The SACEM’s twists and turnsJanuary 24th, 2007
At this end of January, my interest is focused on France and its SACEM. Does the “Society of the Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music” wish to deprive its members of diffusion?
Our team has decided a few weeks ago to put online for free some of my most recent recordings, in streaming and downloading versions. The juridical jungle of internet has considerably slowed down the project of on-lining and changed our plans.
Wishing to introduce to French contemporary repertoire works, we came up against the problem of SACEM’s authors members. Far from criticizing copyrights, I’m opposed here to three things:
- The prohibitory prices charged by the venerable institution
- The authors image resulting from the society’s management
- The complete dispossession of the author’s rights
To put online my recordings, I must of course pay the royalties. That being said, the SACEM does not make any difference between a lucrative and a non-lucrative purpose… If we wanted to lead to the initial project, this website would have probably been a total ruin.
A small example: Let’s suppose that we wanted to put the Henri Dutilleux’s sonata for piano online. This site would have, according to the clauses of the SACEM, to pay a 100€ tax per year + 0,07€ per download for free download as well as a fixed price of 100€ per month for streaming. One single Dutilleux’s sonata would then come to about 1400 € per annum, and this, even if Mister Dutilleux gave us a free license, as he would himself have to pay his own rights, having assigned them to the SACEM.
There remained two possibilities: either to be in breach of the law and not pay anything at all, or put in place a payment system, generating an additional cost of 200€/month for the secured banked system. None of these possibilities have been retained; the first one for obvious reasons to not deprive a composer of his royalties; the second one because it did not square with the initial conditions.
Therefore, the simplest solution seems to not put online the SACEM’s members and to only publish French authors that have fallen in the public domain.
Too bad! Whereas everyone criticize the lack of dissemination of Contemporary Music, which could easily be filled in with a fast and mass medium called the internet, the institutions supposed to defend us, prevent us from doing that “in our own interest”.
The institution also makes wicked artists, stingy and money-grubbing out of its members. However, about this image, the authors would speak for themselves (see this article). As you can see, the SACEM generates comic situations, like when an artist is forced to pay rights on his own works! Fortunately, France does not have the monopoly of good music, and in other countries, such institutions do not possess exclusive rights; it is therefore possible to directly negotiate with composers.
The final word would be: Do not play French music now, wait 70 years after the composer’s death! The French music will always have, at least, a 70 years delay in media, unless one helps to develop the legislation… isn’t it Mister Petitgirard?