Church Rip off?

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

... yes they are, and if you don't record them for later playback then they are being paid for what they do and you are receiving everything you paid for.

However, if you are recording them then you also get to hear / see / enjoy their performance over and over again, performances for which they are not getting paid.

Ok, so being payed for the performance at the wedding and being payed again for the client to hear the performance again afterwards, maybe charge a fixed amaount per time they watch the video because that seems fair. Maybe charge extra when their friends get invited and watch the film also, after all, if you go to a show everyone has to buy a ticket so that's sounds very reasonable?

Since the musician agreed and got paid extra to have his music listened to in my video they actually should pay me a amount for giving them exposure and possibly extra work. I did get paid by the bride for my work but not by the musician for providing him more exposure and extra work. That also seems like a fine line to me :)

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Ok, so being payed for the performance at the wedding and being payed again for the client to hear the performance again afterwards, maybe charge a fixed amaount per time they watch the video because that seems fair.

Exactly how would the musician administer that? It's just not possible.

[Noa Put]

Ofcourse it could be possible, anyone who finds it normal to get paid double for a single performance at a wedding should also invoice every single person that gets to watch the clients weddingvideo, they are after all enjoying the music performance over and over again so they should pay for every single time they watch it. I mean, that is what musicians expect these days it seems. Maybe they could work together with the videographer to do a pay per view concept online with a unique key so you can be sure the couple and family/friends can only watch their weddingfilm once and pay again for another view, we want to make sure the musicians get what is rightfully theirs. :)

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

Of course it's a commercial product, you're charging for it as a business!

No it's not, I am providing a service that I charge for, not a product for resale. I am also giving them the rights to it, so if they choose to sell it to a TV company, then good luck to them. I have been paid for the service to record it, but it was not my wedding, I have no rights to that.

I bought my 1962 Fender Stratoscaster electric guitar for £150 in 1983. The guy who sold it to me was happy with the price,nut it is now worth around £20,000 so should I pay him a percentage of the value when I sell it.

If someone recorded me playing in a pub and it went viral on YouTube, I would say thankyou very much while I cash in on the publicity and increased income that the fame will bring to my future gigs. Hell I might even give them a cash thankyou from my income jump. If the video was sold commercially for profit, I would expect and be legally entitled to a royalty from it. As regards the weddings that I have played at as a musician and was paid for, I would also be delighted if they took pleasure in playing it over and over again and showed it to all their friends. Their is a very clear difference between the two scenarios.

Roger

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Roger Gunkel

No it's not, I am providing a service that I charge for, not a product for resale.

Yes you provide a 'service', but as part of that service the B+G expert an end product - the video - which is part of that commercial transaction. You know it's a commercial transaction because the Inland Revenue deem it so.

Originally Posted by Roger Gunkel

If the video was sold commercially for profit, I would expect and be legally entitled to a royalty from it.

Bingo!

In the end we have to accept that some are happy to be recorded and that recording reproduced and distributed for free and others are not. That's about the sum of it, wouldn't you agree?

[Roger Gunkel]

@Dave, The Inland Revenue see me as a service provider. The DVD is a result of that service and is not something that I sell to the client. If the client chose to market their wedding video commercially then that is their concern not mine. If I paint their house for a fixed price and they sell it for a vast profit, that is also not my concern as I don't own their house any more than I own their wedding.

The other quote referred to a recording of my own musical performance being sold commercially which is a totally different scenario that I have been at pains to point out from the early part of this thread and have never disagreed with.

Roger

[Noa Put]

We are not talking about a danceperformance here were hundreds of dvd's are sold, where are talking about one client that gets a copy and that copy gets watched by they familymemers and friends, the couple doesn't have a duplicator to massproduce and resell their weddingvideo for a profit. You are making this into something it isn't, to me it's very clear what Roger is saying, there is no extra benefit for anyone, except for the musician who acts as if he just has been recorded on a big stage and lost his share of a large dvd sales. It's a wedding, nothing more, of all vendors working for the bride there only seems to be one who thinks he is being mistreated and should be reimbursed for it. Maybe we should all just start to sing songs ourselves around a campfire at a wedding and make sure the composer of those songs died more then 70 years ago :)

[Roger Gunkel]

It seems to me that the core point here should be whether anybody is making extra money from the participation of service providers at a wedding who have already been paid. As a videographer, I couldn't care less whether the couple have bells, an organist, or Elton John playing at their wedding, because it will make absolutely no difference to the payment I get for filming the wedding. Will the client earn money by friends and family looking at their wedding video? No! So that means that any participating musicians, bell ringers or children's entertainers will not be losing income because the wedding is being seen by family and friends. In fact most musicians and service suppliers actively try to promote their services on websites and social media, but there seems to be an objection to the free publicity of being on a wedding video.

Look at any band website and you will see videos of them promoting their band usually filmed at a pub, club or theatre that they have been paid to perform at. I wonder if any consideration is given by the musicians to paying the promoter who paid to put on the show that the band recorded for their own promotion.

The line is crossed when a recording of a participant directly affects the earning potential of that participant by losing sales or bookings as a direct result of the viewer watching the video. In the case of a musician, if a recording of their performance is made specifically to bring in extra profit for a third party by the sale or viewing of that performance, then a royalty agreement should be made with the musician.

In our current society, getting money for doing nothing seems to be foremost in many people's and organisation's minds rather than doing a fair job for a fair payment. Greed seems to be the watchword.

