GOLDEN NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 70, 24 March 1937, Page 26

GOLDEN NOTES

HOW COMPOSERS ARE PAID

Every day hundreds of tunes are broadcast, and hundreds of records are sold. This mass production of music means a golden harvest for the composers who have the ■ secret of writing melodies which radio listeners like to hear.'

In the following article, reprinted from a London radio journal, the writer discusses the vexed problem of performing rights and gives some indication of the fees paid by the 8.8.C. to performers and, through the Performing Rights Society, the composers.

Henry Hall, directing the 8.8.C. Dance Orchestra, is paid a'salary of over £2000 a year by the 8.8.C. and, of course, he gets royalties in addition for all the gramophone ' records he makes. ~' "■

Each member of the 8.8.C. Dance Orchestra draws a large'salary, but the total amount of money made by the 8.8.C.'s own dance combination- does not approach the huge sums netted by some of the outside broadcast London dance bands.

Every-band which broadcasts-from an outside cafe, restaurant, or hotel (including the late night 8.8.C dance music), is paid £40 by the 8.8. G.

A few regular fees like- this in addition to their ordinary contracts at the hotel or restaurant still enable bands to become wealthy . . . and the money made by the band leaders themselves frequently prevents the public from realising how much money is made by the men behind the scenes—the radio song writers who compose the popular tunes which in many cases are the making of a good band.

Many of the" leading radio song writers are virtually members of a trade union. Their fees from broadcast performances of their songs are collected by the Performing Rights . Society— and the 8.8.C. has ■to pay, on each broadcast, a sum to the composer, the money being" collected by the society.

In the old days when a man wrote a good song he went to one of the big music publishers, who bought his work outright for between £10 and £25.. The "music publishers put it out in the form of sheet music (that was before the days of gramophone records and wireless), and the composer probably had the mortifying job of going round to theatres and music halls and hearing the tune ori everybody's lips while he was none the richer for it!

Nobody worried very much in the days when the musical business was quite small, but as soon as gramophone records became popular and broadcasting brought entertainment to the millions, then composers realised that there was good money to be made out of radio song writing.

In the music hall days, when Eugene Stratton or Marie Lloyd popularised tunes on the boards, they did not have to bother about the composers of the numbers.' Performing fees were seldom paid in those days, for the music publishers were only too glad to get their numbers popularised by leading r;ople on the stage.

But it is only fair to the-composer, in these days of mass production music, that every tune played by a popular dance band should bring him in a royalty. .'''.: ' '

Roughly, half a crown out of every radio listener's licence ■ money goes to the programme section of the 8.8.C. This pays for artists' salaries, the fees of people who go to the microphone to broadcast, and to the composers who made the radio music. Roughly, 4d out of every 10s licence is paid out to the music composers.

Actually the 8.8.C. make a lump sum payment to radio song writers, and the' amount of* this fee is calculated on a sliding scale according to the number of licences in force at the time. Every half-year the radio song writers have a "share-out" in accordance with the number- of times their, work has been performed, and their length.

It is a very difficult business estimating the number of times a tune is broadcast, for although a number may be played only once from a 8.8.C. studio, it may be relayed through'a number of stations all over the British Isles, ■ and the performing, right fee in each case has to be taken into account. ' ; '■'■'.'

A simultaneous broadcast of an item doubles the fee payable to a radio song composer, and the fee may- be anything from 4s to £5.

The same fee is paid for any one particular kind of item broadcast from a 8.8.C. station and the fee is doubled if it is simultaneously broadcast, but the fee is halved, if a number is broadcast only through one of the small relay stations.

Of course, a large sum of money is also collected by radio song writers for their royalties on sheet music and gramophone records. 'Radio listeners may think it rather unfair that .the 8.8.C. should' have to pay fairly heavily for the performing rights of a number of popular items . . . but it must be remembered that in the case of concert hall performances the, song writers get their fees according to the size of the hall and the number of the audience.

I the body acting on behalf of the radio song winters charged the 8.8.C. on the same scale, ' the corporation would very soon go bankrupt. But actually the sliding scale which is arranged between the 8.8.C. and the society is considered fair both to listeners and to song writers, and it may be some consolation to know that as so many British, tunes are now being played, radio listeners in England are contributing greatly towards the prosperity of Britain's own music history.

About two hundred thousand new works are broadcast every year on which fees are payable direct through the performing rights concerned to the composers. The fees paid to the composers are estimated on the type of music, and this central body has classified every type of number, allocating "points" to each variety.. For example, an . ordinary fox-trot might represent one point; while a :'=iirly long symphony or concert performance might represent 240 points.