The International Alliance of Composers

[Chris Alpiar]

It is my immense honor to introduce and unveil to you all a project that was conceived in early Spring of this year and is finally matured enough for an initial release:

"The International Alliance of Composers"!

You can learn all about the IAC and join with a free basic membership at http://www.iacomp.org

The International Alliance of Composers is a non-profit organization, currently engaged in seeking 501c6 tax exempt status from the IRS to be a trade organization and to one day in the future lead to building a federal level Political Action Committee as part of its mantra.

While those aspects of the org will take some time, months for the tax status, potentially years for creating the PAC and finding proper funding, we nonetheless have filed for incorporation as a not-for- profit entity (Ohio filing) and are focused right now on building a free member base built on a grassroots no-budget internet concept.

The objectives currently are two-fold:

Firstly to create a great composer community and website with lots of great features to inspire folks to come and spend 5 minutes joining for free, and to become active members of our new community - and in response we have packed in a bunch of valuable tools, discounts and services;

Secondly we will be creating composer rights advocacy campaigns based on the myriad of issues composers are faced with today. Some of our intended campaigns are PRO specific (like song vs score), some more global (like alden rochelle v. ASCAP collecting royalties from movie houses), some more personal (like creating a program to make suggested minimum salary and rate wages and scales). For a complete description of the composer rights topics we plan to include in our advocacy agenda, please go to http://www.iacomp.org/advocacy.aspx

Joining today is pretty quick (under 5 mins), its free, and it will give access to lots of cool free stuff as well as a concept of community tools where everyone is encouraged to enter their personal events (film release, gatherings, cd release, union march, festivals, workshops, whatever) into the community calendar as well as contribute on our web forums, and even contribute with member written tutorials, editorials, and more. Go to http://www.iacomp.org/join.aspx to find out more!

The free stuff is pretty impressive too! Lots of downloadable goodies, and I have arranged a special discount program for IAC members with Sweetwater where each month we will be offering 1 software and 1 hardware at specially discounted prices available only to IAC members
- for this month and October we have EastWest Symphonic Orchestra Gold complete at almost $100 cheaper than you can buy it online anyplace, and Mbox2 at around $50 bucks cheaper.

So join us, like I said its FREE; and while we will have dues-paying membership levels once we have our 501c6 in place and add more benefits fitting of a dues-based membership, we will always maintain the free membership so you can be part of the community and enjoy the forums, calendar, news, downloads, discounts and more for only a few clicks.

Membership is open to anyone who has an interest in the livelihood of composers. Certain IAC programs only perfectly fit composers, but there is still tremendous value for all types of music professionals.
While our advocacy campaigns will hold the rights of composers above all as our primary platform, we will work happily for the benefit of all active parties in the music industry: songwriters, orchestrators, copyists, sound engineers, musicians, etc, etc.

I am happy to discuss further any aspect of the IAC and answer candidly any questions about our goals and intentions for the coming years. To read our mission statement and get an idea of upcoming services and long term goals for the IAC go to http://www.iacomp.org/about.aspx

And if anyone is particularly inspired and wishes to help out and participate, we have lots to do and many volunteer positions available. If you are interested in participating past membership levels, please contact me off-list.

Sincerely,

Christopher Kennedy Alpiar
President
International Alliance of Composers
937.294.0900 (Dayton)
310.339.9603 (Los Angeles)
877.294.0912 (Toll Free)
www.iacomp.org

P.S. Chris Merritt, our Executive Director, will be at the Composer Expo in NYC today introducing the IAC and handing out brochures and cards and stuff, and he will also be at the LA Composer Expo next week on the 27th to do the same. So stop in at one or the other to buy him a beer or 4, he will need it with all the talking he will be doing these 2 days ;-)

P.P.S. the members-only section of the website is in advanced beta mode - so please forgive if some parts are a little quirky. Its all custom C#/asp.net code written by me and I expect the first few weeks to be ironing out bugs ;-)

[Marius Amado-Alves]

It was he canadians, weren't they? The first internationals? Draft!"#$%&/( :-)

[Marius Amado-Alves]

Got as far as step 3 but then I get the error:
Server Error in '/' Application.

Don't sweat on an elegant solution for int'l users. Just putting the "Other (Int'l)" option at the top (or at the bottom) of the list is elegant enough. And maybe add a few instructional words on the side.

[Chris Alpiar]

Everything is C#, asp.net 3.5/ajax, MsSql no versioning atm, but I could put it in VSS at some point. But will probably be a little later on. Thanks for the offer ;-)

[Marius Amado-Alves]

Oops... I had missed this "Others (Int'l)" option before. Sorry. Gonna retry now.

I'm also a computer programmer so I may help with the coding eventually. Preferably if you have it on a version control system.

[Chris Alpiar]

Actually there was quite a bug this morning where international folks could not complete the form after some quick changes went live yesterday. I apologize for any inconvenience. And I will have a more elegant solution in place for international members soon. Its difficult since its just me doing the site - no testers, no other coders - and my profession hasnt been a developer since early 2003. But I think the end result is going to be quite nice ;)

[Chris Alpiar]

sorry man we already have quite a few ;-)
There isnt an elegant solution for international yet - however you can select "Other(Int'l)" and then enter your region in the "region" box - and the zip code also takes postal code - which is required yes. Do you live someplace that has no postal code?

[Marius Amado-Alves]

I'd love to be the first international member :-)

[Marius Amado-Alves]

Sounded wonderful at first glance. Then I started to read and realised this was probably an USA thing inspite the "International" designation. But I decided to give a try anyway. A number of things still seemed genuinely international and very interesting. Then the unfortunate usual happens: a USA state and zipcode are mandatory fields for the subscription. Even though there is a Country field. So maybe it's a bug, not a feature. If so please kindly announce when it's fixed. Thanks.