Roger

[Dave Blackhurst]

From a practical standpoint, the musicians playing for a wedding are "incidental" to the "performance". Easily replaceable...

Should the B&G charge the musician for their "exposure" to a new audience?!? Pay to play? The pendulum swings both ways when someone THINKS they should get "something for nothing", I've seen it plenty of times in the music biz... someone is SURE they are the next big thing, or that they've got something super duper special and so should charge more than the other guy... A certain gal pulled off Spotify because she no doubt felt like she didn't get enough for being there... so this isn't just "small potatoes", ego knows few boundaries.

Why would musicians (or anyone for that matter) charge extra? Because they CAN "get away with it". It appears (from some of you UK posters) that venues that like to "charge up" fall out of favor, as would be expected. Some people WILL pay when asked, but at some point it becomes outrageous, and suddenly the payments vanish entirely! Seen THAT happen more than a few times too... economics is a funny thing...

Certainly one wants to maximize their income and returns by "charging what the market will bear", but if you pass the tipping point, you will find there IS NO MARKET, you won't get it back just by lowering your prices (because you've already earned a reputation as a greedy SOB), your customers will have moved on and gone elsewhere (musicians can be "replaced" by a CD or MP3...), and you will be holding an empty hat...

I'm sure it's quite different in an organized theater type environment - just like the movie "biz", there are unions, "scale", and so on... the wedding biz ain't all that...

[Paul R Johnson]

The facts seem to be that because it's music, it's perceived very differently to any other service. Endless disagreements about rights all revolve around music, because many people,really believe it is not a tradable product, it's just music, right? Maybe it's a bit like religion, where most people,have a private view, even if they don't say it in public? I've learnt that it's not possible to change people's opinions on music because they're more like beliefs, than opinions. Everyone in this topic believes their opinion in the right one.

Even musicians disagree on money. Loads play for free, some even pay to play. However, people who do not have a 'real' job and rely on music for income have different views. I will play for free for things I want to support. However, the disgusting treatment you get sometimes means every damn penny was earned. Once you have been ripped off yourself, you tend to get tougher on your own choices.

I wonder if out there somewhere is a forum where they're talking about the video people ripping off the brides by charging far too much money for taking pictures with the same camera uncle bob has, and there's one in the window of jessops for under £60 and he's charging £1500! They clearly don't understand, do they?

[Noa Put]

I wonder if out there somewhere is a forum where they're talking about the video people ripping off the brides by charging far too much money for taking pictures with the same camera uncle bob has

Just like uncle bob only has to press a record button on his big camera to make a movie I could blow on a flute to make music but that doesn't make me a musician. :)

Size of the camera is not a discussion point anymore amongst brides, getting a uncle bob quality movie is...

[Roger Gunkel]

Whatever the Musicians Union, Equity, or what have you try to enforce, music will always be driven by supply and demand. If you start a band, you can be the best band that ever existed but you will struggle to get work and may have to play for nothing or even pay to play to get any sort of exposure at all. Once you start to get known around your area, then your worth is based on how many punters you can pull in. Appearing on someone's wedding video might help to get you more work.

If Noa played the flute at a venue he may well get thrown out, however, if there was a video of him being thrown out that went viral and gained national news coverage, he would be an instant celebrity and would be able to charge stupid money inspite of his inability to play.

I have been a gigging musician for 52 years and have never joined any of the unions, mainly because I feel that some of the restrictions and minimum charges put on ordinary unknown musicians and venues has helped the decline of live music and demise of venues. The other side has been that when it comes to celebrities, the unions will bend over backwards to allow them in even if they really don't meet the requirements that the unknowns meet. That is because higher payers like national TV and theatres need celebrities to draw audiences, so different rules for us and them.

A similar thing with copyright, it has little to do with protecting the poor musician or writer and everything to do with the big publishing and recording companies protecting their own interests while paying minimum aamounts out to the writers and musicians at the bottom end of the market. We all pay for licences for filming weddings, but has anyone had any experience of anybody actually receiving any payment from the licence money? The MCPS openly admitted to me in a private conversation a few years back, that the wedding licence fee just covered the cost of producing it and they had absolutely no way of knowing what hymns, music or any other content was filmed at a wedding let alone used.

The other issue that nobody has mentioned is that as far as I am aware, there is no breach of copyright in filming an event, only in the use of it in a way that contravenes the rights of the contributor. So if a musician demanded a fee for allowing his 60 minute performance at a wedding to be recorded, but only 15 seconds or none of it was used, the client may well feel aggrieved.

Roger

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Roger Gunkel

The DVD is a result of that service and is not something that I sell to the client.

I think you're playing with semantics here. They wouldn't be hiring your 'service' if it weren't for the end 'product'.

Anyway, I'm done here because clearly there are very polarised views and I'm really not fussed either way. People have to make a living and how they choose to do that is up to them. :)

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

I think you're playing with semantics here. They wouldn't be hiring your 'service' if it weren't for the end 'product'.

Anyway, I'm done here because clearly there are very polarised views and I'm really not fussed either way. People have to make a living and how they choose to do that is up to them. :)

I agree Dave, it's just a differing point of view. If I was filming the wedding and my payment was based on the copies that I sold, then I would see the DVD as a saleable product, whereas I see it as being paid for the service of filming and editing their wedding and the DVD as their way of viewing it. I am not selling the DVD as a product per se.

But as you say it is for the individual to choose how they do it :-)

Roger