...where Peter Jenner, emeritus president of the UK's International Music Managers' Forum (IMMF), shares his thoughts further to the publication of the UK government's Digital Britain report...
I was thinking I really should stop going
on like a scratched record about my few oft- repeated thoughts, but like acne
it resists any attempt at cure. This one is about P2P.
Why is that considered the cause of all the
ills of the recorded music industry? Just because business is declining why do
we look outside for the causes? Maybe business is down because the music is not
as clearly socially defining to the customers as it used to be? Maybe the
competition for the disposable wallet is more intense, with cable TV, games,
holidays, cheap fashion goods, mobile phones, getting drunk, going out to
dinner etc, all competing for the available wallet share? Maybe it is because at
the height of the industry’s boom we managed to get people to replace their
favourite records with CDs as well as buying the new stuff, and now they have
replaced their old favourites?
Maybe it is not our fault and it all the
fault of those irritating people we have to deal with – our customers.
Maybe
they realised that buying the two tracks from iTunes that they heard on the
radio was better than buying either ‘Now…Vol ??’ with all the tracks they don’t
like as well as the ones they do, or buying the album with all the filler
written by the ‘star’ who sensibly relies on the hit makers to provide them
with the hit-songs, whilst boosting their earnings by ‘writing’ filler for the
album. Maybe the majors dominate the media so thoroughly that they can just keep
recycling the same old songs with slightly different faces.
But maybe it is none of the above, maybe
the real problem is people burning CDs for each other, or swapping hard drives
or memory sticks, or side-loading their phones from their computers. Maybe the
whole issue is just rather more complicated than stopping the P2P services and
banning Pirate Bay and all the other ‘pirate services’.
Maybe it is the very fact of calling them ‘pirate services’ is what makes them
attractive to young people (Johnny Depp rules!).
But enough of my typical rant, and before I
go off on Sarkozy, let me get more practical. I think that there is every
indication that no government wants to cope with the problem of digital copying
in all its complexity. It is all too easy to just leave it to the ISPs and the
record industry to sort it out. No government is going to cut people off from
the internet because they didn’t pay for a couple of downloads. But also no
government is going to allow all the creative industries to be destroyed by
digital distribution.
We have to find ways of finding money for
content from the public that generates enough money for the music industry as
well as providing business opportunities for the ISPs and MSPs. At the same
time we should be looking at how these solutions (?) can be shaped to provide
opportunities for all music to be accessible to the public, and for all
creators to share in any revenues, and for new music services to come in, and
to treat all content providers equitably. It is not a zero sum game in a
declining market, but a challenge to make the ever increasing presence of music
in our lives realise ever increasing revenues for the creators and their
enablers. At the same time we have to help the digital distributors to develop
new ways of earning revenue from providing services that people value. It is
not about the value of music, but about the value of music services in a
rapidly changing digital environment, where habits are changing almost as fast
as the technology.
In some strange and evasive way Digital
Britain seemed to me be pointing this out. It provided no short term help for
the record industry, no ‘deus ex machina’ to solve their problems, nor are the
distributors being allowed to say they don’t know what is going on (‘its
nothing to do with us, guv’). The report seems to be saying you have to sort it
out, or else it is going to cost the record companies a lot of money, and the
ISPs a load of aggravation and, in the end, forcing them into policy that will
increase churn by harassing and spying on their customers. The report has set
up lose/lose solution, which is maybe what they both deserve.
As always I remain an optimist home taping
did not kill music, nor did the video recorder kill TV and films. New
technology requires new thinking and adapting of business models. People will
still make music and people will still listen, and money can be made for all
concerned, as long as music remains relevant to the public, and we use our
imagination to work out how, in the context of how people actually behave, we
can all make a living.
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