When Purchasing Music
There are lot’s of amazing organisations in the world that provide legitimate ways of legally purchasing music for licensing so everything can above board and you can feel good about what you are doing with your choirs and groups.
This is important to understand as it changes per country but at it’s core is still the same value of how we mindfully support the different aspects of of industry. From the people who write lyric’s, to song structure to selling full score and composition and making this available for use. We have tackled this subject many times over as SLNA in person at Leaf In’s over the years. But this year ChoirCommunity put a lovely post up about the core sentiment around this issue that we wanted to share with you and some of the responses.
To protect peoples identity we have shortened them to a capital letter, the conversation responses are valid and also raise interesting value points that we would be happy to discuss with you. We will be adding copyright information to our membership area for 2024.
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A MESSAGE FROM CHOIRCOMMUNITY
This is going out to all the groups we are connected to and involved in the choir music scene. It isn’t a very ‘festive’ message but we feel it is however of real importance and worth discussion at this point in time.
As people involved with music for their livelihoods it surely follows that we should also value the music we use at the highest level – and by extension all those involved in writing it.
It is therefore somewhat disappointing when we hear about events and music leaders trying to get away with obtaining the music they use without paying the proper price for it.
ChoirCommunity is a digital download music site so we rely on trust more than most places to ensure that our rights owners, composers and arrangers get the appropriate recognition and reward for the work they do when our music is sold.
We are sure (and are extremely grateful) that the vast majority of our customers recognise this and buy the correct number of ‘copies’ (really licences) of our music to cover the number of singers using our arrangements, but it has been brought to our attention that a recent event ignored this and clearly tried to get away without paying for the appropriate licences, even after having been alerted once.
The system which we have for music licencing in this country which by nature must rely on trust – and is therefore in reality easy to cheat – can only work if the consequences of abusing that trust are serious. For too long an attitude of ‘laissez-faire’, allowing this to take place without any consequences has enabled this to continue.
We believe that only by calling this out and not ‘looking the other way’ when it happens can change this and enable the music scene to thrive.
So this is something of a call to action (and a request for a discussion) about a matter we feel strongly about. We would like to point out that ChoirCommunity is not itself a ‘money-making’ venture. In the five years since we started, we have not paid salaries to anyone involved in setting up or running the site – only royalties to the musicians who submit the arrangements which are available to purchase and download.
We should also state that the issue which was brought to our attention has been put right and the proper licences paid for, but we feel it is still a sign that we, as a community, are not doing enough to ensure that music, the lifeblood of our livelihoods, is not valued as it should be.
Thank you if you have got this far and please post a comment below as we would be very interested to know people's feelings about this.
G: It really is disappointing, as we put so much work into making music available legally on the site and we do not yet pay ourselves for all the work we have put in over the last 5 years .Just because the website is beautiful, well managed and shiny does not mean we are doing well financially and we won't miss a few copies/no one will notice. it is also a principal which is everywhere at the moment about paying people in music properly. These days, unless you are singing under a rock you will be seen.
Y: My choirs don’t have the music as everything is taught by rote but usually I have to buy 20 or so copies so I can teach it. Not quite sure how it all works in this instance.
CC: That’s still the right thing to do Y so thank you for raising that. Learning by ear is still ‘using’ the arrangement so the legal position actually isn’t any different.
S: I no longer run choirs but I generally didn’t give out music just words as we learnt by listening and repeating and I often would buy an arrangement then teach a slightly different version. If anyone actually wanted the music I could direct them to where they could download/buy it but as it might be different there wasn’t much point. But I must admit I occasionally did just photocopy the odd page in an emergency!
S part 2: As an add on, I’m now unsure what to do with all my music. If I give it to a choir, I’m technically breaking copyright but I don’t want to throw it away!!
T: The whole area is such a nightmare, especially for small, community groups, relying on 'reasonable' subs and merely a few dozen members.
Imho, it would be much easier to be able to pay a small sum per year, per member (though even that fluctuates week by week, or termly, and is difficult to calculate, so there would need to be a formula), to be able to use the songs they wished.
The larger groups with a few hundred, or thousands of members, can afford to pay to sing whatever they want. Yet, from discussions I've had with a handful of them, I wonder whether they pay copyright fees, or produce their own arrangements.
I retired my groups some years ago, so, it is no longer of concern to me, so I'm just adding my two pennorth to the discussion.
A: I inherited a music library with some photocopies. We decided to replace everything with originals when we revisited the songs. It would have been so expensive to just replace everything at once. It’s a dilemma as you don’t always know when you are buying if the piece will suit your choir. I have sometimes done a smaller purchase of licenses then bought the rest of the licenses when we perform the piece. I’m aware if anyone inspected our library it might look bad but as a community choir just funded by subs it’s a massive expense if we are to have an interesting and varied repertoire
CC: I think this happens a lot - we did the same with a small village choir just recently - the members weren't even aware that photcopying was illegal (even though its printed on most pages these days!) - maybe we need to educate our singers that music costs money and we should reflect that in our termly subs somehow.
H: We've also done this - as a small community choir with subs pegged at a rate that's affordable, we simply can't buy 25 copies of a piece that we're not sure we'll learn and add to our rep. We buy a few, try it out, and if people like it and want to carry on with it, then we cough up for the rest. We're incredibly grateful to all the musicians on ChoirCommunity who take the time to make and share their work.
If you would like to purchase from ChoirCommunity you can do that here.