The Copyright Tribunal of Australia has announced an increase in fees, in response to an application made by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia - the entity that collects revenue from nightclub owners and dance party operators (amongst other things).

The PPCA's press release contains the details, but the most noteworthy part is this:

In the first comprehensive review of this tariff ever undertaken by the Copyright Tribunal, the Tribunal has lifted rates for licensed sound recordings played in nightclubs from 7 cents per person to $1.05 cents per person. The dance party rate rises from 20 cents to $3.07 cents per person.

Those are some pretty steep increases - over 1400% each by my reckoning. There's no mention of the time period that these costs apply for in the press release, but looking at the PPCA's original document on this issue, these are per night/per dance party prices.

The Australian Copyright Council (the organisation behind the excellent Australian copyright law resource copyright.org.au) have some more information and reference links in their announcement.

There's quite a bit of coverage about this already (including this article on the ABC website) as the various sides try to have their say. Obviously nightclub owners/dance party operators are massively against this - extrapolating the numbers, the cost of operating has just risen dramatically.

That's pretty ridiculous.. 20 cents to $3.07 per person.. Means more cover charges and such I assume.

Why stop at 1400%! Greedy fux

Is that maths right? I did it pretty quickly.

oh man what a joke...
but maybe the review was a long time coming

i guess they could compensate with advertising between tracks, shrugs

anyway, i went to the beat the other night - first time in years
it sucked.. i mean it really sucked

whats with the big baggy pants everyones wearing these days?

Why the local Pig and Whistle is good for drinks.. No annoying posers, and no loud music.

well alot of the people at the beat are filthy ravers so they were probably wearing phatties.

Is that maths right? I did it pretty quickly.

yeah mate...
Nightclubs : (1.05 - 0.07) / 0.07 ~ 1400% increase
Dance : (3.07 - 0.20) / 0.20 ~ 1435% increase

in response to an application made by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia

I thought that said the pornographic performance company of australia for a second.

Does this mean if a nightclub plays a "licensed sound recording", they have to pay $1.05 multiplied by the amount of people in the club (or people in the room where the song is being played) in royalties? Seems like basic question, but thats a f***ton of money.

Its per person, per night... so I guess they were getting it pretty cheap before, but still, thats a huge increase...

I also noticed...

PPCA has formulated a schedule of proposed rates based on an expert economic analysis of the fees that should be paid by nightclub and dance party operators. The fee proposed for nightclubs begins at $1.12 per person per night of operation and is calculated on the basis of the venue capacity. For dances and dance parties, the proposed rate is $5.10 per person per event and is based on the number of attendees. For further details, the schedule of proposed rates appears at Annexure B of the proposed licence scheme which can be viewed above.

last edited by mongie at 20:34:35 11/Jul/07

Its not per song, its per night, and i dont think nightclub operators can complain about someone price gouging them, they are experts at the practice arent they?

I guess inevitably This 97c increase will result in a > $5 increase in cover charges.

thang kod i have nearly retired from going out


this is gonna suck dog balls

ppca and all music licensing bodies can suck my dick

pretty much a tax that goes entirely to the muso's who already make the most money

thang kod i have nearly retired from going out

Me too. Clubs don't do anything for me but I don't mind the occassional rave.

so it will cost you first born to get into Family.

yer makes sense 8)

Better f***en not.

lols @ paying to get into family

What if a place like the family has someone there live performing their own music all night?

Doesn't reaaally bother me anyway, I prefer to just sit a a bar at the pub and get drunk. Lets be honest why do you go out? Most people would say to get drunk, not listen to the music (unless you're like a raving pill head from the valley, and even then it's to get off chops). I could be totally wrong, but I don't know too many people that go out to stand around and listen to tunes. Play nothing for all I care, just don't make my rum and coke go up in price ^^

/rant

yeah mate...
Nightclubs : (1.05 - 0.07) / 0.07 ~ 1400% increase
Dance : (3.07 - 0.20) / 0.20 ~ 1435% increase

Simplify.. simplify!

1.05 / 0.07 = 1500% of the original....

Umm... yeh.

i also heard that its per person, but for the capacity of the club/dance... so if it can hold 500 people, but there are only 50 people there, they still have to pay for the 500.

i really don't see how this is workable... if a club is going to hold a dance party featuring an international dj with some local dj supports... how do they know how much of what each dj plays is music that would attract the fee? (ie: someone elses signed recording). it reads like they would just throw a generic blanket over the whole thing & charge for the parties capacity as hef said... & then, obviously the club has to pay that to some governing body... but how do they recoup it? charge the gig promotor? increase drink costs?

most privately promoted dance parties charge a cover that goes towards paying the dj's, paying for the pa equipment, advertising, etc... & the club owners make thier money from the bar. if the club owners try n pass the cost onto these private promotors they will just shut-down as they are usually on a tight budjet atm. the only other way for the club owners to recoup in this situation will be a massive increase in drink prices at clubs... n they already suck!@$#! :[

I have no problem with Dance parties prices going up as the music is what people are going for, and people will understand a several dollar increase, especially if it is advertised that it is because of the greedy music industry.

But, contrary to what some people believe, just because niteclubs charge high prices for drinks and entry, they're not all making exorbitant profits. Yes, there are plenty of places that do, but there are plenty of places where an increase in running costs of several hundred dollars a night could mean the difference between running at a profit and running at a loss....especially on particular nights. The bloke that said it's hard to believe that an increase in price of %20 of a beer or half the price of checking a coat will send a place broke....clearly has no f***ing idea of how half the worlds bars operate.

Also, I'm lead to believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but the current licensing fee's are charged per person at the venue, but this is changing to be per person the place has capacity for. I could understand if it is not practical to charge per person attending because hard to know accurate numbers, and easy for bars to report less people than there actually is....but if they currently are charging based on attendance and this model is working but they're changing to charging by capacity anyway...then that sounds like pure profiteering.

The fact that the distribution of money is based on the ARIA Dance Charts also makes me think that maybe they need to concentrate on developing a more fair system rather than worrying about charging more.

Oeer, the illegal underground dance would do well from this :P