PPCA to kill off small nights?
The Age has more bad news for the Melbourne club scene today. It got me mad enough to write to the editor.... fat lot of good it'll do :/
Dear Sir/Madam,
I was impressed to see Nick Sheridan’s piece entitled “The day the music in nightclubs got dearer” made your front page today, as I see it as a very important and worrying development for the rich and cosmopolitan Melbourne music scene, however a title of “The day the music died (a little more)” might closer reflect the impact which the changes handed down by the Copyright Tribunal yesterday with surely have.
A key fact omitted from the article is that the PPCA tariffs are applied not just to each person who pays into the venue on a given night but to the entire licensed capacity of the venue regardless of the numbers of customers who attend. This may make collection of the fees (and the following legal action to litigate venues into bankruptcy if they cannot afford the payments) easier for the PPCA but it is egregiously unfair on any venue which struggles to fill its rooms on any given night. Imagine if electricity suppliers billed not for the power people used but based on the potential power consumption of all the devices in the home? Ridiculous.
Under this oppressive scheme a venue with a licensed capacity of 150 but which is used for a niche market or a less popular musical genre which may only draw 40-50 punters are suddenly far less financially viable. This ruling could easily see the end of fringe music in a city revered worldwide for the diversity of its musical nightlife. To double the damage, the information collection methods employed by both APRA and the PPCA precludes payments to marginal artists, who are arguably the ones in most need of funding from them, unless their music is featured regularly enough on radio and television to appear on the play lists sporadically collected by these agencies.
So I ask, do the PPCA intend to give the promoters of specialized and niche music events a fair go or does the state government need to step in to protect the musical variety of Victoria?
Yours sincerely,
Gerry M.
Melbourne
Dear Sir/Madam,
I was impressed to see Nick Sheridan’s piece entitled “The day the music in nightclubs got dearer” made your front page today, as I see it as a very important and worrying development for the rich and cosmopolitan Melbourne music scene, however a title of “The day the music died (a little more)” might closer reflect the impact which the changes handed down by the Copyright Tribunal yesterday with surely have.
A key fact omitted from the article is that the PPCA tariffs are applied not just to each person who pays into the venue on a given night but to the entire licensed capacity of the venue regardless of the numbers of customers who attend. This may make collection of the fees (and the following legal action to litigate venues into bankruptcy if they cannot afford the payments) easier for the PPCA but it is egregiously unfair on any venue which struggles to fill its rooms on any given night. Imagine if electricity suppliers billed not for the power people used but based on the potential power consumption of all the devices in the home? Ridiculous.
Under this oppressive scheme a venue with a licensed capacity of 150 but which is used for a niche market or a less popular musical genre which may only draw 40-50 punters are suddenly far less financially viable. This ruling could easily see the end of fringe music in a city revered worldwide for the diversity of its musical nightlife. To double the damage, the information collection methods employed by both APRA and the PPCA precludes payments to marginal artists, who are arguably the ones in most need of funding from them, unless their music is featured regularly enough on radio and television to appear on the play lists sporadically collected by these agencies.
So I ask, do the PPCA intend to give the promoters of specialized and niche music events a fair go or does the state government need to step in to protect the musical variety of Victoria?
Yours sincerely,
Gerry M.
Melbourne