The journal Popular
Music and Society has recently published my article ‘Is Equitable
Remuneration Equitable? Performers’ Rights in the UK’. If you do not have
access to the journal via an academic institution, it would usually cost £28 to
read it. However, the following link allows the first 50 readers to access the
work for free: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/i9cDVrJXSAWuYhm8gciC/full.
The
article has its roots in an entry for this blog, which in turn formed the basis
of a talk I gave at the ‘Working in Music’ conference about the Musicians’
Union, held at the University of Glasgow in January 2016. The abstract is as
follows:
British
musicians receive ‘equitable remuneration’ when their recordings are played in
public or are broadcast. Performers’ rights are weaker than those of
songwriters, however. This is largely because songwriters are the first owners
of their copyrights, whereas performers rarely own the copyright in their sound
recordings. This article concerns the remuneration of musicians’ labor. It
looks at the legislative evolution of performers’ rights in the UK and
addresses the influence that songwriters, record companies, and the Musicians’
Union have had on this area of copyright law. It argues that performers will
only achieve legislative parity with songwriters if the ownership and
conceptualization of sound recording copyright are reconfigured. This copyright
should be awarded to performers for their creative labor, rather than to record
companies for their financial and administrative endeavors.
