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Sharkey talks tough at MIDEM
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 20 January 2009
More MIDEM, and the boss of cross-industry trade body UK Music, Feargal Sharkey, often the consolatory voice in the room when the music industry feels it is being abused by government or the internet industry, delivered some fighting talk in his speech.
First the UK government. Despite Culture Secretary Andy Burnham putting pressure on the ISPs to take a more proactive role in combating online piracy, and more recently saying that the government were no longer completely against the idea of extending the sound recording copyright, Sharkey said British ministers should do more to help the music business.
Welcoming the French approach to online piracy (putting obligations on the ISPs to act – and to cut off file sharers – into law), and noting that the UK industry often relied on European legislation to protect label and artists’ interests, he said: “Whether it’s ensuring that a private copying exception is met with some sort of compensation mechanism, or term extension for sound recordings or simply protection of a creator’s moral rights, why is it that UK creators are constantly having to seek support from Brussels and not on our own doorstep?”.
On the internet world’s attitude to music, he said he was sick of the “ever growing chorus of pseudo-intellectual cyber professors who feel that even [a] basic right of [IP] ownership is one right too many”, concluding: “It is now clearly time we stop playing the game according to their rules. It is now time that we make the world understand music and creativity in terms which transcend the language of economics and utility”.
Sharkey probably adopted the more-negative-than-normal tone in a bid to call his UK-heavy audience to arms. He observed that the music industry had always survived through building mutually beneficial partnerships with other industries, but said that whereas in the past the music business had taken the lead in those partnerships, in recent years “for the first time we are being told by others what to do and when to do it”.
I’m not sure that’s completely true – the record industry was originally created by another industry telling the music community what to do – ie gramophone makers telling then exclusively live performers to get in the studio and start putting their music down on record. And, while Apple did take the lead in turning the internet into a revenue stream for music companies, the Universal Musics of this world have done quite a bit of dictating in how subsequent digital music services operate.
But Sharkey’s point, presumably, is that the music industry needs to more frequently lead the way when working with partners – governmental or commercial – to both protect its interests and pursue new opportunities, and he’s probably right.
That, of course, is easier with one united voice – meaning Sharkey’s unspoken conclusion is that it is in everyone’s interest if those trade bodies used to acting alone remain committed to his new trade-association-of-trade-associations, and let him take the lead on industry-wide issues, like copyright and the internet.
Some of those trade associations affiliated to UK Music may share some of Sharkey’s sentiments, but at the same time be nervous about giving up too much lobbying power for the common good.
