As a reminder – please encourage your artists and companies to join us in tweeting and facebooking this week to support the #fairplayfairpay campaign. Full details below.
Sheila E, David Byrne, Jack Savoretti and Cyndi Lauper have all announced their support and will soon be joined by other major artists including Chaka Khan and Annie Lennox. Thank you to all those who have pledged their support so far.
Additionally, on Friday we said that we would send you the Berklee Report: Fair Music: Transparency and Payment Flows in the Music Industry, which is attached. The report outlines key recommendations to increase transparency, reduce friction and promote fairness in the industry and we highly support it. Please feel free to forward this report on to your networks.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/FairPlayFairPay?src=hash
-Courtesy of MMF UK
Statement in Support of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015
“If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.” – Jimi Hendrix
Music is one of the most important social, emotional, artistic, and cultural forces in human society. It affects each and every one of us, every single day – from the smallest of personal moments and feelings to the largest and most vital arenas of social change. Music is also a business and, for many, a job.
And for too long the rules governing the economics of music have been stacked against those who create it – from Top 40 superstars to garage bands hoping to break through and everyone
in between. We applaud Representatives Jerry Nadler and Marsha Blackburn for introducing the
Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015, and we thank all of their colleagues who have lent their support to this landmark effort to make the rules for the use of musical recordings more just and fair. We
love radio in all its forms and are proud to partner with terrestrial, Internet, and satellite music services in many different ways.
We admire their innovation and support their growing success. In our view, this legislation will make those partnerships stronger, healthier, more lasting, and more fair. We encourage all our fans and everyone who loves music to support this legislation.
#FairPlayFairPay
The unsurpassed reach of the Internet and the emergence of a range of new digital technologies have transformed virtually every corner of the music industry for fans and creators alike. While consumers enjoy vastly more options, these market disruptions are presenting a range of important challenges for creators, producers, and distributors of music. In our year-long study, the Rethink Music Initiative at the Berklee Institute of Creative Entrepreneurship has sought to identify the underlying barriers to progress and propose solutions to increase transparency, accelerate transactions and cash flows, and reduce inefficiencies in the $45 billion global music industry (including live performances).
Musicians are struggling to balance their passion for music with the need to be knowledgeable and vigilant about the financial rewards for their talents. Of the $15 billion in global recorded
music revenue for sound recordings reported by the IFPI for 2014, only a small portion of the money beyond the initial recording advances ultimately makes its way to artists as ongoing revenue.
Faster release cycles, proliferating online services, and creative licensing structures make finances and revenue even more complex to understand and manage. To strike the right balance, we must address a difficult question: Are the compensation structures fair?
[Contributed by Steve Garvan | Garvan Media,Management & Marketing,Inc. | steve@garvanmanagement.com]