I thought I'd bring this up here as it may be an interesting subject.
I was interested in knowing how popular membership of the Musicians Union is amongst Worcester musicians/bands.
Two of the benefits of MU membership are Public Liability Insurance up to £10m, and equipment insurance up to £1000.
However membership of the MU is pretty expensive (in my opinion) at:
£270 a year if you earned more than £16000 from music in the last year £150 a year if you earned less than £16000 from music in the last year £75 a year if you're a student in full time education
I guess a better question is what are your views on the costs of membership and do you think the benefits outweight the costs?
Personally I think that £150 a year is a lot if you're earning, like me, pretty much nothing from music. It seems to me that the price thresholds are a bit arbitrary. For example I can only dream of earning £16000 a year from music as it seems quite a lot. Other people who are making a living out of music at somewhere between £16000 and £30000 may feel aggrieved that it costs them the same to be a member as someone like e.g. Mick Jagger who is earning millions from it.
From the point of view of the Public Liability Insurance cover, does £10m seem like a lot? It does to me but, if I were playing places like Wembley and so on, perhaps I would need to get PLI for much, much more than £10m.
Does a typical amateur musician on the Worcester circuit need £10m worth of cover or would, e.g. £1.25m be enough?
More importantly, how does the PLI cover work if only one member of a band is a member of the MU? (The MU website suggests that cover extends to the band, but ...)
Is £1000 of cover enough for musical equipment? When you've got a single guitar that can cost well over £1000, it seems that even amateur musicians would probably want to take out extra cover anyway.
Based on that, you've got companies like E&L selling musical equipment insurance to cover £1000 for less than £50 a year, including £1.25m PLI.
So, from my point of view...
you've got membership costs that appear quite expensive (to me) if your income from music is nothing, yet if your income is millions then it's an amount you earn in a matter of seconds during the day
you're given PLI cover that may be more than you need for little gigs, but for big regular gigs you'd probably need significantly more
you could quite easily find the included musical equipment cover is nowhere near the amount you need if you have e.g. an expensive guitar or an expensive amp
Is it really worth joining?
Anyway - I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
