Posts by Ian Jorgensen
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Hard News: Friday Music: Good ideas and grumbles, in reply to Rob Stowell,
All it needs is someone from APRA to chip in
I doubt we'll hear from them, they've already made a statement on their website and Don has made a statement which is a huge move. They've already committed to making a few changes and haha, in a bizzare move, Don has asked me to do their job for them and come forward with ideas of how to do background music collection better - I have many and am not sure why its my responsibility, but hey...I'm up for it.
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but its not a small audience if you're talking commercial radio. It's the 'normals'. Gotta get those 'normals' to ya gigs if ya wanna make a career out of it.
but its as you pointed out before and I point out in the book. 'normals' dont come to shows. Its about creating passionate music supporters, not casual listeners, this can only come about from direct engagement - ideally from a young age.
obvs I'm all for an increased quota, i just don't think its the only answer. Making music something that like sports the average NZ really gets excited about is my wish. That comes from a total reboot
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sorry russell for my patronising post above, didn't mean to come out like that :/
trying to raise the quota to a small audience seems not as important to me as just making a larger audience. Quotas can be increased if needed, but building an audience is the priority.
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hmm. an interesting idea. If its venues who are now paying the fees for live performance, venues could be used as ways to enlist songwriters and perhaps be offered a discount for the fee on the nights they sign up brand new songwriters. This takes work out of APRAs hands and gets venues more on board seeing that money wil actually go to the right people.
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I like all this, and it’s not like Apra hasn’t been flexible in the past
Though Ben, of course, formed it much better, haha, this concept is exactly what I allude to in my essay. If APRA can't work out how to record the data correctly, they need to work out how to exploit these businesses into broadcast opportunities. It makes so much sense.
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So Apra is supposed to magically know what songs you’ve written and performed and when, find out where you live and send you money without you ever registering, proving your identity or claiming those songs? Really?
i don't think you're quite aware of their event collection processes. One of my major beefs and I keep reiterating on is that they DO have all this info. Ie: for camp each year, every band that performs completes a setlist, and includes, yes, their contact details. APRA are meant to contact every band who is not a member and sign them up - I pay them on this proviso. They don't. I have copies of emails with them reiterating these details and I've heard from those bands that no contact was ever made. I have still paid for them.
Also. Haha, you have the same atittude to APRA when it comes to royalty collection and distribution. You look at something as being too difficult because you don't understand how it could be simple. It is VERY simple to find contact details for any band on the internet. If an employee at APRA was to spend 1.5 seconds entering a name into Google they would probably be returned with that info - and yes, it IS their responsibility. They are going around collecting that money on the assumption that it will be paid to the artists in question - if it requires little effort to track people down, they should do it.
They should have someone in their employ whose job it is to do this. After every show at every venue in the country they should have someone send those bands a formatted email outlining the procedure of signing up. It wouldn't be too hard at all if someone kept on top of it.
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And this is the problem I do have with what you wrote Ian. Young bands look up to you and they could easily read what you wrote and go 'yeah fuck apra, I'm not gonna bother with that shit'.
After listening to Anthony Healey talk for a couple of hours, a member of one of the most prolific live bands around who have put out a couple of releases and is not a member of APRA summed it up best with "If APRA was a product, I wouldn't buy it".
And why would you?
They are a company who collects money on your behalf without you knowing and makes no proper effort to contact you, forcing you to sign up to them to receive money which is rightfully yours. By signing up, you effectively endorse their extortion practises - and like the title of this particular essay - their members are (according to my research) unaware of the particulars of their collection processes.
I know Russell isn't a fan of me using that extort word, but I don't know how else to describe it? They ask money from music users but don't show them where it's going and don't give them any evidence of where its gone and threaten them (legal action/imprisonment/fines) when they don't pay but simply ask to see where the money is going.I think the more songwriters who question APRAs reporting and collection the better. For people just to blindly sign up to them and assume that their collection practises are legit is wrong. If someobody is going around asking others for money for you, its in your best interests to understand exactly how they go about asking for that money and the ways they treat those people. (They are doing it in your name after all)
It wouldn't take much at all for APRA to fix all of this. It's just data and finding the right way to collect and report and distribute accurately - the core of their business and they need to get it right, they currently don't.
Extort: To obtain from another by intimidation.
APRA's lawyers sent me a letter threatening legal action, 5 years imprisonment or a 150,000 fine if I didn't pay my background music fee the second year - and it seems the one thing we can agree on is their background music collection is not 100% accurate. To me this is extortion. If its something else, please enlighten. -
Hard News: Friday Music: Good ideas and grumbles, in reply to Samuel Scott,
I feel there is a distinct lack of young bands breaking through in the funny land between total-indie and yucky-mainstream that acts who emerged in the early noughties (Mint Chicks, Brunettes, Pluto, Goodshirt, my band, lots of shitty bands)
RIP Channel Z (and a much more supportive live scene)
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Hard News: Friday Music: Good ideas and grumbles, in reply to Samuel Scott,
They should explain it. You pay them money, you should be allowed to know it is going to the right people.
This is the crux of it and my argument, but somehow my sideswipe and snotty comments aimed at the Silver Scrolls (when I was totally just using that as an illustration) have taken away from the real issue.
I know that we get paid based on our actual gigs because I can tell the difference between a big and small year.
Yeah, It's not really bands like yours who have people who make sure that paperwork is filed which are the issue. Its the huge number of bands who don't file returns, but whom venues are still being asked to pay for which is the problem.
But yeah, haha, you should know you get paid on actual gigs because you get to see a list of those gigs and the amount collected from each - not just seeing the difference from a big to a small year.... -
They generally care about music and why shouldn't people who have been working in the industry for that long get the sweet deal jobs.
this is so correct and yeah, haha, I don't wish to see a bunch of 19 year olds running the industry (though that would be fascinating). I would love to see more consultation and involvement from young people in these organisations though.