Jan Hautekiet

Jan Hautekiet is a producer, radio producer, musician, and writer. He studied Language and Literature, Philosophy and Audiovisual Communication at the Catholic University of Leuven. Afterwards, he went to study music, as well.

He worked for the public broadcaster VRT for 40 years and composed for various clients. He has spent the past 40 years as a musician doing session work for national and international artists and projects.

Jan Hautekiet is chairman of Cultuurloket, Rosas and SABAM and was also a member of the Board of Directors of Uradex for 10 years.
Finally, he also writes about communication. 

Patrick Printz

After a career as a freelance music journalist, Patrick was a director of Sowarex (a record production company that has the labels Franc’Amour and Igloo) between 1983 and 2009. Since 2000, he is also entrusted with the management of the public agency Wallonie-Bruxelles Musiques, where he was responsible for supporting the export and international promotion of French-speaking artists until June 2018.

Currently, he continues supporting players in the sector (management agency, label, festival…) on a part-time basis.

Moreover, for 20 years, he was secretary-treasurer of the Conseil Francophone de la Chanson, a multilateral organisation responsible for musical exchanges between the northern and southern countries.

Christian Martin

Christian Martin is a musician, sound engineer and artistic producer. He has been a member of PlayRight for 30 years and joined the Board of Directors in 2011.

Lou Berghmans

Lou is a Flemish Director of Photography (D.O.P.). He works on feature films, short films, TV series, documentaries, and video clips both in Flanders and Europe (www.louberghmans.be).
In 1981, he received his degree in Photography at the RITCS and made his debut as D.O.P. with FILM 1 by Willem Wallyn. In addition, together with the Checkpoint Charlies (Kris Smets), he was responsible for the management of, amongst others, music groups The Scabs, Guy Swinnen, 1060, Tubelight and television cook Jeroen Meus between 1983 and 2010.

Eric Russon

Since 1989, Eric Russon works as a cultural journalist for TV, radio, and the printed press (Arte Belgique, Télé Bruxelles, Moustique, La Première RTBF).

Christophe Van Vaerenbergh

Christophe is the director of PlayRight. Hence, his approach within the Commission is different from the one of the other members of the advisory committee. After all, he was at the basis of the creation of PlayRight+.

Alain Van Goethem

Alain Van Goethem started his acting career in 1988. Since 2019, he is also an international talent agent who focuses on giving European actors and actresses the opportunity to build their international careers. This new function sprung from a lack of such agents in Belgium, as until then there existed only managers who mainly focused on Belgian territory. As an agent, he wants to offer the next generation the opportunities that he had missed out on.

Despite the two-year coronavirus pandemic since the foundation of Lucky Star International Talent Agent, he still managed to book actors for, amongst others, “Ted Lasso” and “Tehran” for Apple TV, and he had actors work with directors such as Guy Richie, Roman Polanski and Luc Besson.

In 2016, he was elected as one of the Dutch-speaking actors on the Board of Directors. Since 2017, he has been representing the actors within the Executive Committee.
However, he had already attended his first meeting at the then Uradex in June 2007.

Nathalie De Lattre

Nathalie De Lattre is a programmer of contemporary music at Eden, Charleroi Cultural Center. She is also a co-founder of the festival Deep In The Woods where she worked on programming and logistics for 5 years.

Eric Didden

Besides Artist Manager and co-founder of Gentle Management, Eric Didden is also a co-founder of the festival Deep In The Woods & keeper of the Green(s).

Valerie Dobbelaere

Valerie started working at the guest office of the Ghent International Film Festival where she coordinated the film music and sound projects (concerts, seminars, masterclasses, composition competition, the annual World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony, etc.). In 2016, she joined the Post Bills Agency team as a Film Music PR & Talent Agent.

How did you get to know PlayRight+?

Jan: In the early 1980s some colleagues told me that there exists a collecting society for performing artists. I became a shareholder straight away. Between 2000 and 2010 I was also a member of the Board of Directors.

Nathalie: I was approached by Ioan Kaes who was working at PlayRight at the time. He explained PlayRight+’s main objectives to me and offered me to join the Commission as soon as it was created.

Patrick: I got to know PlayRight+ while I was a manager at Wallonie-Bruxelles Musiques. We held meetings with the aim of building bridges between the actions of public services and collective management companies, in this case those of the musicians.

