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Business News Education & Events The Great Escape 2015
Why music people should #VoteForMusic
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 17 April 2015
Three weeks today we’ll be trying to work our what the new UK government will look like. And four weeks today we’ll know what music-related issues the music community wants that government to address, because the results of the #VoteForMusic campaign will have been revealed as part of CMU Insights @ The Great Escape.
As previously reported, during the #VoteForMusic keynote TGE co-founder Martin Elbourne, Cooking Vinyl’s Martin Goldschmidt, Yellowbrick Music’s Meredith Cork and artist Dan Le Sac will all deliver a short speech addressed at the new government. And after that we will find out the five key music-related issues most mentioned by performers, industry people and music fans in the run up to the General Election via the #VoteForMusic campaign.
CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke has been talking to the person behind that campaign, Julia Payne from The Hub, who explains why she thinks the wider music community should take some time to engage in the political dimension of their industry.
Referencing the trade bodies that more routinely represent the music business to the political community, Payne says: “I think it’s great that we have those trade bodies, and that they have channels through which they can talk to government and Parliament, but there’s no way that they can ever represent everyone, all of the different parts of the industry; we’re just too diverse a bunch of people”.
She goes on: “And I’m not suggesting for one moment that #VoteForMusic can do that, but I do think that we need other ways that people who work in, or love, music, can come together to have a voice, people who maybe don’t belong to a membership organisation for instance, or for whom there isn’t an umbrella body. But the reason I wanted to launch #VoteForMusic now was because the election is a once every five years moment, and it seemed the right time to try to kickstart something that gives people a chance to set out their stall to a new government”.
Explaining how people can get involved, she adds: “It’s really easy. Right now, you can use the #VoteForMusic hashtag to vote via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, posting using either a simple message or a photo to vote. At the same time you nominate three other people to cast their #VoteForMusic, a bit like the Ice Bucket Challenge. We’re also asking music venues and shops to get involved too, by becoming a #VoteForMusic polling station and creating their own #VoteForMusic ballot box that audiences and customers can use to vote, using #VoteForMusic ballot papers”.
Read the full interview with Payne here and find more information on #VoteForMusic here.
To find out about the wider CMU Insights programme at The Great Escape click here. And don’t forget to buy your TGE delegates pass before they all sell out here.
