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EMI IN GOOD HANDS

New EMI owner Guy Hands considers paying musicians for their time - what a radical!

By David James

The new head of EMI, Guy Hands, chief executive of private equity firm Terra Firma, is perhaps the most interesting thing to happen to the music business for four decades. At first glance, he looks like any other financier who hopes to buy a distressed company, shake it up and sell it on for a handsome profit. But look a little closer, and he is flirting with a radical new concept: paying musicians a decent living for a decent day’s work.

According to a recent article, he is looking at paying musicians for their time: “EMI will look to support some acts that it might otherwise jettison through new mechanisms such as monthly salaries or paying them a "per diem" - day rate - while they work on their material. 

Almost a third of acts that EMI signs never actually produce an album.” Hands said that he is trying to find a model that will give the artists who cannot support the full functions of a label – about 85 per cent of what the company releases does not make a profit -- “some income”. Having done that, he will know which artists to keep, and which to let go.

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Aussie Rock
THE SUPPORTERS

By Peter Haydon

This band was obviously born in a seedy bar. If they ever reach stadium status, they will turn the stadium into a pub. 

Hard, no-holds-barred Aussie rock with Aussie lyrics about going to shows with girls and offering extended footy metaphors without the slightest intellectual pretension. 

Vocals are of the, hard-edged yet musical-yelling school. Crunching guitars and solid drums are mixed with a vintage raw production sound and no fuckin' reverb.
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Retro Rock

MYSTERY MACHINE

By Peter Haydon

Mystery Machine are a young band, but their record reveals them to be ambitious. 

Suffering like many of their contemporaries from late-60s-itis (get your own music, young dudes!) they nevertheless manage to stand out from the pack of clones because, although stylistically heavily influenced by that era, they have a sound that can't be pinned down.

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THE SCORE WITH SOUNDTRACKS

By Gianysh Toolsee

Darren Powell has been the man behind the music for numerous documentaries including ‘Stories of Somalia’ (1992), ‘The Iceman’ (1993), ‘The Horse Handler’ (2001) and ‘Wild Horses, Wild Kids’ (2003).

He recently left the documentary world behind to branch into music co-ordinating for the upcoming movie, ‘The Silent Woman’. He spoke to The Dues own Gianysh Toolsee about the challenges of finding the right sounds to support the myriad of images in the world of feature-film making.

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PROTEST SONGS FOR THE FEARLESS

By Stephen Luntz

American independent folk musician SONiA Rutstein has just finished touring Australia with Laura Cerulli, the drummer from her band, Disappear Fear. As SONiA (she avoids explaining the capitalisation) admits, touring another continent as an independent artist is a challenge. However, for a performer who doesn’t shirk trying to bring peace to the Middle East or end world hunger, making a go of a geographically difficult tour is a small challenge – it’s her fifth trip down under.

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DREAM SUPPORT GIG COMES TO ABRUPT END

By Alyssa Coulson

Madeleine Wood

They say luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So when the opportunity arose to join the Australian tour of American Grammy-award winning rapper E-V-E, Madeleine Wood was ready. But what led her to that point was far from random. While most of us were wandering aimlessly around some shopping complex at the age of 15, Madeleine knew the first step towards being seen, was to be on the ‘scene’. She recently spoke with Alyssa Coulson about her dream tour with the superstar.

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Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician.

We give preference to letters of 200 words or less, but try your luck anyway. We may edit your letters for reasons of space, or possibly because we're just a bunch of interfering bastards. Despite that, we welcome your feedback, comments and observations. You can use a pseudonym if you wish, but please include your real name, suburb/town and, if you are writing from outside Victoria, your state/country.

Email us at musosunion@aol.com.

Got a problem or question relating to the music biz? Ask Uncle Terry.
(Uncle Terry is a grumpy old man who lives in a cave in one of the less fashionable corners of the Yarra Valley. He is not a qualified legal practitioner and he does not dispense formal legal advice. Neither he nor the publishers of "The Dues" accept any liability for the results of acting on the opinions, statements or recommendations expressed in his column)

Email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com. Please provide your name and suburb (& state/country, if you're not a Victorian yokel...)

Charge!

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Laughing At Your Expense

By Megan Albany

There are some stories that go down in the legendary annals of music-making.

Most of these stories are told by bands about life on the road. They’re funny, poignant and often go unnoticed. 

We want to hear your live band stories, we want you to dob in your band mates, we want to laugh at your expense. 

To encourage you to do just that, I’m willing to share one of the funniest stories that I have of life on the road as a working musician. .

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Out With The Old...

After a long and illustrious career with The Dues, Peter Haydon has moved on to life outside the musician’s union. Well actually, he’s still slightly attached by the umbilical cord as he’s gone from editing to volunteering – he contributed the music reviews for this month’s edition. 

Now before I go any further, I just have to clarify my headline by admitting that I am actually older than Peter, so I shouldn’t really be saying out with the old, but… I’m a big believer in calling other people old whenever you get the opportunity. 

This issue of The Dues will seem fairly familiar to everyone but we do in fact have plans to bring ‘in the new’. There’s a makeover planned for the ezine and the whole Dues team, including our esteemed outgoing editor, have been generously adding their input to the make-over. So keep your eyes out for a new primped and preened look in the upcoming editions.

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Disclaimer:
Articles express the opinion of authors and not necessarily that of theMusicians Union of Australia. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. The Dues makes every effort to use reliable, comprehensive information, but we make no representation that it is accurate or complete.

The Right Bank

By Theo Schulsospekz

The Music Council of Australia (www.mca.org.au) has announced the establishment of a Music Instrument Bank. The scheme involves investors in “fine instruments” loaning their investments to up and coming musicians and was driven by the massive rise in price of these instruments caused by investors competing with each other for their acquisition. There is something nicely poetic about the idea but it wasn’t seen that way by the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ who editorialised about the bank in what may well turn out to be the worst satire misfire of the year (http://newsstore.theage.com.au/apps/browseArchive.ac?sy=smh&cls=2390). (charges apply)

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Part 11 in a series 

by
Bellaire Hillock

Well, “How to Get a Properly Paid Gig” is back after a two issue hiatus. In the last instalment you were promised that the next two areas we would examine would be pricing and promotion. 

PRICING 

How much should you charge for a gig? 

This really is one of those “how long is a piece of string” questions and unfortunately requires that we descend briefly into the murky world of economics. 

In a normal business setting the laws of supply and demand apply and the market tends to answer pricing questions. Much of the music business, however, does not behave like a “business” at all. It is subject, in business terms, to extreme “market distortion”. Distortion of markets is what government bodies such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) are supposed to protect us against but the ACCC seems to have entirely overlooked the manner in which much of the music industry behaves. The market distortion in large sectors of the industry is so extreme that it leads to what economists describe as “market failure”. This term means that the laws of supply and demand simply cease to operate. 

Let’s look at a concrete example to make this a bit clearer.

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