FIM

FIM’s 21st Congress took place in Reykjavik from 7 to 9 June 2016, host­ed by our mem­ber union FIH, in the superb Harpa Congress Centre.

Speakers and panels

Opened by a warm­ly applaud­ed speech by Mr. Illugi Gunnarsson, Icelandic Minister of Education and Culture, the Congress was fol­lowed by debates on motions as well as three pan­els respec­tive­ly focus­ing on

The notion of well-​being in a per­form­ing musician’s career
• Mrs Dianne Widdison (BMU, United Kingdom)
• Mrs Christine Thomassen (MFO, Norway)
• Mr Jean-​Marc Vogt (DOV, Germany)
• Kari Árnason (FIH, Iceland)

Gender equal­i­ty in musi­cians’ unions and at sec­tor level
• Mrs Déborah Cheyne (SINDMUSI, Brazil)
• Mr Daniel Gomes (AMS, Senegal)
• Mrs Silja Fischer (CIM)
• Mr Thomas Bjelkerud (SMF, Sweden)
Moderator: Anders Laursen (DMF, Denmark)

Music stream­ing and the issue of absence of online income for musicians
• Dr Pál Tomori (MZTSZ, Hungary)
• Mrs Geidy Lung, Senior Counsellor, Copyright Division of WIPO
• Mr Marc Slyper (SNAM, France)
• Mr Jan Granvik (SMF, Sweden)
• Mr Horace Trubridge (BMU, United Kingdom)
• Mr Bruce Fife (AFM, United States)
Moderator: Beat Santschi (SMV, Switzerland)

We were hon­oured and pleased to have the fol­low­ing guests take part as speakers:
• Mrs Ferne Downey (Canada), President of FIA
• Mrs Geidy Lung, Senior Counsellor, Copyright Division of WIPO
• Mr Samuel Shu Masuyama (Japan), CPRA-​Geidankyo
• Mr David Jandrisch (Canada), President of MROC
• Mr Peter Leathem (Royaume-​Uni), CEO of PPL
• Mrs Silja Fischer (CIM)

Resolutions

Among the res­o­lu­tions adopt­ed, we can men­tion in par­tic­u­lar those aimed at the right of mak­ing avail­able on demand (res­o­lu­tions 10 to 13) based on the unan­i­mous obser­va­tion that per­form­ers are still exclud­ed from income gen­er­at­ed by the rapid growth of dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms such as Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music.

The mod­el pro­posed by the Fair Internet cam­paign was re-​affirmed as the best means for most coun­tries to obtain min­i­mum remu­ner­a­tion for all per­form­ers, both in sound and audio­vi­su­al sectors.

Mr. Pál Tomori (MZTSZ and EJI, Hungary) offered Congress a par­tic­u­lar­ly clear and detailed work­ing doc­u­ment from GRULAC (an analy­sis of copy­right in the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment). Despite cer­tain weak­ness­es, this doc­u­ment, which is on WIPO’s SCCR agen­da, was wel­comed as a seri­ous oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote new remu­ner­a­tion schemes for music performers.

We should also note that, on the ever-​sensitive issue of trans­port­ing instru­ments on planes, res­o­lu­tion 19 asks the Secretariat to place online a list of air com­pa­nies illus­trat­ing the way in which they deal with musi­cians trav­el­ling with music instru­ments. A prize will be award­ed annu­al­ly to the com­pa­ny which best takes into account their spe­cif­ic needs.

All res­o­lu­tions adopt­ed by the 21st Congress can be down­loaded here.

Elections

President John Smith (United Kingdom) was re-​elected for a fourth term of office for four years.

Following adop­tion of res­o­lu­tion 5, the num­ber of Vice-​Presidents went from four to five. The Vice-​Presidents elect­ed by the 21st Congress are Deborah Cheyne (Brazil), Romeo Dika (Cameroon), Ray Hair (United States), Anders Laursen (Denmark) and Beat Santschi (Switzerland).

The eigh­teen coun­tries elect­ed to the Executive Committee are as fol­lows: Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Norway, Romania, Senegal, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The Icelandic FIH union

On behalf of all par­tic­i­pants, the FIM Secretariat express­es its warmest thanks to its col­leagues from FIH and in par­tic­u­lar Björn Árnason and Gunnar Hrafnnson, for their gen­eros­i­ty, sense of hos­pi­tal­i­ty and kind­ness. The Congress enabled most del­e­gates to dis­cov­er a coun­try unlike any oth­er and appre­ci­ate the qual­i­ty of its musi­cians in very dif­fer­ent reper­toires, in the excep­tion­al set­ting of the Harpa Centre and its fas­ci­nat­ing architecture.

Photos of the 21st Congress are acces­si­ble here.