When Brian Barlow started working as a session musician playing drums and percussion on commercials in the 1970s, the average life of a spot, by his estimation, was six, 13-week cycles.

Back then, musicians were paid about $80 for a one-hour session and then residuals of up to half that for every cycle. Not a bad wage for one hour of work, particularly when you consider that a musician might have played three sessions a day, five days a week.

‘There was a time not that long ago when that was all we did, many of us. We did commercials,’ he says. ‘And we made a really good living.’

No more.

Due to a significant decrease in commercial cycles coupled with advancements in synthesized music and a global advertising recession, this one-time staple of the music business is in decline.

As a result, top-flight session musicians who once found choice pickings playing jingles are today being forced to cobble together a living playing bar mitzvahs, nightclubs, teaching music or recording in other media.

And many are looking to their union, the American Federation of Musicians, to step up and provide relief through a new collective agreement. What they are getting instead is frustrated.

‘The union hasn’t realized that the business is changing, the technology is changing and the use of our product is [changing],’ says Barlow, chair of the recording committee of AFM local, the Toronto Musicians Association.

‘The musicians have an agreement that is basically the same agreement from the 1960s. We need a brand new agreement….That has happened in other areas, but unfortunately not on the jingle side.’

Central to the issue is the life cycle of the average commercial spot. Where commercials once ran multiple 13-week cycles, today it is quite common for a spot to only run for one cycle. As a result, musicians are taking a major hit to the chops, with their commercial session incomes dropping by as much as half due to lower residuals.

According to the Television, Radio and Internet Commercial Announcements Agreement, the minimum fee per one-hour, one-spot call is currently $148.90, a 3% increase over last year.

By comparison, a solo singer performing on a spot makes about three times that.

While 3% is a standard negotiated increase for workers from teachers to garbagemen, the scale has actually been inching up slower than rates for other musicians. For example, in his career, Barlow has seen the rate for commercial work go from paying nearly twice as much as for weddings to the inverse.

According to woodwind player Phil Dwyre, who has been in the business a decade, the rate increase over his career has been in the $15 range.

But session rates are only part of the problem facing these musicians. Dwyre says advancements in technology and the use of synthesized instruments are also contributing.

‘These days on what would be considered a big-band track you might have a total of six live musicians, whereas 20 years ago it might have been 16,’ he says. The rest is created digitally in the studio by producers.

And that is all before one takes into account the fact that the international ad market went into the tank in the fall of 2001.

One solution that is gaining momentum is integrating a buyout option into the collective agreement for commercial players.

In fact, commercial players are one of the last groups not to see their contracts altered in such a way. Most musicians, whether playing on CDs or doing TV episodic work, have a buyout option, which means that rather than waiting on residual payments, players get more upfront for a session.

A session musician playing on a CD, for instance, will get a buyout of $265.54 for a Canadian recording, according to the Sound Recording Labour Agreement. On international recordings, that figure grows to $321.29.

Still, says Bill Skolnik, executive director of the TMA, not all musicians playing commercials are behind moving in that direction. ‘Some players are very happy with the low session rate because they think it encourages more recording. Some players wish we had a higher session rate because we’re not getting the new cycles. So it depends on who you ask and who you are.’

Indeed, according to David Jandrisch, VP from Canada for the AFM, while the cycles have decreased, there has been a corresponding increase in the level of productions.

‘The amount of new commercials that come up has increased dramatically,’ Jandrisch says, adding that those voicing complaints may simply be musicians who no longer get the calls.

Jandrisch attributes the decline in cycles to the fact that agencies get paid for new rather than recycled commercials, so it’s in their best interests to develop fresh spots as often as possible.

‘When we had our most recent negotiations eight months ago with the advertising agencies, they admitted quite honestly that there aren’t as many reuses involved because commercials aren’t having that long an airplay. People want something new every two, three, four months…you’ve got to keep it fresh. That is the bottom line.’

While that may be true, according to statistics compiled before the last collective agreement – negotiated in November 2001 – the economic realities of working in advertising in Canada in the ensuing months has become something different again.

No one knows that better than the session musician.

‘This year could go down as the stinker of all time,’ says Dwyre. ‘I think I’ve done 15 studio recording sessions this year…usually by this point I would have done more like 50 or 60.’

So what’s the solution?

Well, the next collective agreement is not due until 2004. According to Barlow, if the AFM doesn’t step up then, the union risks losing more musicians from its already declining rolls. ‘It’s a very old-fashioned association. It seems to move like the Queen Mary trying to turn around in Toronto harbor. It’s very difficult,’ he says.

‘I think musicians in Toronto have to make a decision whether there is a benefit to belonging to that organization or whether we have to become like ACTRA and [create] a Canadian organization.’

But Dwyer puts the emphasis on the musicians’ shoulders. ‘From the rank and file…there has to be some more active involvement. I can’t think of any other way it’s going to improve.’

-www.afm.org