VIEWPOINT
this up: the entire grassroots music venue sector is united in believing that songs are the absolute foundation stone of live music and that without them we have no concerts to host. It also acknowledges that songwriters’ work needs to be recognised and paid for. This really shouldn’t need saying given that more than a third of grassroots music venues are run by musicians, but you can never discuss PRS For Music without accusations of undervaluing songs. So, songwriters and publishers, please don’t send me angry tweets because this column is about how to get you paid in the grassroots sector, not how to avoid paying you. At its most simplistic, Live Events = Space + Songs + Performance (LE=S+S+P). The question is how to value each part of that equation, not whether the individual parts of that equation have value. I promised myself to make it through this month’s column without discussing hummus, so instead let’s discuss pie. The value of the ‘live event’ in our equation could be symbolised by a pie. Sometimes it’s a big lemon meringue pie and sometimes it’s a half-heated Ginsters pasty from a garage at 3am, but it’s still a pie (singular). Everything involved in the live events equation – the ‘space’, ‘songs’ and ‘performance’ – needs a slice of that pie. The value of the pie is essentially decided by what the audience is prepared to pay for it by purchasing tickets. In our sector the audience contributed £129 million in ticket sales during 2019. How much everyone needs from that pie can be broken down into fixed costs and flexible costs. The fixed costs a venue needs from that pie should be – and I’ll come back to that phrase in a minute – rent, rates, taxes, infrastructure and staffing. But it isn’t. In the same year that our audience paid £129 million for tickets, the grassroots music venue sector spent £160 million on live events. You’ll probably want to read that again, but it is correct: the grassroots touring circuit is losing £31 million a year hosting live music events. To cover this shortfall, grassroots venue operators have submerged live event costs into other parts of their business. The fixed costs that should be included – basic things like rent, electricity – aren’t there, so they’ve created a side dish of bar and catering sales to subsidise it. Let’s call this the chips served with the pie.
A This is the bit when people often like to point out
ny column about royalty collection for songwriters is usually subject to allegations that the author doesn’t want those writers or publishers to be paid. So, let’s clear
Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd’s monthly deep dive into live music’s biggest issues...
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TARIFFS
Music Venue Trust and our sector are doing to reduce those fixed costs as much as we can, and the work we are doing with our audiences to persuade them to pay a bit more. We are working hard to make the pie stand on its own as an economically viable product, because without paying those fixed costs the space part of the equation doesn’t exist and we don’t have a live event.
PRS For Music does a lot of good things for songwriters and publishers, but the main issues it faces in the grassroots sector comes down to the fact that the tariffs it imposes on it, such as its recent Online Streaming Tariff, are badly considered, poorly announced, and terribly delivered [PRS For Music quickly withdrew its online tariff for small-scale events in cases where a songwriter is performing their own work]. Combined, this results in PRS For Music imagining they have made the pie bigger while actually turning flexible costs into fixed costs. They add additional financial burdens on to the chips instead of taking a reasonable and agreed share of the pie.
“We need a tariff designed specifically for the grassroots sector, that puts the right money for
that the bar/catering sales should be counted as part of the pie, that if it wasn’t for the pie there wouldn’t be any chips. PRS tried this during its last Tariff LP review, seeking a percentage for car parking, guest lists etc. We had to politely point out that chips exist and you don’t actually need pie to sell them. In the grassroots sector, the pie has become an economic loss leader, an expensive product that loses the venue money, which they have to make back by selling chips. I’ve described in previous columns the work
The Online Streaming Tariff debacle is just a magnified version of this challenge. Tariff LP, designed to protect songwriters’ work in arenas and huge concert halls where a high percentage of performers are detached from the songs they are performing, is also applied to grassroots music venues where the performer and songwriter are often the same person. Set lists are demanded from artists performing their own compositions which PRS don’t even represent. Unfortunate comments about the price being paid by venues for the use of songs end up being made in public by executives who don’t understand that the total value of the pie is only £100. And those statements end up being targeted at people who are struggling to keep the lights on.
the songs directly into the hands of songwriters” MARK DAVYD MUSIC VENUE TRUST
There is a better way. We need a tariff that’s designed specifically for the grassroots sector, that puts the right money for the songs directly into the hands of songwriters as quickly as possible. We need to start from the basics; songwriters and performers need to agree on the value of their share of the pie. Then we can all come to a consensus that this is how we will divide up the pie, however big or small, it is.
Music Venue Trust would be happy to host an event for grassroots songwriters and performers to undertake this first piece of work. When that is completed, our venues want to create a partnership with performers and songwriters to create something that truly works for everybody; accurate, quick distribution of the pie based on a value everyone respects. Get it right and we can all be in the gravy.
musicweek.com
Music Week | 79
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104
