This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Top Stories
MU, FAC and MMF ally behind Music Supported Here initiative
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 26 March 2010
The Musician’s Union, Featured Artists Coalition and Music Managers Forum have announced their intent to more closely collaborate on those areas where they have a common interest, and, presumably, where the interests of artists and musicians might run contrary to those at the corporate end of the music business.
While both the MU and MMF are affiliated with cross-sector trade body UK Music, so are the likes of the BPI and Music Publishers Association, so where creators and corporates conflict there is presumably merit in those organisations focused on the former collaborating separately.
Part of this alliance will see the FAC and MMF giving its support to the previously reported Music Supported Here campaign that has been spearheaded by the MU, and which aims to encourage and enable musicians to engage directly with their fanbase on copyright issues, on the basis that grass roots artists have more chance of persuading music fans to go the legit route when it comes to buying or accessing music online compared to any centrally-driven industry initiative.
All three bodies are also throwing their support behind a campaign called ‘Artist As Retailer’. Promoted under the Music Supported Here banner, this campaign is trying to persuade record companies to, as a matter of course, give artists the right to directly sell their own recordings via their own websites and social network profiles, and to be treated like a retailer in that arrangement.
This would mean that an artist would enjoy the retailer cut of the download fee in addition to the royalty they are due under their record contract. Music Supported Here claim this could increase an artist’s income from a download five-fold, and it would also enable artists to earn from their recordings even when they haven’t recouped on their record deal, because they would earn the retailer cut whatever. The argument is the label doesn’t lose out financially, and the system encourages artists to encourage their fans to pay for their music.
Confirming the plan for the MU, FAC and MMF to work together on the Music Supported Here initiative, and other areas of common interest, the Musicians’ Union’s Assistant General Secretary Horace Trubridge told CMU yesterday: “Our three organisations basically share the same agendas, in as much as we are about looking after creators and performers. We want to deal with the big issues that we think are wrong with the industry. In terms of putting the artists directly in contact with the fans, and cutting out all of the people in between, I don’t have any doubt that Music Supported Here will become a kind of vanguard, in what will become the industry norm in years to come”.
FAC’s Membership & Development Director Matthew Brown added: “The MMF, the FAC and the MU represent the interests of artists right across the board. Each organisation has a lot to bring to the coalition. All this lays the groundwork for a powerful collaboration. Coming together in this way has never happened before and has largely been brought on by the narrowing of the gap between artist and fan; a change that brings lots of opportunity for all those who support and represent artists”.
Speaking for the management community, MMF CEO Jon Webster added: “The MMF is delighted to be working more closely with the FAC and the MU on items of common interest. Managers have always represented featured artists, and their interests and those of musicians of all types need to be more aligned”.
