The Chain Table Pop Musicians is looking at the fair remuneration of musicians performing at venues and festivals. Topics covered include transparency in budgeting costs and revenues of venues, festivals and live acts. Live acts are independent musicians as well as (session) musicians hired by a main artist. Determining appropriate fees requires criteria that “grade” pop musicians according to how advanced they are from amateur to established professional. The participants of the chain table are developing these criteria and building a mathematical model. This model will be translated into a tool for determining appropriate rates in practice. Consultancy firm Berenschot is supporting the chain table in developing products, funded by fairPACCT.

The chain table Pop Musicians continues to lead the program. The table exists since February 2022 and worked on transparency in cost calculations and earning models, objective criteria for career stages and definition of variants in professional practice. The first goal was to arrive at a substantiated and easily applicable fee guideline. For this guideline, the chain table itself developed the building blocks. With the help of Bureau Berenschot, these building blocks were translated in early 2023 into a concrete tool for application in practice, which was tested among stakeholders and experts. Starting in the spring of 2023, the Chain Table is working on implementation.

Development of career stage tool

With commitment from the VNPF and the Pop Coalition, the program was introduced in a panel discussion at ESNS22, in January 2022. Central theme: improving gages for live performances. A chain table was then assembled with representatives from venues, festivals, musicians, management and bookers. On February 24, 2022, the group met for the first time, during which much commitment was expressed mutually to achieve a concrete result; essentially, the realization of an accepted and well-supported fee guideline. Part of this included designing a methodology for defining the musician’s stage of professional maturity. This will be completed in July 2023 and published externally in the fall of 2023.

Research report ‘The gap between commitment and earnings of pop musicians’

For a presentation of (and conversation about) the intermediate position, members of the chain table provided a session at the Congress Podia|Festivals|Events on Sept. 19, 2022 at TivoliVredenburg.

At ESNS23 in January 2023, after a year of mutual consultation, the chain table presented an analysis of the income gap between current fees and an appropriate and fair fee (fair pay) for pop musicians. This happened in the panel Faire Gages in the Pop Sector with fairPACCT program manager Noud van de Rhee, Pien Feith of Friendly Fire B.V., Rita Zipora of BAM! Pop authors, Jolanda Beyer of Patronage and Will Maas on behalf of Arts Union, led by moderator Oscar Kocken. Conclusion of the analysis: €7.8 million more is needed per year for fair pay. The analysis and accompanying report, The gap between commitment and earnings of pop musicians, were conducted by consulting firm Berenschot. State Secretary Gunay Uslu accepted the report at the conclusion of the panel.