For those of you who hate The Bachelor, you’re about to get a whole new reason to dislike the popular Australian reality dating show. And for those of you who don’t care, you’re about to join the haters.
We’re all familiar with the scourge of ‘exposure gigs’. It’s a hotly contested issue, but creatives have long had to deal with work offers that don’t provide any actual monetary restitution, but instead promise ‘great exposure’.
The idea is that you work for free this time and the ‘exposure’ you get from this job will hopefully lead to paid work down the line. It’s par for the course when you’re young and green and looking to get your foot in the door.
However, it becomes an issue when it’s expected that skilled creatives, even those who’ve had years or decades in the business, should work for free and it’s within the means of those offering the work to pay for it.
One company we imagine definitely has the scratch to pay for a team of creatives is Warner Bros, the producers behind The Bachelor (currently one of the biggest shows on Australian TV), who recently put out an ad looking for musicians.
Warner tapped the Australian Institute of Music (AIM) to share their classified looking for “an eight-piece orchestra” or “a string quartet at the minimum” to play a piece of copyright-free music to accompany a romantic date scene.
The musicians would first have to audition for the producers and would be chaperoned back and forth to the gig, but of course no payment would be received. In blowing the lid on the ad, AIM rightfully expected “a bit of backlash”.
“Artists are not there to be taken advantage of. Exposure does not pay the bills.”“We want a thriving music industry in Australia, we want an culture where artists are paid for their work and rewarded for the years of time, creativity and effort put into honing their craft,” said Mal Tulloch, director of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.
“Artists are not there to be taken advantage of. Exposure does not pay the bills. It is a profession not a hobby, and we expect musicians to be remunerated for their work.”
“Working for free is rampant in this industry, we need to be supporting our artists and help build a culture of respect where they are always paid for their work.”
As the MEAA notes, the controversy recalls an incident in 2014 when members of the dance industry were up in arms over a US-based video agency asking dancers to work for free on a Kylie Minogue music video shoot, which spawned the hashtag #PayTheDancers.
