More businesses will pay for music under new licensing system
The two collection agencies for Australia's music industry are set to raise more revenue from businesses that play their tunes, under a new regime that requires business owners to buy only one music licence instead of the two previously needed. The profits-to-members agencies, which together collected about $100 million from businesses in 2017-18, claim the income boost will come from proprietors who were confused by the former two-licence regime, and therefore had held only one licence or none. The agencies claim businesses compliant with the previous regime won't pay any more when the new system, OneMusic, comes into effect on July 1. Any business that uses music, from nightclubs and restaurants to call centres with hold music, have hitherto had to acquire two licences for it. One was from the merged Australasian Performing Right Association-Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (APRA AMCOS), which collects on behalf of member songwriters, music publishers and composers. The other was from the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA), which collects on behalf of recording artists and record labels. From July 1, those licences will merge into a single OneMusic licence, with fees then flowing to each member organisation, generally on a 50-50 basis. “We know many businesses found it hard to deal with two separate rights organisations and some neglected their obligations altogether," APRA AMCOS chief executive Dean Ormston said. "A simple, single, easy-to-use system will significantly reduce the administration burden for everyone." In order not to be seen as "some sort of government impost" by new licensees, Mr Ormston said the OneMusic interface emphasised that music was a product that businesses benefited from paying for. "The new website will be continually publishing content about how music can help businesses, and we'll offer advice to any licensee that reaches out to us," he said. "We are selling a product that's proven to make your customers happier and to spend more, and the livelihoods of the people that make that product needs to be protected." The arrival of OneMusic coincides with calls for APRA AMCOS and PPCA to be more accountable and transparent about how fees they collect are distributed. Transparency drive The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently made the reauthorisation of APRA AMCOS, which together with PPCA holds a monopoly over music rights management, contingent on it publishing an annual transparency report with information on rights revenue, operating costs and payments to members. The Council Of Small Business Australia is even pushing for a Senate inquiry into the performance right royalties system, according to its chief executive Peter Strong, in response to member gripes about the opaqueness and expense of the present system. For instance, the director of Academy Ballet School, Sinead Vidler, complained in a submission to the ACCC's reauthorisation process that APRA AMCOS charged her school the same as a modern dance school playing contemporary music, even though she played music that was "predominantly well out of copyright". In another submission, the Australian Venues Association claimed recorded music was licensed for dancing in Australia "at a significantly higher rate than anywhere else in the world". Mr Ormston promised OneMusic would address transparency and expense concerns, with a new quoting system that allowed business owners to specify how and for how long they used music. There are 24 types of OneMusic licence, from childcare to workplace music via funeral directors and karaoke. This range represents a streamlining from previous arrangements, where for instance APRA AMCOS alone offered 32 licence types. In its 2017-18 annual report, APRA AMCOS said only 14 per cent of the record $420 million it collected (including $68 million from business users of music) was spent on administration, a rate it said "compared favourably" with counterpart performing rights associations overseas. Read the full article
