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McCreevy encourages consensus on performer’s fund
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 12 December 2008
More comment on the copyright extension now, also from the UK Music conference, this time from European Commission Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the politician who initiated the aforementioned European review of the extension issue. He was also speaking at the Creators Conference.
McCreevy’s proposals, which advocate the 95 year copyright term, also propose a rule whereby after fifty years 20% of gross revenue generated by a recording (so, that’s all revenues I think) would go to a special fund for performers – ie the labels would have to pass on a fifth of revenues generated from fifty year old plus recordings to musicians oblivious of whether those recordings had recouped on the label’s initial investment.
McCreevy’s performers fund is specifically designed to benefit session musicians, who generally rely on recording royalties more than so called featured artists (the artists who the recording is actually credited to) because they don’t normally benefit from all the other income streams the featured artists often get a cut of (songwriting royalties, merchandise sales, money for opening supermarkets, that kind of thing).
And of course session musicians may not be contractually due any cut of royalties generated by the record company, rather relying exclusively on the aforementioned statutory royalty that comes from public performance (which is automatic and not contract dependent).
Which is all very admirable, though artist managers reckon featured artists, many of whom don’t make much from other revenue streams either, should also get a cut of any performers fund created as part of a copyright extension.
As a result trade bodies representing various different interest groups – so in the UK the BPI, Musician’s Union, Music Managers Forum and recently created Featured Artists Coalition – have been discussing how such a fund would work and, crucially, who would benefit from it. Which makes the whole copyright extension debate even more complicated.
Anyway, McCreevy yesterday urged the industry to reach a consensus on the performers fund proposal asap, because doing so, he reckons, will strengthen the overall industry’s case for extension.
He told the conference: “There has been a debate between the record labels and the session musicians on how to distribute the money set aside in the fund. How should the amount of the claim be calculated? What revenues should be taken into account and how high should it be for the performer’s part?”
“[Interested parties] had better come to a rapid agreement on this. And they have to do so publicly, because the enemies of term extension will exploit any discord among future beneficiaries. And here is my warning: the proposal’s chances for rapid adoption in first reading will not be enhanced if the two major beneficiaries, performers and record producers, are caught counting their chickens before they have hatched”.
