collecting societies. The premise for this development: the UK produces the most diverse, most exciting, most innovative and most successful music in the world and all of our members have a considerable and shared stake and interest in that.
With UK Music, for the first time, we, in the UK can truly have a single vision, a single objective, collective aspirations, opinions and viewpoints, one song, one voice.
And my applause to the member organisations and individuals who make UK Music possible for their determination, insight and courage.
Because that unity becomes crucial when we want to tackle those big, truly all-encompassing issues; the ones, that will shape the destiny of our industry for decades come.
There is an astonishing amount to play for. And music and ISP relations are central to that objective.
All of us know that the incredible, inherent value of recorded music, has yet to be realised in the digital era.
That value has been sucked away through unlicensed, unapproved sharing and copying. The status quo is unsustainable.
The health of the recorded music sector is vital and an essential cog in the wheels of our industry.
And the vibrancy of its future impacts upon all of us – music publishers, composers, songwriters, managers, the live sector, artists and performers.
Now I can and do understand the frustration that a decade’s worth of repetitively futile conversations can bring – for everyone involved – and how on occasion that frustration can translate into despair and even anger.
But when emotion takes the place of logic, it takes us all two steps backwards.
In the UK, as an industry, we can, we will as we always have, adapt.
But I would caution that we need to remain acutely aware of music’s role in the bigger picture of a digital economy and a digital culture.
We must retain our sense of perspective, and ensure we are not seduced by the allure of easy options and Utopian sound bites.
It seems we are surrounded by an ever growing chorus of pseudo-intellectual cyber professors who will have us believe that their vision of reality is nothing short of the high altar of intellectual thinking. And to challenge those viewpoints and assumptions is nothing short of heresy and treason.
Are you with us? Or are you against us?
This is ultimately a creative and a commercial challenge and which can and should be solved by creative and commercial solutions.
In July 2008, British Music Rights published the largest-ever academic study into the music consumption habits of 14-24 year-olds.
95% of respondents told us they were copying music, 63% told us they downloaded music over P2P – mainly because it was free – and mainly because they didn’t think anyone would ever notice. Of the downloaders, 80% claimed they would pay for a legitimate service, and they would continue purchasing CDs.
Their love of music – way above all other forms of entertainment - came over loud and clear.
All of us need to focus our energies on cultivating, nurturing and serving that demand.
We as an industry have to seize upon that agenda.
To paraphrase Dr Strangelove: 2009 SHOULD BE THE YEAR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY LEARNS TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.
Let’s reflect on a few facts:
Technology has always changed how we listen to music, how we consume it and how we compose music.
Music has always offered an effective way of building an audience – never more so in the dot com era.
Yet in the world of bits and bytes, the competition for eyeballs and attention is incessant.
The result, I suspect for many, is already fatigue.
But it also creates a fertile environment for music.
Are we truly still dazzled by technology simply for technology’s sake?
The concept of carrying 1,000 songs in your pocket is no longer sufficient to blow anybody’s mind.
I think we all now recognize the absurdity of your MySpace friend count representing some form of tangible currency.
The answer has been and always will be simple. It is the music that matters.
The prospect of biting the bullet and embracing P2P should not seem as foreboding as it once did. We should not let words like BitTorrent strike fear and dread.
It’s simple; it’s the music that matters.
That Bon Iver album is still a great album regardless if your preference is vinyl, CD, download or stream. And ten years from now it will still be a great album.
It’s simple; it is the music that matters.
I very much welcome Nick’s comments about the value of music, and we too value and recognize the constructive role that ISPs can and do play.
By viewing ISPs as partners in the solution, I am certain that this can be the year that we can all stop fretting about delivery platforms and concentrate on what really matters.
Without human creativity and high quality content, technology is exactly that; technology. And is utterly redundant.
There will always be a bridge between the creator and the fan – whether that’s a record label, an aggregator, or an ISP. And all of us must and need to keep evolving.
ISPs and start-ups are also operating in this new era.
As you’ve already heard this morning there is hesitation of venture capital that ponders the contradiction between incessant demand and a dysfunctional business model.
The telco sector might be a Goliath, but it is also a business in transition.
The financial spoils of the great migration from dial-up to broadband are being squeezed. The quantities of online content being consumed are putting terminal strain on our national network. Music online might not be a scarcity, but bandwidth most certainly is.
We are at the tipping point, where telcos and ISPs are also feeling the pinch from all that valuable creativity traveling freely up and down their pipes.
There is also clearly a welcome recognition of the value of music to their businesses.
This major, major opportunity needs to be seized. And it needs to benefit everyone.
Our joint objective should be clear.
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Unlock the true potential of digital music and give music fans what they want, legitimately
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Do it in a way that ensures that our artists, composers, songwriters and musicians - and those who invest in their careers - get paid
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and do it in a way that ensures the next phase of growth and development in the telecommunications sector.
It’s now not about whether we embrace each other. It’s about will you still love me in the morning.
Individual countries are pursuing different approaches, but I think we would all acknowledge that the UK strategy has been amongst the most progressive.
Certainly, the UK Government is acutely aware of what is at stake. And that a heady cocktail of technology and creativity will be essential for the rebuilding of our economies.
The Memorandum of Understanding signed in the UK last July marked a significant step forward.
In essence, it focuses all players on the ultimate objective - developing the online market and establishing new secure profitable supportive business partnerships.
Relations between UK ISPs and members of UK Music have moved on considerably in the past 12 months.
BUT I DO REITERATE: THAT MOU IS ONLY A STARTING POINT. There is still much to do. And we need to accelerate the pace at which we translate constructive dialogue into deeds.
As reported in yesterday’s FT, the guiding philosophy to the anticipated Government report into the future of the UK’s digital economy is that the internet and music industries have failed to sort out the problems of illegal downloading between them.
Government now intends to impose its preferred solution.
As an ex regulator I would urge a word of caution to Government.
Any intervention must be designed to embrace new horizons and must be fit and proper for use in a modern world; a modern society and a modern culture.
For this industry, regression is not an option. We have learnt from our past mistakes and have no ambition to repeat them. Our future lies ahead not backwards.
Regulation brings a cost to all parties. We all need to be sensitive that the debt we pay for an imposed Government solution does not outweigh the benefits and the rewards.
This can and should be a hugely exciting time but it is also a time for open and innovative and clear minds.
We need to go beyond tired positioning statements and soundbites.
Which means it will also be a testing time for some seasoned speculators who present a peculiarly Utopian vision of a deregulated all-giving benevolent internet.
Times of turmoil have been good for the speculators, and music has been their whipping boy.
But the future is catching up with the futurists. The spirit of realism will overtake them too.
At our recent Creators’ Conference a young artist who also runs his own label spoke about how the internet has both helped and hindered his career.
He described the internet as a bit of a Catch 22 “because the people you are contacting on the internet obviously know how to use the internet. So obviously the majority of them know how to get your music for free.”
“It is a bit like the Lottery this whole game - you can’t win with just three balls, you need all of the balls to win. You need TV, you need radio, you need the internet, you need promo. You need all of the balls popping at the same time or you’re not going to make it.”
We need to be clear that the decisions we take today will determine the legacy we leave behind.
For that legacy needs to be befitting of the next generation of artists, songwriters, musicians, composers and performers.
They are the ones who will have to carry that legacy forward and that will be long after history has forgotten all of our names.
For all of this. For everything in all of this. For everyone in all of this. It’s simple. It’s the music that matters.
