Blog 2: Your Income & Your Art

During today’s class we spoke about contracts within the creative media industry and we looked into a few companies that protect Australian/New Zealand artists and their creative work both in this country and abroad.

These companies are APRA, AMCOS and TPP and they are designed to protect Australian and New Zealand creative artists. APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association Limited) and AMCOS (Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society Limited) licence organisations to play, perform, copy and record members of their organisation, including distributing the royalties.

Prior to the class I didn’t really know much about these organisations but it became very clear by the end of the tutorial how crucial it is to sign up as a member when producing work in the creative field to protect yourself and receive the royalties you deserve for the work you produce and share with others.

The online lecture discusses sources of income from your art, whether it be audio, games, film, design and how these disciplines work together in a project scenario. Each discipline links to the other which is why it’s important to start networking early on in the course.

Personally, I don’t see myself working alone in my own recording studio. Perhaps one day, however with my experience of working with people and in a team environment  in the last 10 years, I feel I would sink into an occupation as a employee very easily. I love working with people and not necessarily being in charge but gathering ideas, putting forward my own ideas and coming up with a solution as a team is where I excel. I’m hoping that this mindset leads me into the right position in the industry initially, whether it be live sound, in a radio studio environment or a project team on a touring company with budgets you could never manage on your own. I’d be willing to travel around and move interstate if need me. Being well travelled myself through my previous job, the thought of moving around for the right career doesn’t phase me.

We got into groups by the end of the class and discussed working contracts and what types of conditions we would expect to find as part of a project contract. I can see how this closely links with our ‘Production 1’ unit as we are forming groups and starting to prepare our scope and pitch for recording as a team. Without a group contract, team members don’t have specific roles or responsibilities and project management becomes disorderly.