Richard Bellis: Re-Sophisticaton

Advanced technology has merely enabled us to be efficient, but composing music for media is much more than efficiency.

Why Composers & Lyricists Should Affiliate With The Teamsters

The road to Unionization isn’t simply paved with negotiations about pension and benefits… It is about the core definition of what we do as media composers and how we are perceived by those who hire us to accomplish that work.

Are You “Pro”, Union?

Groucho Marx famously said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” I tend to agree with that sentiment, and it’s a good thing I do… because I don’t think that the AMCL wants me very much at all.

Although the actions of the AMCL Steering Committee—the eleven men who have taken it upon themselves to spearhead the effort to unionize composers in Los Angeles under the Teamsters Local 399 banner—have run a somewhat confusing gamut from ill-prepared to scatter-brained to misinformed to moderately victorious, one thing is particularly clear: The AMCL and the Teamsters Union have zero intentions of unionizing ALL composers. They only want the “working ones”. If you are like me, you want to know “Why?”. Let’s talk it through and see if we can come to any conclusions…