#SoundsFair
We are proud to represent a growing action, #SoundsFair, the campaign for music to command a fair price.
As I see it, we love and believe in music more than ever. Yet, many of us don’t realise how unethical and unsupportive our industry is.
It’s has become increasingly common for filmmakers to use Artlist and other ‘micro-transaction’ libraries. As it has become common for composers to want to sign up to them.
But let me ask you, if this sounds fair to you…
Artlist pays out about 15p per download (pre-tax) and that is royalty free (no further payments depending on where it’s viewed) and no credits offered either.
Let’s imagine this music is used on a commercial that is being filmed today. According to APA, you’d have an assistant, straight out of university, that would have to be paid a minimum of £215 p/day on that set.
Just to get the same day rate as our post-grad, our music would have to be downloaded nearly 1500 times that day.
Does this sound like an industry that can survive to you?
The burden is as much with us Composers as it is with Film Creators as us/they are the ones who sign up to these bad deals. We need to stop accepting so little and command a fair price.
It’s difficult to blame film makers using Artlist because their service is amazing for them. It costs nothing and the music is decent.
But, in the same way we try to buy local, we must all take responsibility and work with musicians properly, create bonds, create exciting new material.
We will have all quit soon enough.