Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones reunited to release an important letter. The Who’s Roger Daltrey and King Crimson’s Robert Fripp also signed on as part of 150 musicians who are demanding Prime Minister Boris Johnson updates U.K. copyright law to increase financial payments from streaming companies to creators.
The Musicians’ Union and Ivors Academy teamed up for the #BrokenRecord campaign, saying that the royalty payments “[have] not kept up with the pace of technological change” in the record business.
“Streaming is replacing radio so musicians should get the same protection when their work is played on streaming platforms as they get when it’s played on radio,” Horace Trubridge, general secretary of the Musicians’ Union, says. “As the whole world has moved online during the pandemic, musicians who write, record and perform for a living have been let down by a law that simply hasn’t kept up with the pace of technological change.”
The letter also states that the law has “not kept up with the pace of technological change and, as a result, performers and songwriters do not enjoy the same protections as they do in radio.” The letter adds that “only two words need to change in the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act…so that today’s performers receive a share of revenues, just like they enjoy in radio,” and that the new potential change “won’t cost the taxpayer a penny but will put more money in the pockets of UK taxpayers and raise revenues for public services like the NHS.”
