Longtime CEO of APRA/AMOCOS Brett Cottle will step down from his position in June.
Cottle has been CEO of APRA since 1990.
In 2012 he was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for “service to the performing arts, particularly to songwriters, composers and publishers, through executive roles with copyright protection organisations, and to the community”.
APRA represents over 67,000 songwriters and publishers in Australia and New Zealand.
From December 1994 to April 1999 Brett also held the position of Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Committee of CISAC (International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers). In 2000 Brett was appointed Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of CISAC and in 2006 he was elected Chairman, a position he held until 2010.
He is also a past director of the Australian Copyright Council and the Copyright Law Review Committee. Brett was also chair of the Board of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Ltd from May 2008 to September 2009.
APRA Chair, Jenny Morris said:
After 27 years leading the organisation we quite understand why Brett has reached the point where he is keen to pursue other priorities in life. He will nevertheless be missed enormously by the Boards, Management, staff and membership of APRA AMCOS.
During Brett’s tenure, royalty collections and distributions have increased seven-fold and the organisation is now recognised as one of the world’s leading copyright collecting societies.
In a career that began as the organisation’s first in-house counsel in the late 1970s, Brett has championed the cause of songwriters’ and composers’ rights for more than 40 years and instilled and sustained a culture of dedicated service within APRA and AMCOS, of which we on the Board are immensely proud.
AMCOS Chair, Ian James said:
The operational merger of APRA and AMCOS is today taken for granted, but when it was effected in 1997 Brett’s vision and leadership were critical to its success. The positive and productive spirit in which the two Boards have co-operated seamlessly ever since is testament to the culture created and fostered by Brett.
Internationally the organisation commands enormous respect, reflected in the fact that Brett is the only Australian to have been elected Chair of the International Confederation of Authors’ Societies (CISAC), a role in which he served for two consecutive terms.
In a statement to APRA AMCOS staff Brett said that he would leave with some sadness but enormous optimism about the future of the organisation; noting that 2017 financial results would again be at a record level. Having worked for both societies for over 40 years he noted that nobody is really entitled to such good fortune in their working lives.
While Brett will continue in the CEO role for the next 12 months, the APRA and AMCOS Boards have announced the appointment of the international recruiting firm Odgers Berndtson to undertake the search for a new CEO. Said Jenny Morris:
We are determined to undertake the best and most thorough search to find the right candidate to fill this incredibly important job in the Australasian music industry, to ensure that the interests of Australia’s and New Zealand’s songwriters, composers and publishers continue to be represented in the ablest and most effective manner.
