Australia: Copyright staff get more than they give to authors and artists

Source: The Australian

THE body established to pay authors for the use of their copyright last year spent more on its own staff -- including more than $350,000 for a chief executive -- than it paid authors and artists directly.

The Copyright Agency Limited was formed in 1989 to raise money from institutions using copyrighted works, such as newspaper articles, photographs and book excerpts, to reward the creators of these works.

But the collection agency last year paid $9.4 million in salaries, compared with a $9.1m direct allocation for authors and artists.

Among the highest paid at CAL was its chief executive Jim Alexander, who earned more than $350,000 last year, while another senior staff member earned between $250,000 and $299,000, another between $200,000 and 249,000, and five others between $150,000 and $199,000. A further 21 staff earned between $100,000 and $149,000.


Read more: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/copyright-staff-get-more-than-they-give-to-authors-and-artists/story-e6frg8n6-1225831556653

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Found thru http://techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1832548214.shtml / Twitter

...someone needs to look into the Copyright Clearance Center here in the U.S. and make sure they aren't doing the same thing.

Most artists get very little from CD sales. They do have to up the rate once the musician is hugely popular and has the leverage to push for better terms. Which is probably one of the reasons we see such a constant deluge of new artists. Gotta kick out the old ones before they get uppity and want to be paid for their work.

The highest estimate I could find puts it at about a dollar per CD as an average. Of course the average also includes the people that can negotiate for better rates. So for a 16 dollar CD, an actual dollar of that *might* go to the artist. This is why you don't see a lot of artists up in arms about music downloads. The downloads don't really hurt them anyway. They make their money off concerts, royalties, and merchandising.

They just can't resist dipping into the till.

structure of our financial rewards system?