Julia, I can address a little into the music part..any money-making venue
that plays music, pays a royalty fee. Bars, clubs, stores...and radio stations.
I believe the fee is collected on behalf of the songwriter - whom maintain
'ownership' of publishing rights for the song, not to the performer (unless
they are one and the same).
For radio stations - I really can't recall if it's a per day charge. I think
so and that's why you'll often hear the same song played over and over again
-it will cost the radio station the same price whether they play it once, or
10 times a day.
Sorry - this is going way back, more than a decade when I attended some
workshops on the biz. I was thrilled to have a chance to speak one on one with
the likes of Bobby Wienstein (co-wrote 'Going Out of My Head') who was the
President of BMI, George David Weiss ('The Lion Sleeps Tonight'), President of he
Songwriter's Guild of America (of which I am a former member) and..hehe the
most awesome Dan Hartman (one-hit wonder of the 80's) who played bass for 4
years with the Edgar Winter Group (he also wrote, sang and played the song
'Freeride') and I thought it was really kewl that his neighbor in Westport was
'Meatloaf" and they hung out together!
But a song like 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' has been re-recorded (The Lion
King) and the original singer does not profit from the subsequent recording by
another. Thanks to songwriter's publishing rights organizations, etc., the
songwriter can continue to benefit.
So obviously these aspects of the music business have very little to do with
an honorarium paid to an artist for exhibiting their material in a museum! A
publication that the museum may produce for the exhibit, particularly if
it's for profit -is also another issue altogether.
The artist may gain more recognition/prestige from an exhibit - but that
does not guarantee that they will profit directly. Not all of the work on
exhibit will necessarily be for sale either. All the more reason that an
honorarium, whether to cover expenses or not - is a sound, ethical jesture,
Pam
In a message dated 9/28/2005 12:34:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Jay, can you explain further how paying an artist a fee or honorarium to
exhibit is unethical? Once an artist’s work has passed curatorial muster, say
in a one- or two-person exhibition, how is offering an honorarium to the
artist(s) impugning the museum’s reputation for honesty and objectivity? How is
this worse than, say, an art museum exhibiting a retrospective of the work of
a fashion designer after it has received a seven-figure donation from that
designer?
I’m also fuzzy about radio after reading that Wired article you cited. I
seem to remember when I was a DJ in college, having to keep track of all the
songs I played (and having to play a certain minimum of songs from a top-40
playlist each hour) and the program director saying that he had to send in all
the station’s lists so that royalties could be distributed. This was in the
early 1980s and it was a small, low-power station. Made sense to me then—you
play an artist’s music in public, the artist gets paid. I was under the
impression that it was a tiny payment (a fraction of a penny or less per play),
but the principle seemed to be reasonable.
No matter how creative an artist is, logic would dictate that if s/he makes
it his/her life’s work, s/he would expect to make a living at it. And we as
citizens need to recognize that if we don’t support artists financially, from
whatever source (public, private, institutional, whatever), there will be
fewer and fewer of them out there as time passes. We also need to keep track
of auxiliary issues, such as copyrights and moral rights, that recognize an
artist’s continuing interest in his/her creative output and to respect that
interest as a matter of institutional policy.
Julia Muney Moore
Public Art Administrator
Blackburn Architects, Indianapolis, IN
(317) 875-5500 x230
Pamela Silvestri, Museum Assistant
Northeast States Civilian Conservation Corps Museum
Shenipsit State Forest
166 Chestnut Hill Road
Stafford Springs, Connecticut 06076
(860) 684-3430
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