Musical copyright: Baying at the moon over code

30-Nov-2011 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 21:59 GMT

Coulson: 'War of attrition' on copyright fees

I think that Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), is right when she calls for some kind of voluntary code on musical copyright fees.

But I fear that she may be baying at the moon here, from my experience of the collection agencies.

I happen to know that hours and hours of work have been put in by BBPA staff over the years in combating the inflated claims of such organisations as PRS for Music and PPL on setting tariff levels.

The complexities of these tariffs is one area that should be reviewed, together with the approach to negotiation and prosecution. They are quite a litigious bunch — they are happy to go to law whenever it suits them, in spite of their protestations to the contrary.

I do get the impression that they are wolves in sheep’s clothing when it comes to the licensed trade, seeing pubs and clubs as a very handy source of regular income. Now that the troubles of the trade, and pub closures, have seen a shrinking of that revenue stream, it may be that they will become even more persistent in trying to up their fees.

It is good news that the fuss over the swingeing increase in featured music royalties proposed by PPL has persuaded that organisation to engage in a discussion and hold back on putting them into place.

But it is a war of attrition here: it will not give up easily and it will only be a matter of time before it comes back for more.

This is why the call for transparency and sound evidence is so timely. It is far too easy to claim a general ‘benefit’ from music as a basis for a hefty copyright fee — one of the main reasons why the large advertisements for music in pubs, paid for by the societies, seek to emphasise how good music is, without quantifying what that actually means on the bottom line.

When matters have come to the Copyright Tribunal, as they regularly do, in general the huge increases for particular types of music have been rejected as being out of line with the use profile or the evidence.

And gradually the range of different tariffs, for one-off performances, for background music, radio and TV, has produced an accumulated fee that is of some significance to hard-pressed licensees.

A clearer and simpler way of working is long overdue.