Proposal: zzp rates for composers and musicians in jazz/world/contemporary
Platform ACCT (Platform Arbeidsmarkt Culturele en Creatieve Toekomst) was established to sustainably improve the labour market in the cultural and creative sector and strengthen the position, including the income, of those working in this sector. The fairPACCT programme within Platform ACCT focuses in particular on the concretisation of fair pay given the Fair Practice Code. Early this year, Platform ACCT / fairPACCT together with the Ketentafel Jazz/world/contemporary conducted a poll that was completed by 131 musicians. As discussed at inJazz, this resulted in a fair pay Ketentafel proposal with zzp rates for composers and musicians in jazz/world/contemporary.
Please help the Ketentafel by reading and commenting on the Report and the tariffs before Monday 16 September, preferably! Feedback by fairPACCT and the Ketentafel based on the responses received will be done before the November 1 deadline.
NOTE: all text is in Dutch.
Here are some takeaways from the fairPACCT panel talk at inJazz 2024.
How many hours do you actually spend on a concert?
This is not just from arriving at the venue to going home, but from the moment you start booking the concert, studying your parts, sending out the promotional materials, and so on. What emerges is that an average musician spends 12 hours and 20 minutes per concert. If you compare this to CLAs in similar environments, an hour goes off, simply because even in a CLA environment, your dinner time doesn’t get paid. That comes to 714 hours on an annual basis. Of those 12 hours and 20 minutes, 2 hours and 20 minutes is organisational and administrative preparation. Apart from the bandleader or whoever does the bookings, that often adds 4 hours and 42 minutes per concert.
You can refer to preparation time, or organisational and administrative matters, as non-declarable time. Based on the discussions with musicians, programmers and the chain table, and ACCT’s assignment, Bureau KNYFE decided to develop a tool that you can fill in as a musician. This tool scales you into a certain category. By filling in the tool, you arrive at a score corresponding to a certain stage. In principle, the tool is completed for the whole group, not for the individual musician, but it can also be used for the individual musician within a formation.
If you are a bandleader or organiser, you spend more hours and that is also factored into the rate. This is special, because it does not happen anywhere at the moment. Band leaders often work three times as hard as everyone else in the band, but earn the same or less. This prevents the bandleader from treating himself as a closing position.
Four career stages
To determine how you are scaled and whether that is right, several criteria are used. How many years have you been active? Do you use external help, such as marketing? Have you won any awards? How many tickets have you sold in the past? These criteria were drawn up in consultation with the Ketentafel and programmers to get the widest possible scope. Four career stages were defined (corresponding fairly closely to career stages in pop music):
- Starting phase
- Upcoming
- Mid-career
- Recognised
As Bureau KNYFE explained to the inJazz audience, if you are still studying or in the starting phase, a full-time working week as a musician in jazz/world/contemporary should provide a welfare-level income. In the upcoming phase, income should be at least equal to the minimum wage. For the mid-career phase: a fee of 75% of the modal income, which was €44,000 in 2023. If you have reached the Recognised status, your fee should at least match the average salary according to collective agreements for college graduates in the non-profit sector, level 10 and 11, scale 7. This is technical, but it provides a concrete basis for explanation to grants and funds. It ensures that the sector can gain greater understanding and recognition for this approach.
Bureau KNYFE has compared remuneration with collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) from different sectors: dance, theatre, music ensembles, and classical orchestras, as well as some outside the cultural sector.
Four career stages for an independent musician
If you work as an independent musician, things like public holidays and statutory holidays are taken into account, resulting in a factor of 91%. This means that in the starting phase, an hourly rate of €17.97 should be used. Calculate this through to a concert rate based on 11 hours and 20 minutes, and you arrive at:
Starting phase: €203
Upcoming: €287
Mid-career: €424
Recognised: €556
For a big band
In larger formations, such as a big band, it is likely that the musicians’ final remuneration will be supplemented by additional funding. Contrary to what you might expect, smaller groups do not automatically increase the fees per person. This is an important conclusion Bureau KNYFE has drawn from the poll and interviews: musicians basically receive the same per-person remuneration for performing with a larger group as for a smaller ensemble.
You are worth much more than you receive
Musicians and composers in jazz/world/contemporary need to send a strong signal, to make programmers recognise what the real value is. Fact of the matter is that in the creative sector, much more work is often done than is financially remunerated. This discrepancy underlines the need to give a fair valuation of musicians’ work.
A key point is that 99% of musicians are self-employed without staff (ZZP’er). This may also be through a remuneration agency, but the amount mentioned is gross. It is based on a 36-hour working week, as used by most collective agreements in the cultural sector. The amounts listed do not include VAT.
Part of the Ketentafel focuses on the activities of composers, making the situation more complex. Briefly, there is a fee table that has been around for quite some time and was originally developed by Nieuw Geneco. The table indicates how complex a piece is, the duration of a piece, and the number of musicians involved. Find more on this table in the Eindrapportage as delivered by Bureau KNYFE and Platform ACCT (in Dutch).
More research is needed: venues and NL-based artists
Hard data on the number of music venues in the Netherlands is lacking to date. In order to determine the size of the gap between the current situation and the desired situation, Bureau KNYFE, with the help of Bimpro, the Nationaal podium Plan (NPP), the VNJJ (Dutch Jazz Venues and Jazz Festivals), Buma Cultuur and programmers from the VSCD (Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors) outlined a number of concert locations in the Netherlands, the number of musicians performing there on average and the number of concerts given. This helps to calculate how many musicians are actually employed and what the difference is between the current situation and the desired remuneration.
A bandleader usually plays on a stage only once a year, whether it is Christian McBride, Eric Vloeimans or Tineke Postma. Two important aspects: first, what do venues spend on musicians living and working in the Netherlands? The current rate of employment shows that 32% of bands on jazz stages are Dutch, while 68% are international. This affects the circularity of investment: if a stage receives 100% of their budget, 65% goes to foreign artists. This means that a significant amount is not invested back into the local music sector, nor into the local economy such as supermarkets or mortgage payments. This outlines an unfavourable earnings model for Dutch musicians.
Booking the balance
Different venues fulfil different roles, and it is important to recognise this nuance. It would not be fair to judge each venue by the same yardstick, given their varying profiles and roles in the music sector. What is uniformly endorsed by all venues, however, is the importance of strengthening the Dutch jazz sector.
As for achieving fair pay, we have to take into account the financial considerations of venues. A venue wants to sell out, and a band from America can offer this guarantee despite the cost of airfare and hotels. This is often an investment the stage is willing to make because it will fill the venue. However, with the money spent on international bands, venues could potentially also book several Dutch bands and promote them better. Focusing on balanced programming can help give more Dutch bands a chance and thus improve the balance in the sector.