Labels & Publishers

Candidate statements in PPL Performer Director Elections

By | Published on Thursday 14 November 2013

PPL

Four musicians are standing for the two Performer Director posts available in the record industry’s rights organisation PPL. The two new directors will be elected by performer members at the body’s upcoming Annual Performer Meeting. All four candidates have written statements to support their bid for election, as follows…

CRISPIN HUNT
I, Crispin Hunt, wish to stand as candidate for the role of elected Performer Director on the board at PPL. I am Co-CEO of the Featured Artist Coalition, a not-for–profit organisation that provides a collective voice for featured artists. The FAC campaigns on behalf of those who release music as an act. To help them navigate towards a new climate of fairness, transparency, partnership and sustainability within the music industry.

I have represented featured artists on numerous panels and forums where I have debated issues such as streaming, copyright, piracy, internet regulation, intellectual property, education and future models of music production and distribution. I have developed positive relationships with UK Music, the BPI, AIM, PRS, the MU, Google, Spotify and with other collective artist groups across Europe and the USA. I have also participated in numerous successful delegations to the European Commission voicing artists rights.

I have been a member of PPL since the early 1990s when, as the lead singer and guitarist for the Britpop group The Longpigs, I toured the globe, promoting several hit singles and two hit albums. I am now a multi-platinum selling songwriter and producer working with or for: Jake Bugg, Florence And The Machine, Ellie Goulding, Maverick Sabre, Ronan Keating, Natalie Imbruglia, Newton Faulkner, Rihanna, Bat For Lashes, Estelle, Cee-Lo Green, Bipolar Sunshine, Lissie, Luke Sital-Singh, and numerous others from underground dance DJ’s to ‘X-Factor’ winners. I am keenly aware of the pressures of the modern market, profit margins, and the hopes and investments of record labels and publishers.

From 2001 to 2007, I worked in the House Of Commons as a political researcher and campaign coordinator. Working for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Parliamentary Reform, Parliament First, I worked with Kenneth Clarke, Gwyneth Dunwoody, Robin Cook, Claire Short, Tony Banks, Tony Wright, Grahame Allen, Ed Milliband, Tristram Hunt and many others. Politics taught me patience, protocol, PR, dialogue, debate and, most importantly, the diplomatic skills needed to make change happen.

I hope this unique combination of experiences qualifies me to offer the board of PPL an unusually broad aspect with which to contribute to the future governance of this flagship collecting society. Not only am I fully aware of the rigours involved in making a living as a featured artist, but I am also a working musician and producer: sampling, writing, playing, programming, engineering, gigging and creating with, and for, emerging and emerged artists and music producers, week in week out. I believe that these artists, who are the future of music, deserve representation within the governance of PPL that is commensurate to the income that their work generates.

Never has the time been more pressing for music creators and music promoters to work cordially together to build a future for the music industry that addresses the needs of its audience and producers alike. And never has the time been more pressing to ensure that creators and promoters of music receive fair remuneration for their work.

MARK KELLY
I am delighted that after years of campaigning, the FAC and MMF have achieved another step towards their vision of fairer representation for performers. The extra performer seat on the board is getting us closer to equality of representation with the record labels and our voice is getting louder.

In the four years that I have served on the boards of PPL many of my aims are still the same; fairness and transparency from everyone in their dealings with performers have to be the prime goals.

It is important that those who understand the challenges that face artists working at the coal face and have first-hand experience of being a featured performer fill the performer seats on the board. I have now been the keyboard player for Marillion for 32 years. I am experienced musician but I am also open to the adoption of new technology both in making and marketing music and the measurement of its use. It is important that music use is fairly recorded so that money raised by PPL can be distributed fairly and accurately to those that made the music.

In addition, my position as co-CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition for the past five years has put me in the best place to influence other industry bodies and government. I have been exposed to a great spread of artist opinion from all quarters of the music industry and continue to learn and represent their views at the PPL board table.

Whilst progress has been made in ensuring that correct performer line-up information for each track is supplied by record companies (whose legal obligation it is) some do a poor job at providing accurate information in a timely manner. This costs performers money and must be minimised. Recent issues with Sound Exchange in the USA mean that UK performers are not paid properly and the money they do pay lacks the data needed to distribute it fairly. Performers and collective rights management organisations must work together on an international basis to make changes in this area, which I am striving for.

