New executives of RAO held their first meeting

29.12.2016

New executives of Russian Authors’ Society (RAO) held their first meeting.

The meeting of the new Authors’ Council was attended by its following members: Maxim Dmitriev, RAO General Director, members of the Authors’ Council – People’s Artists of Russia Igor Butman, Ilya Reznik, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Anatoly Kroll, Daniil Kramer, Alexey Rybnikov, Honored Artist of Russia Vladimir Presniakov, Alexande Vulykh, Nikita Vysotsky, Dmitry Darin, Vsevolod Zaderatsky, Evgeny Kobylyansky, Rector of the Moscow State Conservatory n.a. Peter Tchaikovsky Alexander Sokolov, General Director of «Universal Music Publishing» Dmitry Konnov, General Director of «United Music Group» Victoria Konchakova, General Director of National Music Publishing Dmitry Maiko, General Director of «Mazay Communications» Andrey Chesnov, General Director of Warner Music Russia Alexander Blinov and other rights holders.

During the meeting members of the Authors’ Council discussed current state of affairs and the challenges which RAO had faced. Members of the Council stated that the first general study of internal RAO documentation revealed several problems, which previously had existed.

Members of the Council set the date for starting a profound audit of the Society’s work –16.01.2017. Results of this audit will be presented to the Authors’ Council and to the general public by the middle of February, 2017.


Igor Butman, Maxim Dmitriev, Alexander Sukhotin, Evgeny Kobylyansky

 

«When we receive the results of the audit, we plan to optimize RAO expenditures», – said Igor Butman, President of the Authors’ Council, People’s Artist of Russia, composer.

Members of the Council also discussed plans of RAO for the first 6 months of 2017, including the short-term modernization of the organization.

«In January 2017 we will introduce new standards of automatic royalty distribution and payment» said Maxim Dmitriev, General Director of RAO.

Members of the Authors’ Council advised the executives to use best practices of VOIS and to adopt the services which this organization uses in its work.


Evgeny Kobylyansky, Daniil Kramer, Alexander Sokolov

The first IT service (personal accounts for authors) will be launched in the middle of January 2017. Another B2B-service, which sill be available for users soon, is musical player Fonmix. It will provide transparency of music usage reports.


Igor Butman, Maxim Dmitriev, Alexander Sukhotin

At the end of the meeting RAO General Director Maxim Dmitriev underlined urgent necessity to introduce changes in the RAO Statute, and offered to increase number of the Authors’ Council members.


Members of the first meeting of the RAO executives

The RAO Statute should set up legal status of the Supervisory Council as a managing body of the organization, in accordance with recommendations of the Russian Ministry of Culture. Powers of the Authors’ Council in the sphere of setting maximum administrative deductions also have to be amended. The Statute should also set up obligatory annual audit of RAO and publication of its results at the Society’s web-site.


Dmitry Konnov, Alexpander Sukhotin, Maxim Dmitriev, Evgeny Kobylyansky, Ilya Reznik

The Authors’ Council unanimously decided to hold an extraordinary RAO Conference at the end of April 2017. The Conference should discuss amended version of the RAO Statute, increase number of the Authors’ Council members, present preliminary audit results, announce first results of IT modernization and to approve RAO development strategy.


Ilya Reznik, Vice-President of the Authors’ Council

«Our task is to introduce real transparency and new technologies into RAO work», – announced Dmitry Konnov, member of the Authors’ Council, General Director of «Universal Music Publishing»

Press-service of RAO
Photos by Ilya Ignatovich