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Featured artists fear worst from copyright proposals
09:31 | Monday July 14, 2008
“Featured” artists are anxiously waiting for Charlie McCreevy’s draft directive to extend copyright term, after leaks from Brussels suggest they could be big losers in proposals due to be put before the EC Commissioners’ Cabinets this Wednesday.
The music industry has been dancing with glee since February, when the Internal Market Commissioner announced his proposal to extend the term of protection of copyright in sound recordings in the EU from 50 to 95 years.
However, while record companies and session players are rejoicing, the dream for featured performers – artists who are billed on records – now seems to have soured.
A leaked draft directive indicates that the “clean-slate” provision initially proposed by McCreevy has since been shelved. This had promised to wipe clean any unrecouped balances after 50 years.
However, it is estimated that only one out of eight featured artists will have recouped after 50 years, meaning that the vast majority of unrecouped performers will earn nothing during the extension period.
Worse, most recording contracts have a clause that states that if a recording is sold for 50% of dealer price or less, no royalties are payable to the contracted artist. So even if the artist is one of the lucky ones to have recouped they will still receive nothing if the recording is sold off cheap – quite likely for a 50-year-plus recording.
For more see this week’s Music Week, out today
Readers' comments
what does it matter anyway, by then, nothing will be sold, everything will be for free, besides, who would want to live that long,
Can anyone please explain to me what possible use a term extension will be to session musicians as they are paid one-off flat fees and do not receive royalties for their work? Just part of the campaign of obfuscation and faleshood put around by the pro-extension campaign. The main beneficiaries from a term-extension would be the major multi-national record companies and as we all know the majority of them are not in the least interested in re-issuing the bulk of their back catalogues apart from the usual half-dozen or so artists many of whom have been re-issued many times before.
Artists nowadays make very little money from selling CDs and even selling songs on the net. And how will they when the record co´s still take a chunk off the royalties for packaging when digital format music requires none! The main way for average artists to actually make a decent living is through gigs and merchandising. The music industry is dying and being reborn, new business models are being discussed so the future could hold anything.
Tony Session players (depending on the contracts the sign per session) have the right to claim performance costs back for distributed or broadcast recordings through PPL (formerly PAMRA) so the new deal makes a massive difference to the older vastly talented guys who played on great tracks.