Pop sector addresses income gap

blank
6 March 2023

Pop sector addresses income gap

Photo: ESNS

State Secretary Uslu accepts report at Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS)

The fairPACCT program organizes consultations for professional groups in the cultural sector to reach clear agreements on appropriate and fair remuneration. The first of these consultations, the so-called chain tables, started last year for pop musicians during ESNS 2022. The chain table for pop musicians presents, after a year of mutual consultation, an analysis of the income gap between current wages and an appropriate and fair fee (fair pay). The analysis and report was done by consulting firm Berenschot. State Secretary Gunay Uslu will receive the report during a session at ESNS 2023, Friday, Jan. 20 at 3 p.m., kleine zaal Oosterpoort, Groningen.

Conclusion of analysis: € 7.8 million more per year needed for fair pay

  • The upshot of this analysis is that the actual earnings of pop musicians from live performances with a reasonable track record are only one-third of the social minimum and only one-fourth of a so-called fair pay award (see below).
  • There are 8,000 performances annually in small venues and supporting acts for large venues.
    If band members were to receive fair pay for such performances in career stages 1 and 2, this would require €7.8 million more per year.
  • This money cannot be raised within the pop sector itself or from increased audience revenue. Without additional income support or financial incentives for the pop sector, fair pay is unfeasible for most pop musicians.

Explanation

Dutch pop musicians active in the Netherlands have an average work week of almost 50 hours. They give an average of 80 live performances per year. The average commitment for one live performance is 15.4 hours, for both individual and collaborative preparation and the performance itself.

Revenues for pop musicians from live performances fluctuate widely and currently depend primarily on market forces. The chain table pop musicians aims to achieve more consistency between income and the career phase of an act. Using a newly developed instrument (test phase), this phase (0 to 4) can be determined on the basis of 11 objective criteria.

  • Phase 0(starting up) and Phase 1(upcoming) are buildup phases in reputation.
  • In phase 2(developing), the act plays in the small venues of VNPF stages and works with a small professional team.
  • Stage 3(Mid-career) and 4(Arrived) refers to the acts with a solid fan base, market forces provide appropriate rewards with them.

    Berenschot was commissioned by the chain table pop musicians to compare a fair pay remuneration, remuneration at the social minimum and remuneration in current practice. Using a modal income for a self-employed professional as a reference, this leads to compensation of

€414 per band member per performance. Assuming the minimum wage, an act should be paid € 258 per band member per performance. The current cost structure of pop stages and pop acts ensures that the fee for a developing act (stage 2) with four people can be only about € 100 per pop artist. This is after deducting travel and expenses of crew and management.

About fairPACCT

FairPACCT is a program of Platform ACCT, funded by the Ministry of OCW. Platform Labor Market Cultural and Creative Future (Platform ACCT) is a and initiative of the cultural field. The platform works to improve the labor market in the cultural and creative sector. FairPACCT wants to stimulate better working conditions and collective agreements by translating the Fair Practice Code into concrete tools for application in practice.

“we have been able to develop a tool that is representative of the talent development chain in pop music”

Over the past six months, one of the things the chain table has been working on is testing and optimizing a test tool to use to determine an artist’s career stage. For this purpose, we have extensively tested among as diverse a group of pop music professionals as possible who have enough data on an artist to be able to test the tool. Think of bookers, managers, record companies, and of course performing artists and musicians themselves.

In total, the tool was tested on about fifty cases. Most of these artists received a correct stage classification. For the artists where this did not happen, this was often due to a difference in genres, years of inactivity of an artist (for example, during a reunion) or a phase definition that was too vague. With various adjustments, for example in wording of presentation and question, as well as adjustments in the proportions of the tool, we were able to develop a tool that is representative of the talent development chain in pop music.

As the tool moves toward its final phase, we are focusing on the last major task to achieve fair pay in the live circuit for pop musicians: funding. We hope to provide an update on this soon.

/

You may also like