A ruling has just recognized the right of more than 40 members of the Zarzuela Theater Choir to collect, together, more than 100,000 euros for the works that were broadcast on streaming through YouTube and Facebook between 2018 and 2021. The judges of the Superior Court of Madrid explain that the regulations include the payment of bonuses for choristers when their zarzuelas are broadcast on television and radio and that this obligation “does not lose its essence or its purpose” when applied to other types of platforms that did not exist when those laws were put in place.
The Zarzuela Theater Choir was born in 1956 and, as explained on your website“has sung countless performances of zarzuelas, ballets, operas and concerts,” not only in the theater itself but also on tours inside and outside of Spain. Their sopranos, contraltos, tenors and basses were the ones who decided to sue the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM) for thousands of euros. For several years his works and performances have been accessible through his official channel on YouTube.
According to the judicial documentation to which elDiario.es has had access, up to 44 choristers from the Zarzuela Choir went to the INAEM demanding to collect money because their zarzuelas were not only seen live and broadcast on radio and television. Some of them were also broadcast by streaming through YouTube and Facebook or the Teatro de la Zarzuela website.
Some of these 44 artists had been joining the choir for a few years, but others had been on stage since the late 1970s. In their lawsuit they explained that between 2018 and 2021 they had performed works such as The House of Bernarda Alba, Three Top Hats either The Tempranica, among others, without charging any extra.
The INAEM refused to pay this money, but the social justice judges found that it had paid the choristers “a supplement for broadcasts carried out on television in any broadcast carried out on radio and television, whether recorded or live.” These videos, in addition, “continue to be incorporated into social networks as well as on the Teatro de la Zarzuela website itself, which allows their free access and download.”
Among other allegations, the INAEM explained that it was already paying a salary supplement for the broadcasts of zarzuelas on radio and television “without streaming broadcasts being included in the agreement, being a technology that has no relation to a television broadcast.”
A social court in Madrid was the first to agree with the choristers and now it has been the Superior Court of Justice of the capital that has sealed this obligation of the INAEM to pay a premium for these streaming broadcasts: a total of 102,000 euros for everyone, with amounts between 1,500 and more than 3,000 euros per head depending on the case and the number of zarzuelas in which each of the artists participated.
The judges of the TSJ of Madrid answer that the INAEM collective agreement with respect to the choristers of the Zarzuela Choir was created in the nineties and that, at that time, it cited “the two usual and usual means of reproducing a performance, here is a zarzuela.” The retransmission bonus, say the judges, “does not lose its essence or its purpose because the technical means by which the transmission is produced is streaming.” A possibility that, at that time, simply did not exist.
The broadcast of live videos over the Internet and their subsequent storage on platforms such as YouTube, explains the Superior Court of Madrid, “has served as an instrument for the retransmission of voice and image, and also, with regard to zarzuelas whose economic compensation that the plaintiffs sought, they are videos that continue to be incorporated into social networks, which allows their free access and download.”
In the last year, the Teatro de la Zarzuela choir has warned of a “accelerated process of disappearance” alluding to a lack of compliance with commitments by INAEM to complete its staff and renounce temporary employment. “The Zarzuela Choir is moving towards extinction,” he noted at the beginning of the year.
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