A post on the emotive subject of being asked to play for no payment............ Last week I had a gig in Central London, and a couple of days beforehand we were asked by the BBC if they could take a live feed into one of their shows. They offered us NO MONEY!!!!!! Below is the text of the email I sent to my fellow band members and the BBC producer. Suffice to say it resulted in a volte face and an offer of payment was forthcoming. So when they offer you exposure, just tell them no. After all, who wants to be exposed as someone who plies their trade for free? Not you, nor me. TRANSCRIPT: Just to elaborate on our phone conversation yesterday; if I may be candid I am frankly horrified and beyond insulted that the BBC should seek to broadcast a significant segment of our gig tomorrow without any offer of remuneration. Nobody is looking for a whacking great session fee, but Im sure that the MU has a provision for short items included in radio programmes just like they do for telly. The BBC and radio 3 in particular like to make much of how important live music is to their output. In the context of the prevailing situation I find this disingenuous to say the least. What do they think we live on? Goodwill and thin air? If we had records or concert tickets to sell that would be an entirely different matter. However, all our concerts are for guaranteed fees and we have nothing to promote per se. Doing a partial OB of our gig is a far cry from popping into BH for a chat. I have done a lot of social media campaigning on the subject of fair play for musicians, and will be interested to take the temperature in this context. In conclusion I will go with the majority verdict of course, but given the corporations notorious largesse in other areas for them not to be able to find something between two and three hundred quid for our group is shameful.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 14:29:40 +0000
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