Lou: When I was still active as a manager, I was also a member of the Music Managers Federation (MMaF) that acted as a point of contact for music managers and the artists that they represented, both nationally and internationally.

The problem and especially the defense of copyrights and neighbouring rights were already high on the agenda at that time. Hence, my continued interest in this matter that I, as a D.O.P., also have to deal with in our current audiovisual landscape. Because, unlike in other countries, the D.O.P. in Belgium doesn’t benefit from copyrights.

“I decided to join the PlayRight+ Commission because…”

Jan: … because I hope that, with my 40 years of experience and my affinity with the broad cultural and music sector, I can contribute something during the negotiations.

Christian: … because I am chairman of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of PlayRight.

Eric R.: … because my participation in the SABAM Comission had come to an end and I wanted to get engaged in the working of PlayRight+.

Alain: … because they asked me to join. I already represented the actors within the Executive Committee, and I was also asked to become part of the Commission PlayRight+.

Nathalie: … because it seemed obvious to me to join this committee of experts from the artistic sector as my role there would be complementary to the one I exercise within Eden. My main role there is to support the position of performers.

What do you think are PlayRight+’s biggest challenges?

Patrick: In my opinion, PlayRight+’s biggest challenge is to always conform as quickly as possible to the reality experienced by its members and to be able, via its actions, to defend the interests of those members in the best possible way. The financial support that PlayRight+ offered to its members during this pandemic is a good example of this. A fair remuneration for artists in the evolving digital universe, the defense of all artists through collective management when power groups want to get rid of this collective management are the biggest challenges for the future, if you’d ask me.

Lou: I thank that we have already taken a huge step forward through the last bill voted in the House that should ensure that the performing artists are remunerated for the online use of their performances. PlayRight was one of the parties who made this bill possible.

However, in the rapidly evolving international landscape of our sector, continuous vigilance is the message. Any copyright, of whatever nature, is a priority right that must not be touched upon and must be defended against any form of manipulation.

The corona pandemic once again painfully exposed the frailty of our Belgian artists’ statute, but at the same time it clearly showed PlayRight’s added value for its members in difficult times.

Eric R.: The biggest challenge is to make an entire sector aware that they must take charge, learn about their rights, and stay informed (while also informing other colleagues) about legal developments regarding their statute.

Christophe: In October, I will be the director of PlayRight for 12 years. I remain an advocate of supporting our interest groups and projects with a socio-cultural and/or educational approach. The recent health crisis has highlighted that the cultural ecosystem in this country is highly fragile and that initiatives such as PlayRight+ provide some much-needed oxygen. In that sense, PlayRight+ fits in perfectly with our central mission: by artists, for artists. And that won’t change anytime soon.

Alain: The biggest challenge? That’s a tough question. We are very dependent on the type of applications we receive and the sums attached to them. Each application is individually examined and discussed in detail twice a year. This shows that this support is really necessary to support the sector.

Nathalie: Improving the socio-economic and cultural position of artists, increasing their chances of an international career, and at the same time informing them about their rights and protecting their works. In addition, we should also increase this support in extreme situations such as the crisis we have gone through, which has left several artists without an income. We receive more files every year, but we only validate those that entirely respect the objectives, so that the artists can maximally benefit.

How do you see PlayRight+ in 10 years from now? (Or what are your ambitions for PlayRight+?)

Jan: PlayRight+ must help ensure that forces within the music landscape are bundled as efficiently as possible, so that the available resources are effectively distributed and can yield optimal results.

Christian: I hope that, on PlayRight+’s 20^th anniversary, we will be able to say that our fund has become an essential cultural player and that it has played a leading role in improving the social and economic position of the performing artists.

Lou: I’ll leave it to the geniuses of this world to guess how far we’ll have come in 10 years J!

Eric R.: That’s a difficult question. I believe that PlayRight+ should evolve according to the evolution of the cultural landscape and at the same time contribute to that evolution (the one cannot exist without the other).

Nathalie: While PlayRight+ was still quite unknown several years ago, we have come a long way and the department now plays an increasingly important role within the cultural sector. This recognition should only increase even more in the years to come!

Alain: 10 years, that’s still a long way off. I think we’ll have a larger budget to spend and that we’ll be supporting even more artists and projects.