'Performer members' of recordings royalty collecting society PPL (ie recording artists and musicians) have put their names to the latest petition calling on the government to extend the recorded music copyright term.
As much much much previously reported, in Europe the copyright term for recordings is fifty years, whereas the term enjoyed by songwriters (and writers and photographers etc) is life plus seventy years.
Record labels and those artists who rely primarily on a cut of recording royalties for a living (ie they didn't write their own songs) have been calling for an extension of recording royalties for some time, though the most recent government review on the matter, by Andrew Gowers, declared no such increase was justified. That said, there remains support for an extension in parliament, and there are moves at a European level to increase the recording copyright, probably to 95 years, which is currently the term in the US.
But with many of the famous early rock n roll recordings about to come out of copyright here in the UK, the label and artist communities need to keep up the pressure for extension sooner rather than later. To that end, a petition was written at the Annual Performer Meeting held by PPL in London yesterday, and 99 musicians quickly lined up to sign it. The petition calls on the UK government to reject Gowers' findings on the matter, and to work with their European counterparts to proactively push for term extension.
Commenting on the petition, PPL chairman and CEO Fran Nevrkla told reporters: "Over the last six years PPL, on behalf of all our performer and record company members, has worked quietly but resolutely on addressing this issue. We have organised petitions, we have taken national newspapers advertisements, we have lobbied, we have listened, we have debated - and we have done much, much more besides. However we have reached a point now where this government simply has to understand that musicians feel desperately angry at being treated in this contemptuous and dismissive way".
The Musicians' Union also support the petition, saying their members, too, are angry about the government's resistance to act on this issue. General Secretary John Smith told CMU: "To say that we are disappointed in the UK government's attitude towards British musicians is an understatement. At a time when the creative industries and music in particular, is the only growth area in the economy, how can they take this attitude towards the very people that provide the music industry with its raw material?"
Elsewhere at the APM, Gerald Newson, double bass player for the London Symphony Orchestra, was re-elected as chairman of PPL's Performer Board.