out to the extraordinary advances in recording technology that have made it possible for artists to record their own material in their front bedrooms - this equally applies to much of the music written for film and tv – David Ferguson Cracker, Rebus etc.
For Classical music, there are a number of independent studios around the UK which provide a service for solo recordings and for small ensembles. Orchestras and larger ensembles tend to use one of the small number of large studios or sometimes record in their own venue’s or at live performances.
MUSICIANS’ UNION (MU)
Any of you who become professional performers will probably join the Musicians’ Union. The MU provides advice and support for performers across a wide range of situations. The MU negotiates fees for various sectors, there are excellent training courses, there is high quality free legal advice and an invaluable insurance scheme for instruments, public liability etc. The Union also continues to recommend appropriate fee levels for a range of activities.
BROADCASTERS
This is a vital arena for bringing new music to the public and major financial contributors
BBC – £37 million a year to PRS for its blanket licence
BBC Also runs five orchestras and the BBC Singers – Radio 3 commissions new music and regularly broadcasts from the classical repertoire plus Jazz and World Music. Radios 1 and 2 mainly broadcast Pop and Folk. Radio 4 commissions music for drama Radio 6 Extra is new cutting edge pop.
Every piece of music played on the BBC is logged and will receive a royalty payment if in copyright.
National Commercial TV also pays through blanket licenses and logs all pieces played
Commercial Radio is a mix of blanket licenses and sampling
FUTURE OF HOW ROYALTIES WILL BE COLLECTED IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
European Collection Societies not longer territorial but to be forced to compete against each other
Good for the consumer but bad news for the creator and artist as the competition will bring prices down.
Solutions
Tougher laws on illegal downloading – the new UK Digital Economy Act will help with this
Three strikes and you are out – service providers
International agreement on length of terms of copyright and on its protection
More state funding for music in subsidised/non commercial sector
It’s like everything else -. . . . If you want quality music you have to pay for it!
The future - Going it alone
From one perspective the current state of the music industry is rather depressing – but every cloud has a silver lining. The truth is that change is painful but in the longer term we may live in a much healthier environment for music.
At one time there was no chance of making any money at all as a music writer or performer unless you had a manager, an agent, a publisher and a deal with a record company.
As you will all know only too well, today many young classical composers, singer-songwriters, individual and ensemble musicians and bands do all these things for themselves and promote themselves via live gigs, You tube, Facebook, Twitter and, of course sell their wares via itunes or a similar distributor. This is liberating for the individual writer or performer but it has, of course contributed to a very congested market place for new music.
The old music business has been dominated by the big players with fat wallets who often put profit before quality. The new music business should be a much more level playing field with more writers and artists sealing their own destinies, with smaller outfits providing support services and with everyone having access to the means of delivery, especially via the internet. Hopefully it will be a world in which survival and success will depend much more on quality and determination than a mere stroke of good fortune or a lucky break.
A FINAL WORD
I don’t know how many of you have thought out the personal paths that may lie ahead for you. I expect that most of you will go on from Chet’s to one of our Conservatoires or University Music Departments to study further. After that it will of course depend on what you yourselves would like to do and, of course, your natural talents, your determination and, often, a strong element of good fortune.
One thing I can say having worked around the Music Business for 35 years is that unless you’re exceedingly lucky or uniquely talented, nobody bwill hand you an easy career on a plate. Years ago I used to work closely with both drama and music students from the Guildhall School. As they neared the end of their respective courses they tended to fall into one of two categories:
those who planned to sit at home and wait for that phone call from an agent or publisher or promoter – that phone call that rarely came
and those who started actively looking for opportunities straight away, joining up with others to form a piano/singer duo, a string quartet, a brass quintet or whatever and taking to the road – the local pub, busking site or Festival – often for little or no pay but to build up the experience..
The most important thing you can do is to build up a strong CV things that you have already done and experiences you have already enjoyed, works you have performed, places you have visited, reviews you have received, letters of thanks you have been sent.
Good luck to you all