APRA

.. you could be missing out on $$$.

16 Mar 2005

http://www.apra.co.nz

After talking at length about this with APRA people the dance music data collection is somewhat flawed but better than nothing.

Firstly, a venue or club should have an APRA license.

Secondly the DJ needs to give a list of tracks played to the club owner who then passes this on to APRA.

APRA then take that data and allocate funds to to the artists.

The important point is that the club or venue pays a one-off yearly fee to APRA - NOT a fee PER SONG or anything ridiculous like that.

There has been a recently established 'NZ DANCE CHART' which is put together based on data from the above returns. Dubious or commercial that may be it's a start.

It is up to artists to register their works with APRA (free), the DJs to submit their set lists to club owners (pretty easy) and the club owners to file the data to APRA (not too hard).

If any of these things fall down then it all goes to hell.

Club owners and DJs seem suspicious of APRA to a point where they think APRA is some kind of agency that prosecutes DJs fro playing bootlegs or unauthorised mixes.

Not true - APRA simply collects royalties from tracks played in public, on the radio/TV/film etc on behalf of the artist and allocates them back.

If you are a songwriter and have not registered your track(s) with APRA you could be missing out on $$$.