Fellow IMRO members,
Given the extraordinary events that we’re living through at the present time, I wanted to take a moment to reach out to you to let you know what we’re doing in IMRO to help see all our members through the difficult times that lie ahead.
For the safety of our staff and members, from 13th March, IMRO HQ, Copyright House has been closed to members and we have facilitated home and remote working for all employees until further notice. We have sadly had to cancel all scheduled events in the building. We cancelled all business travel two weeks ago, and all physical meetings are now held over conference and video calls. Our primary concern is always the safety of our employees, members, affiliates and our licensees.
Business Continuity Planning
Our COVID-19 preparedness is co-ordinated as part of a company-wide business continuity and resilience testing programme which we had updated in 2019. A key objective of these measures is to enable us to support our members’, affiliates and licensees’ needs with a minimal level of disruption in the event of a significant event.
From an operational perspective, we have put in place business-continuity plans utilising our cloud-based technologies to ensure that we can conduct business from work-from-home locations. This is to ensure we can continue to serve both our members’, affiliates and licensees needs appropriately. All our employees will be contactable and available for business utilising our usual modes of communications and contact details (email, desk phone numbers etc.) fully accessible from remote locations. Our March 2020 distribution went out as scheduled on the 15th. Royalty payments to our members and affiliates continue to be our top priority and we will in fact be expediting the radio distribution to a monthly payment schedule with effect from the April distribution.
I fully appreciate that this is a difficult and worrying time for you right now. Many of IMRO’s members are self-employed freelancers and small businesses who are reliant on the income that they receive from music licensing. Please be assured that IMRO is doing everything within its power to protect revenue streams for members and affiliates over the coming weeks and months.
We are very fortunate to have an exceptional crew working in IMRO. Our CEO Victor Finn’s response has been superb right throughout this crisis. His management team and all the staff inside in IMRO have responded with extraordinary determination and have gone above and beyond to make sure that all the work continues and that the distributions go out on time to all our members. I would like to pass on my sincerest thanks to them.
This may be an unprecedented situation, but we all need to continue to take individual responsibility for doing the right thing for the greater good. We can all ensure that the COVID-19 virus and its effects are minimised as far as possible.
We all hope that life will return to normal as soon as possible, but for the immediate future it looks as if life will be very different. Given the particular difficulties that the creative community might be facing at this time in relation to mental health, I asked Bressie if he would do a special video introduction to his ‘Where is My Mind’ podcasts for our members. The link is here:
Podcast Links
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-is-my-mind/id1470956619
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CyjB6oxmOc8nsndBFCOVM
Acast: https://play.acast.com/s/whereismymind
We will have the links for all of these podcasts along with other information
that might assist members available on the IMRO website for the foreseeable
future.
The world will need music and creativity to see them through the weeks that lie ahead. Keep writing, stay safe, look out for each other and in the words of Jackson Browne “Let the music keep your spirits high”
Onwards and upwards,
Eleanor McEvoy
IMRO Chairperson
chairman@nullimro.ie
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