PPCA vs venues: who are the good guys?

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But perhaps one does not have to choose a "good guy". After all, neither side is exactly squeaky clean.

And what of the musicians who create this product? The Copyright Tribunal's recognition that the efforts of musicians have long been undervalued should be welcomed, but why isn't that recognition acted on by the record companies themselves?

Playing a copyrighted recording in a nightclub or at a dance party is, in copyright terms, a "public performance". The right to do this does not automatically come with the purchase of the recording; further licencing is necessary. These licences are granted by "collecting societies" who act on behalf of the recording's copyright owners.

Now it gets complicated.

Music recordings generally contain two copyrights, that of the composer/lyricist and that of the "maker" (of the recording). The collecting society representing the composer/lyricist is the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA). The collecting society representing the "maker" is the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA). This latter body took their case to the copyright tribunal.

What is now the maker's copyright was originally the copyright owned totally by whoever owned the master recording, usually a record company. After that right was created by the 1968 Copyright Act, the PPCA was set up to collect "public performance" royalties solely for record companies.

Unsurprisingly, the PPCA's board is dominated by record company representatives. Four of the eight-member board, including the chair, are also board members of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). These four represent the four major international recording companies (EMI, Universal, Sony/BMG, Warners). Since under the PPCA constitution the chair has a casting vote, this block of four controls the organisation. There is also one representative from one of the smaller labels, and two artist representatives, who may try to influence policy by persuasion but don't have the "numbers" to effectively counter the Big Four.

The PPCA eventually introduced an "Artist Direct Distribution Scheme" which distributes some royalties directly to artists. This scheme, which is voluntary and so could be halted at PPCA's whim, is limited only to "featured artists", typically those under contract with a record company. The scheme specifically excludes other musicians who play on recordings as session musicians. There are some hurdles for artists to jump over to become part of the scheme and if they fail to clear any, their share simply reverts to the record company. The artist's contract with the record company can affect their entitlements under the scheme. The scheme distributes only once a year and if an artist does not qualify in that year their share is not held over…it goes to (come on, want you to guess now… ) the record company!

Amendments to the Copyright Act in 2005 gave performers (including session musicians) copyright in sound recordings but there were two hitches. First the right was assignable and second it was made part of the "maker's" right… yes, that's the one administered by the PPCA… which is controlled by the record companies! The PPCA simply informed record companies that it was not interested in collecting performers copyright and would not be distributing money to anyone except record companies and artists in its existing scheme. It states that it "…needs a licence of 100% of the copyright in a recording before it can grant a licence of that recording to users and collect licence fees in respect of its use." In order to do this a record company would have get all performers on a recording to sign away their copyright to the company. This is now standard practice. Performer's rights are given with one hand and immediately removed with the other! Hope you got a whiff of that money on the way through…

In the light of all this, you can see PPCA's claim that its recent victory in the copyright tribunal represents a "Better deal for artists…" in the proper perspective. It is certainly a better deal…for record companies. One of the factors encouraging the PPCA to increase its take in this area (and its recent effort to increase its take from radio by removing the "one percent cap") is that sales revenue is declining. Despite protestations that piracy is causing this, ARIA's own figures for 2006 indicate that total unit sales actuallywent up by a huge 27% compared with the previous year. Unfortunately income declined by about $16.5M during the same period.

This can be explained by the fact that the massive increase in legal digital sales (26%) failed to make up for the drop in average unit price: in 2006 physical product (CDs) sold for an average price of $8.15 per unit compared to $1.33 per unit for digital sales, this meant an average unit price of $6.37 compared to the previous year's $8.36, a decline of 16%.

The question is not "should an independent tribunal make decisions about the PPCA's collecting levels", it is "why isn't there a tribunal who can force the PPCA and record companies to behave fairly to musicians".

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Elton John - straight to the heart

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But what fixed it for me, for good or ill, was repeated listening to the entire double album, all four LP sides, as it blared through a Pioneer sound system with four statuesque speakers owned by one of the Marist Brothers in whose care my parents had thoughtfully left me for most of the 1970s.

So instead of being safely bosomed with my family, as most kids my age were, I sat at boarding school drinking in Bernie Taupin’s lyrical propositions about love, uniquely amplified by Elton John’s distinctive and occasionally eccentric musical arrangements.

He even used castanets.

I drank in the hymn to Marilyn Monroe, with its message from the young man who sees her as “something more than sexual.” Even now, I can’t quite put an explanation on that line. But I knew then and know that it’s a line that definitely says something.

I drank in other love-impressions also, like angst. Thanks to Elton, I now knew that love often “lies bleeding” in our hand" even if it doesn’t usually do so in time to highly orchestrated rock music, as it does on the album’s memorable overture song.

Years later, we all learned Elton was gay. Suddenly, some of the other love-impressions on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road took on an interesting new light.

What to make now of All The Girls Love Alice, the sympathetic song about a young lesbian who takes her own life? Was that just edgy 1970s pop lyricism, or did it speak of some deeper psychological questioning in the artist’s mind?

With the exception of Alice, the Yellow Brick Road songs are all distinctly heterosexual. But some might wonder if they’re a little too much so.

For example Sweet Painted Lady, the hymn to a seaside prostitute, sounds over-eager (at least to my 2007 ears) in its endorsement of the notion that it’s “OK” for a woman to make a living by selling her body to strangers.

And then there’s the song Dirty Little Girl, with its appeal to someone to “grab that bitch by the ears.” In any era, this sounds like misogynistic fantasizing, and stands in amazing contrast to the exalted “pedestalism,” to use James Thurber’s term, in which Elton has shrouded women like the dead Marilyn Monroe and the dead Princess Diana, in Candle In The Wind versions I and II.

Like love and desire, this album has followed me through the years. About a decade ago I hunted out a vinyl version from a recycled record store, because I still loved the cover art with its drawing of Elton’s big glasses, his platform shoes and, well, its gay colors.

It got buried amid lounge-room junk. Then recently my wife bought me a CD version. Every chance I get, I now sneak off in her car to play it by myself, loud and proud, out on the public roads.

But I still don’t get it. How could someone as gay as Elton produce such songs that speak so powerfully, over so many years, to someone as straight as me?

It’s not the only phenomenon of the kind. How many red-blooded, red-necked males grew up banging their heads in time to rocking by the late Freddie Mercury – apparently unaware, until the singer’s death from AIDS, that Freddie was also gay?

There’s a nice song about that, called Fahrenheit, by Denver band Five Iron Frenzy, where the singer apologises to the late Freddie for betraying the love he’d felt for him as a singer in his youth, by slagging him off, as a faggot who got what he deserved, to friends after Mercury died.

I’ve never slagged off Elton for being gay, but I must admit, I’ve felt confused about it at times. However, that is really because I think Elton himself was confused about it for many years.

Perhaps the most sexually satisfying song on Yellow Brick Road is not a song about sex at all, but rather the sentimental track Harmony which closes the album. It’s about the singer’s lifelong, loving, troubled, imperfect but impassioned relationship with music:

Hello, baby hello,
Is this the only place you’ve got to go?
Am I the only man you ever had
Or am I just the last surviving friend that you know?

Gay or straight, we all spend much of our lives doing what this song describes, looking for an island in our boat upon the sea.

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