Composers - APRA

1999 Survey of
Members: here’s what you said
Members:
In November 1999, we mailed out surveys to all
11,661 APRA members who received a royalty
payment in APRA’s 36 B distribution. Over 14%
of these members responded. Thank you!
Who wrote back?
■ 75% were males
■ most were aged between 30 and 39 years (32%)
■ most came from NSW (29%) and Victoria (24%)
■ most classed themselves as rock or pop musicians (56% and
51% respectively)
■ a significant number classed themselves as ‘alternative’
musicians (34%)
■ the large majority earned up to $1,000 in royalties from APRA
and the bulk of these royalties were earned from live
performances (75%) followed by radio (62%).
Our customer service
You were strongly supportive of APRA and rated our staff and
customer service very highly. (Percentages shown below have been
rounded off to the nearest percent).
Access to APRA staff 75% good or excellent,
19% satisfactory
Our courtesy, friendliness 86% good or excellent
Our understanding of your needs 80% good or excellent,
13% satisfactory
Information we gave you 78% good or excellent,
16% satisfactory
Our promptness in replying 76% good or excellent,
16% satisfactory
Overall APRA service 78% good or excellent,
12%satisfactory
Areas we need to address:
■ 6% had problems with getting prompt replies to email or
written queries.
■ 4% said APRA seminars were difficult to access or attend for
regional areas
■ 3% had received wrong or vague information from
APRA staff
■
understanding of our cultural funding program
■ information about overseas royalty collection and distribution.
Our handling of disputes
Over 90% had never had a dispute with APRA and believe that
our current dispute resolution process is effective and satisfactory.
Our communication
Most of you find out about what’s happening at APRA through
Aprap (81% read it, 53% gave it a good or excellent rating,
37% said it was satisfactory). The second most popular way of
keeping in touch with us was using the telephone (58%) . Almost
30% use the web to keep in touch with us.
You felt that we needed to communicate more with you about:
■ legal aspects of the music business (53%)
■ copyright issues (52%)
■ music publishing (how to get a contract - 49%)
■ our distribution system (48%).
Accounting issues and membership profiles came towards the
bottom of this list of communication priorities. In fact, a lot of
you said you wanted to know how to make it yourselves rather
than to read about others who’d ‘made it’.
Our website
Most of you already knew about our website (76%), and quite a
few of you have internet access (61%). 37% had visited our
website in the last year. The top three reasons cited were:
■ to register works (48%)
■ to search for works (39%)
■ to download LPRs (36%)
86% found what they were looking for. Clearly, when you visit
our site, you’re looking to do a transaction of some kind. You
were least likely to visit the site to look for information on
distribution, licensing or music publishing.
When asked what we could do to improve our website service, you said:
■
provide information on individual performances of my work
■ give me information on jobs and potential creative
partnerships
■ let me register works online (this service is already
available, so the result suggests that it’s not easy to find on
our site, or that we’ve not promoted this service enough)
■
show me music industry contacts
■ let me view my personal APRA account details (75% wanted
to do this)
■ give me access to bulletin boards with information on
publishing deals, performance opportunities, collaborative
partnerships.
Our sincere thanks to all those members who took
the time to respond. Your answers have helped us
to refine our dispute resolution, communication and
e-commerce strategies, and to identify other areas we
need to address.
[ 5 ] APrap