Politicians Lost Their Shit Over Daryl Braithwaite's Performance Of 'The Horses' At Parliament

Montaigne

Some of Australia's finest acts have united to perform at Parliament House in Canberra this week in response to the Federal Government potentially making changes to the country's copyright laws.

As NT News reports, Montaigne, Daryl Braithwaite, Megan Washington, Kav Temperley, Diesel and Ross Wilson played at the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Music event, organised by APRA, ARIA and the PPCA, on Wednesday night in a bid to push politicians away from the proposed changes.

Changes to the laws could affect musicians' ability to be paid fairly for their content, as there are calls to widen safe harbour provisions (which currently protects internet service providers from being liable if a customer uploads a musician's song to their services).

Looking at some of the videos shared online, including Braithwaite's ripping performance of The Horses, they just may have got the message across.

"It is detrimental to a musician's livelihood and I am opposed to the proposed changes," Montaigne told NT News.

"We are a small business, I'm registered as a company and the selfish people pushing for these changes want to make as much money as quickly and easily as possible.

"There is a massive economic return for Australia from music and performers and because (music) is fun, perhaps that isn't recognised as much as if it was engineering or medicine."

Washington added that now streaming accounts for the most revenue for sales in Australia, the proposed changes to the laws could seriously damage the music industry. 

"When I started I sold X amount of records and made X amount of money and achieved success on the charts but now that equation is different," the ARIA Award-winning artist said.

"This is why we need people to understand the reason we have to protect our rights and our intellectual property because without those rights, we simply won’t have an arts culture in this country.

"The only thing we will be able to call art will be the stuff that makes money and that is not always the best art."