If you’re an APRA AMCOS member playing your own original music at live music venues, be it at cafés or clubs or pubs, you can get paid royalties every time you step onto the stage, thanks to the Performance Reports tool.
For indie folk-rock band Sunday Lemonade, gigging is who they are.
“We are almost always on the move touring and playing shows all around the country,” Tyson, one half of Sunday Lemonade, says. “Playing our music live is a one-of-a-kind experience.” Since quitting their day jobs and hitting the road with their music in 2019, Tyson and Laura haven’t stopped making and playing music. “It feels wonderful,” Tyson says about being able to bring their original work to new audiences at every show. “[It] keeps us motivated to keep pushing and moving forward.”
Sunday Lemonade’s story
As every budding muso knows, playing live music is only one part of the gig – getting paid for it is when a passion becomes a profession. For APRA AMCOS members, musicians are able to be paid through Performance Reports every time they perform their original music at any live music venue, be it at a pub or a club or a café or otherwise.
Tyson says that submitting Performance Reports has helped him and Sunday Lemonade immensely in staying on the road and continue to perform. “Being paid for the music you play live [is] a huge part of touring.
“For the first year or so [of Sunday Lemonade], we were pretty fresh to the scene and had no idea there was this incredible system through APRA where you get paid for performing your songs live to an audience,” he says. “Lucky for us, we got in contact and asked if we could backlog our previous year as we had full evidence of all the shows we were playing. APRA was so helpful in setting this up.”
For Tyson and Laura, earning money off their music through APRA’s Performance Reports has allowed them to make a bit of cash that they can then put back into making more music or investing in gear and equipment. “The Performance Reports feel like a small amount of background work that builds up over time and adds up to quite a chunk of finance,” Tyson says.
For a band that is quickly hitting almost every corner of Australia with their zesty tunes, and with an overseas tour coming up in July that will give them a chance to bring their music to new international ears, it’s a comfort to Tyson knowing that even when the band doesn’t break even from ticket sales, “something reliable like the APRA payments gives a little relief.”
How the Performance Reports system works
Taking advantage of the Performance Reports system is super easy. APRA AMCOS members can simply submit Performance Reports (setlists) in the APRA AMCOS app or through the online portal. This goes for any APRA AMCOS member who is playing their original music live at any kind of live music venue.
If you’re an artist that has a manager or is signed to a label, often those representatives will submit a Performance Report on your behalf to help you collect your hard-earned royalties. However, if you’re performing at an event organised by a promoter, you won’t need to submit a Performance Report. This is because event promoters (which includes major festivals and tours promoted by a national event promoter) will work directly with an artist’s management to provide a setlist to APRA AMCOS. If you are asked for a setlist by a promoter or event organiser, it’s likely the event will be directly distributed, in which you still don’t have to submit a Performance Report.
This is all because venues pay a licence fee to OneMusic for the use of live music. The fees that are paid to OneMusic make up a pool of royalties that then go on to be distributed to APRA AMCOS members. When you submit Performance Reports, you’re ultimately ensuring that licence fees are sent back as royalties to whoever is creating the music.
Like Tyson points out, it’s super simple and easy and the system that APRA AMCOS has created for its members to help them collect royalties for their music performances means that you’re being paid hard-earned cash for the work that you’ve created. “If you’re reading this and thinking about doing your Performance Reports,” Tyson says, “today is a good day to start!”
You can learn more about submitting Performance Reports as an APRA AMCOS member here.
