This part of our PAY THE PLAY campaign has come to a close. You can read about the original plan below but do check out the latest part of the plan here:

https://gofund.me/975ca9b3b

Any additional funds raised on the new page will go to ensure the message is spread far and wide. Meanwhile there is plenty you can do to help by getting busy with your camera.

http://paytheplay.my.canva.site

Do also Click, Watch and Share the song that your funding helped create.

https://youtu.be/QTmKb79FdUA?si=pGUdnzmzxBn-oY41

And below is our original campaign message.

This is a call for fundraising on behalf of musicians, especially non-featured musicians, the people whose names you may not know, but whose work is on every track and piece of music that you know and love.

We had an amazing week last week - thanks to some truly wonderful supporters, we hit (and passed!) our £8,000 target. Over the weekend, several people got in touch saying they’d still like to contribute, so we’re reopening the page until next weekend to give everyone the chance to join in.

Extra funds will give us a chance to promote the two campaign videos - including targeted social media ads, press outreach, and collaborations with musicians and creators - helping the message travel as widely as possible across the public, music community, and policymakers. Any leftover funds will go to the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund as planned.

We’ll be sharing more details and updates soon, along with a dedicated social media channel for the campaign. Thank you again for all the incredible support - this is how change starts.

Details of the fundraise and the headline plan are in the paragraphs below.

Professional musicians have always earned their money from a patchwork of experiences and roles. Teaching, live performances, recording, but one thing that has been assured for almost 150 years is the right to income from public performance. All the performers get a bit of a royalty, not just the person who wrote it, not just singer or the person whose name you know, all of them. It might not be much, but it is a core strand of a musician's income in the modern day.

But here's the problem.

Streaming came along, and suddenly non-featured musicians aren't being paid a penny for their work just because of a copyright law that was written before streaming existed.

Most people don't even realise their streaming subscription isn't being used to pay the musicians whose work we listen to.

Musicians need to be paid, or we're going to end up with our current and future generations of musicians not being able to afford to be musicians.

We're creating two short, powerful video campaigns to highlight this injustice, and rally support from musicians, the public, ultimately from Parliament.

Every pound raised here will go directly into producing and distributing two campaign videos that tell our story and get this message heard where it matters.

Any money not used for the campaigns will be donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund to help musicians in need.

Please donate what you can. Share this campaign with fellow musicians. Let's get our message out there and make the industry and parliament pay attention.

Thank you.

Hilary