Guest Editorial
Posted: 11:46AM, Friday 20th August, 2010.

The Great Divide - Artists and the Music Business by Marianna Annas

After reading Don Walker’s exquisite book Shots I couldn’t help thinking about the great divide which still exists between artists and the business of music. A jumbled series of literary vignettes provide a magnified view of what was really consuming the author during the years of Cold Chisel’s heady ascent, with the hits, the hype and the coveted life of a successful band silently tucked underneath. The frenzied existence pervaded by live tours, promotional schedules, radio, media and label politics is there, but it’s not the stuff of lasting impressions which is worthy enough of Walker’s prose, although the harshness and brutality of life on the road fares pretty well. The things that preoccupy music business practitioners are even further away from these pages. 

At a point when the music business is tainted by more subversive issues than records sold this week, it is not realistic to believe that artists should just keep being creative, not to be distracted by matters which are strictly the domain of their managers and labels. On one hand many artists pride themselves on being across their music business affairs, and others believe that the traditional role of record labels has been usurped by artists and managers and their web prowess. So why does the divide never go away?

Recently Paul McCartney remarked that he thought the reason The Beatles’ digital rights had not been licensed so far was because EMI was being obstructive...you don’t need to have worked in the music business to know that Apple Corps (not EMI) continues to fiercely control The Beatles’ catalogue and always has. At an industry conference last year a young musician told me that he’d been offered a fantastic deal where the company was offering to be his manager, record label, publisher, merchandiser and booking agent, and how great it would be to have one person doing all these things for him. Last year when Lily Allen said that illegal downloading was worse for emerging artists she didn’t convincingly explain why. At the APRA Awards in June, I lost count of the amount of songwriter award recipients who thanked APRA for “the cheques.” Music publishing is in a particularly elusive spot, even though if you don’t have a good song you probably won’t have a real musical career, and if you do, the mechanics of music publishing will allow it to attract several discrete income sources over a long period of time.

It’s not a coincidence that some of the artists with the strongest commercial longevity are the ones who are sometimes portrayed as control freaks. Madonna did not sign a 360 deal with Live Nation (it did not include her publishing) because she’s too smart for that, and Metallica’s stance against Napster, love it or not, represents a band with the balls to demonstrate that its copyright ownership should not be violated.

Categorically, we have an under informed artist community in the music business, and it’s not necessarily because managers and lawyers aren’t doing their jobs properly. Rather, we are failing in our personal commitment to ongoing self education and dissemination of accurate information. We owe it to the artists who populate a world which is plagued by complex challenges, not to lose sight of its basic foundations. All APRA writer members should be aware of what a performing right collecting society does and we all have to be able to understand the real meaning behind creative commons licences. Google, Wikipedia and bloggers all have a significant place (as resources or repositories), but they are not primary sources and shouldn’t be relied on as information tools by real professionals. And admitting that you don’t know a whole lot about broadcasting royalties on pay TV in Sweden (who does?) is better than a lightweight guess, especially on a conference panel. Think about a recent live performance you saw that reminded you of why you do your job - that artist didn’t underestimate your expectations or intelligence, and conversely, we have the same responsibility.

Marianna Annas is Acting Head, ABC Music Publishing

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