Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Christopher Yero, Musician and Advocate, on Fair Pay for Musicians
1:37:50
·
126 sec
Christopher Yero, a musician and advocate, shares his personal experience growing up in a family supported by music and highlights the current challenges faced by musicians due to dwindling royalties and unfair compensation in the streaming era. He emphasizes the need for fair wages in the music industry.
- Yero comes from a musical family; his father was a member of the Dominican band La Gran Manzana and supported their family solely through music
- He contrasts the past, when royalty checks could cover bills and food, with the current situation where musicians' earnings have significantly decreased
- Yero supports the proposed bill (likely referring to the Living Wage for Musicians Act) as necessary for ensuring fair pay for musicians
Christopher Yero
1:37:50
Hello.
1:37:51
My name is Christopher Yero.
1:37:54
I I'd like to speak to the entire council, but I'd to speak especially to to miss De La Rosa as a fellow Dominican.
1:38:01
Maybe you or your parents will remember there was a band called La Gran Manzana from from The Dominican Republic.
1:38:09
My father was one of the front men in that band, Henriero, and they had numerous hits, very big very beloved in the eighties.
1:38:18
Well, I grew up in a home where we my father helped raise five well, all five of us, three three kids, him and my mom, solely off of music.
1:38:31
And, I remember days when my father used to get royalty checks and be able to pay the bills, buy us food with royalty checks.
1:38:40
I remember when my father used to be working all the time.
1:38:44
My father used to be playing gigs all over the city, and it was normal for me.
1:38:49
It was like I used to go to school.
1:38:51
My other friends, their parents did other things, and my my father was a musician and that's how we we made a living.
1:38:57
I followed in his footsteps.
1:38:59
I'm also a songwriter, producer, singer.
1:39:03
I'm one of the lucky ones.
1:39:04
I get to go on tour as a musician with a very big artist from Latin America.
1:39:11
But not all musicians have that luck and they're not that fortunate.
1:39:15
They're being told on one side that, yes, we've evened the playing field now everyone can release their music and be out there just like the big artists.
1:39:25
But simultaneously, our royalties have been dwindling.
1:39:29
The money that we're making is less and less.
1:39:32
It's really ridiculous.
1:39:36
It's one of the only industries where we put in all this work and we're expected to just shut up and take whatever we're dealt, take the promotion, whatever it is, the exposure, whatever that accounts for, and it just makes no sense.
1:39:52
I think we need this bill.
1:39:54
We need to be paid a fair wage.