скрипач участвовавший в записи "Элинор Ригби" добивается процента от прибылей как участник творческого процесса:
Beatles Violinist Cries for Help as Copyright Ends
Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Patrick Halling is fighting to keep the few pence he earns every time The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” airs on the radio.
The Beatles song was released in 1966 and under European Union law will enter the public domain in 2016, meaning Halling’s violin-led string background on the song will lose its copyright protection and royalties will end.
“I feel it is unfair that it should just be finished,” said Halling, an 84-year-old classically trained violinist who played on many early Beatles songs at EMI Music. Halling makes several thousand pounds a year from hundreds of songs he recorded with artists including Tom Jones, the Moody Blues and Enya.
Halling is among about 40,000 U.K. artists who rely on music royalties to get by. They’re pushing lawmakers to change the rules and extend the paydays, setting up a showdown with those who pay the fees for using music as part of their business: radio stations, Internet sites, cafes and even hairdressers.
“We may be talking about small pounds but they’re significant if you’re talking about people who aren’t stars,” said Richard Mollet, director of public affairs at the British Recorded Music Industry Ltd., which licenses recorded music on behalf of more than 3,400 U.K. record companies and 38,000 performers worldwide. “In the end, the small amounts going to these session musicians are highly welcomed.”
Hired Hands
Stars like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr benefit from being authors and having contracts with music companies. Those who write music and lyrics in both the EU and the U.S. receive dividends from their work for their lifetimes plus 70 years. Contributing studio musicians and singers in the EU are initially paid for making the recording, then receive royalties for only 50 years.
A recommendation to change the law to match the time limit of the U.S., where songwriters or their estates collect money for 95 years, will be debated in the European Parliament in early 2009.
The British government surprised the music industry last week by signaling the U.K. may support copyright for 70 years, reversing an earlier stance that half a century was enough.
“We accept that there may be a moral case for performers benefiting from their work throughout their entire lifetime,” an official at the U.K. Intellectual Property Office said by e-mail. “We are therefore considering the arguments for an extension.”
A spokesman for Charlie McCreevy, the EU internal-market commissioner who proposed the extension to 95 years earlier this year, said McCreevy “welcomes the U.K.’s constructive approach.” His measure is supported by Germany and France.
Abbey Road Campaign
The fates of musicians like Halling have been in the spotlight in the U.K. since British pop icon Sir Cliff Richard’s first hit, 1958’s “Move It,” entered the public domain this year. Richard’s first No. 1 song, 1959’s “Living Doll,” will follow in July. In 2013, the Beatles’ first album, “Please Please Me” will turn 50.
In a video message on behalf of U.K. performers at Abbey Road Studios last month, Halling and 27 others including guitarists, vocalists, trombonists and bassists who played with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Madonna and Robbie Williams, urged U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown to support the change.
The video message is part of the Fair Play for Musicians Campaign and features artists like Halling, who reminisces about recording with the Beatles at Abbey Road in the 1960s.
The campaign has also taken out a full-page newspaper advertisement in support of the cause and sent a petition signed by 99 artists to Brown last month. U2, McCartney and Roger Daltrey have supported extending the copyright for musicians.
Not Pension Funds
Three years ago, the U.K. government ruled out supporting an extension after commissioning a study directed by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers. Copyright should end at 50 years so that consumers wouldn’t have to pay “monopoly prices” for any longer, the analysis, called the Gowers Review, said.
Labels, not studio musicians, benefit most from royalties, because 80 percent of advances record companies forwarded to artists were never paid back, Gowers concluded.
“Labels have vast back catalogues and each of those labels will be in receipt of millions of euros” if the law were to change, said Becky Hogge, executive director of the Open Rights Group, a London-based organization that campaigns for digital rights. “Recorded music and royalties are also not a pension fund and should not be relied on as a pension fund.”
At EMI Music in the mid-1960s, when recording sessions with the Beatles often turned into “one great party,” musicians often improvised, Halling said.
‘Vagrants’
“Sometimes it was just a scrap of paper and we learned as we went along,” said Halling, who recorded with McCartney on his 1984 film and soundtrack “Give My Regards to Broad Street.”
Payment for each three-hour session at EMI Music was less than 12 pounds ($18), Halling said. Today he plays at weddings to supplement his British pension.
“We’re vagrants really, relying entirely on what comes in,” he said. “The majority of artists are freelance and have no stability or pension.”
In 1975, Phil Pickett’s band, Sailor, had two U.K. No. 1 hits with “Glass of Champagne” and “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Pickett didn’t write the songs and his royalties, which total about 10,000 pounds ($14,800) a year, will end in 2025. “Glass of Champagne” was recently used in a Marks & Spencer TV ad.
“Most of the U.K.’s 40,000 musicians are probably not even on 15,000 pounds a year,” said Pickett, who later joined Culture Club and co-wrote hits like 1984’s “Kharma Chameleon.”
“Making an extra 2-3,000 pounds a year means they have their dignity intact,” Pickett said. “They’ve spent their lives building their skill and after 50 years they are cut off. If it were a business that wouldn’t be fair by society.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kristen Schweizerkschweizer1@bloomberg.net
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