GESAC, ‘Meet The Authors’, 23/5 - Meeting with Greek MEPs, 24/5
AUTODIA actively participated in GESAC's 'Meet The Authors' event held at the European Parliament on Tuesday, May 23, where European lyricists and composers from across the EU met with MEPs and shared their views, experiences, and expectations regarding their current professional situation in the streaming music and VoD (Video on Demand) markets.
The event was hosted by Spanish MEP Ibán García del Blanco (S&D Group), with the support of MEPs Laurence Farreng (Renew Europe Group, France), Tomasz Frankowski (European People's Party, Poland), Niklas Nienass (Greens, Germany), and the Cultural Creators Friendship Group (CCFG), with the participation of other MEPs as well.
Among the 20 creators who participated in the event were Matthias Hornschuh (Germany), Celeste Rizvana Buckingham (Slovakia), Marika Marta Kosakowska (Poland), Virginia Maestro Díaz (Spain), Ksenija Marinković (Hungary), Raminta Naujanytė Bjelle (Lithuania), and others.
Representing AUTODIA, a dynamic presence was delivered by composer and AUTODIA’s Board President Yiannis Glezos, composer, producer, and Secretary of the Supervisory Board Vangelis Fampas, Director General Margarita Panagiotopoulou, and Communications & International Relations Manager Ilianna Antoniou, who conversed with creators and MEPs, as well as executives from other European Collective Management Organizations and GESAC.
Defending creators' rights: Need for a collective institutional solution
During their interventions, creators stressed that the rapid growth of music streaming and VoD services does not simultaneously secure adequate value and fair remuneration for themselves. Furthermore, serious issues arise regarding cultural diversity, discoverability, and equal promotion of less commercial repertoires in playlists, as well as the transparency of algorithms that define the operation of these digital services.
Therefore, it is now a reasonable and imperative demand that these markets, which rely exclusively on the commercial circulation of musical compositions—yielding them enormous profits—become sustainable and fair for the creators of these works themselves!
Vangelis Fampas: No to the buyout of music copyrights in audiovisual productions
In the context of the event's second panel, Vangelis Fampas was invited to speak about the negative impact that buyout contracts ('buy outs') of music copyright in Video on Demand (VoD) audiovisual productions have on the revenues and sustainability of music composers.
He emphasized that this practice began several years ago in the US under different terms, without, however, constituting a sustainable option today for European creators and the European music market. European music composers are extortionately asked to sign contracts buying out their rights forever for the music they have composed, in order not to be excluded from the job market ('blacklisted').
Meeting with MEPs Th. Zagorakis and M. Meimarakis
How could a solution be found at a European institutional level?
The European Parliament took the initiative to draft two important Reports, covering "Cultural diversity and conditions for creators in the European music streaming market" on one hand, and the "EU framework for the working conditions of artists and workers in the cultural and creative sectors" on the other. This latter Report also encompasses the issue of rights buyout contracts in VoD audiovisual productions.
Within the framework and spirit of the GESAC event, the representative team of AUTODIA held a meeting inside the European Parliament on 24/5 with Greek MEPs Theodoros Zagorakis and Meimarakis, who are well aware of the critical issues concerning the community of Greek creators in the digital age.
The main purpose of the meeting was the defense of interests and the protection of the rights of all Greek creators in the digital music market.
Special reference was made to the continuous devaluation of the value of musical works by composers, lyricists, and music publishers on major digital music streaming and VoD platforms, resulting in them being underpaid, both in relation to the huge profit these platforms extract and in relation to other categories of rightsholders, such as record companies and performers/executors.
During the meeting, everyone highlighted the imperative need to protect creators' rights at an EU institutional level, ahead of the European Parliament Report, which was discussed in the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), where Mr. Zagorakis serves as a shadow rapporteur for this Report.
A first draft of the Report will come to light around mid-July, followed by the necessary procedures for its finalization in order to head towards a vote by the European Parliament. The objective is to amend European legislation to further protect creators' rights regarding the use of their works by major digital platforms.
AUTODIA will closely monitor the issue and keep Greek creators informed, in cooperation with relevant bodies and European associations of organizations, such as GESAC, and creator coalitions in which it participates.
The role and contribution of Collective Management Organizations today
Within the context of the GESAC event, as well as the Greek organization's team meeting with Greek MEPs, the role and decisive contribution of Collective Management Organizations were highlighted in an era of unprecedented, rapid transition to a different mode of commercial exploitation/integration of cultural goods into technological applications.
CMOs, rallied together and collectively, can exert catalytic action, criticism, and influence on new technology applications, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), which come to fundamentally challenge, or even expropriate, established copyrights upon which the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of creators of music, theatre, literary works, audiovisual productions, and visual arts worldwide depends. The primary concern of CMOs is the protection of national cultural production and, by extension, the rich European cultural heritage.