The fight for fair legislation in the USA continues. This will, for the first time, provide public performance revenue from sound recordings from terrestrial radio to labels and artists. This new revenue stream will mean that US performers will finally get paid and that UK performers will enjoy a new income stream from US radio.

I am very encouraged by PPL’s progress in collecting international income but more work needs to be done to ensure that foreign collective management organisations strive to reach the same data management standards and distributions that are being set by PPL. We have achieved greater representation on the PPL board this year and that is to be welcomed but I am still concerned that the PPL board has more record company members than performer members. As an organisation that deals with a right that provides ‘equitable remuneration’, PPL’s board should be one that reflects the nature of this right.

ROBIN MILLAR
The successful collection of money for performers is a moving and complex world. Changes in Brussels, fragmentation of licensing bodies, the increasing number of digital platforms, streaming services and the willingness of overseas societies to trade honestly with us – these all affect our income.

Add to that the change in how we put our music out. Often on our own label or with friends. Often outside the mainstream world of record companies.

To keep up with this PPL has to keep working at better and simpler data capture from us to track what we have out there. PPL needs to follow vigilantly every new trend and service putting out music and try to make a deal with them. PPL needs the power of collective licensing in as many areas as possible to bargain for the best deals. Most of all, PPL needs to work with government here and internationally to ensure we stay protected.

In 1985 I gave the keynote address at the first Digital Information Exchange in Los Angeles after Sade’s Grammy Award. I predicted that within 25 years physical sales would be eclipsed by downloads and subscription services for music. It’s taken our industry a very long time to move with the times. We have to look at a tendency for music bosses to protect what they have.

I worked with PPL for six years until 2010. I got increasingly concerned that the ownership of PPL by three or four major record companies is a problem. I watched PPL struggle to license new services as one major could veto any such move, stating they would prefer to make such deals directly. How can you license a DJ who wants to sell memory sticks of his gig when you have to say “oh by the way, you can’t use any of the tracks you played if they are owned by Warner or Universal?”

PPL have moved forward a lot. But I don’t think performers are represented powerfully enough. Not just the number of board members, but the influence we hold outside of PPL. Parliament needs to listen. Brussels needs to listen. America and the world needs to listen. Historically performers have not done as well as other rights owners out of performance income. They need stronger representation. There are millions of pounds unpaid to UK performers at Sound Exchange in America. I intend to go and get it.

I want to be a performer representative again, because I have a voice and the time and influence to use it. Record companies listen to me, government ministers pick up the phone to me. CEOs of broadcasters meet with me and I’m pushy and hard to ignore. The Performer Board has done a really good job. It keeps a close eye on what happens internally. But performers need more than that. They need influence inside and outside PPL and a representative who understands what it means having music out there with your name on it. www.robinmillar.org.uk

IAIN SUTHERLAND
I have been a professional musician for fifty years. My first ten years were spent as an orchestral and session violinist with London’s symphony orchestras and in the recording studios; in the West End theatre as both violinist and music director before my appointment as Conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra and Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, eventually conducting most of the great orchestras of Europe and the UK.

I know how inextricable the worlds of featured performers (FP) and non-featured performers (NFP) are, and if am voted on to the PPL Performer Board I will be an advocate for both sections. Every eligible performer must cast their vote. Fellow members of the Featured Artist’s Alliance (FAC) have expressed doubt that I would be able to represent both groupings, and that my election would be detrimental to the interest of the FAs, but I can assure them that we are all after the same ends; the best deals we can get form the recording and collection industries.

I would not back any deal which would benefit either the FAs or the NFAs at the other’s expense. I have worked with the finest musicians from both sectors, from Nigel Kennedy and the RPO, to George Shearing and the BBC Big Band and I conducted the first performance of the orchestral versions of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’ and ‘Hergest Ridge’, arranged by David Bedford featuring Steve Hillage. Each of my own last three CDs was made, on release, Featured Album by Classic FM.

I have experience at board and committee level: the Performers And Composers section of the Incorporated Society of Musicians; the Music Writer’s section of the MU; the Council of the British AcademyOof Songwriters, Composers And Authors and the Board of PAMRA. I was one of that PAMRA Board which fought for the best deal for the merger with PPL, therefore it disturbs me to hear the number of complaints I get from my session players and I would wish to investigate them. Currently the two biggest items to be resolved are the usage of, and payment for, “samples” and the implications of the twenty year copyright term extension.



READ MORE ABOUT: | | | |