2 MusicWeek 01.02.13
NEWS - MIDEM 2013 SPECIAL EDITORIAL
Midem: over- priced, so why not over here?
HAVE you heard the industry’s favourite insult recently? No? Maybe that’s because you’re so ‘irrelevant’, man. Tainted with the residue of a business still teeth-gratingly paranoid about being left in the dark ages, everyone’s slating their favourite moving target with it - be that competitor, genre, format, artist, service, or - most presciently - event. So it’s with a little trepidation that I take the bold move of telling
you just how, erm, relevant Midem 2013 seemed to me. Oh, it’s quiet. Ask any taxi driver in Cannes if Midem will be back
next year and you’ll get a tourist-unfriendly barrage of plus-size sacrebleu: they’ve seen attendance halve in a decade, it’s no longer worth their time, you English are unsophisticated swines. (Okay, okay - they don’t actually say the last one out loud.)
“Take away the Cartier and the Prada logos and Cannes becomes every grain the dreary, chintzy Clacton clone. And the price? I’m not sure that’s doing the industry’s cause much good at all.”
Yet for an industry with a clear and present need for a sense of modern day community, Midem works. Its aim to allow rights- holders and technological boundary-pushers to mix and - shock horror - agree face-to-face is both impressive and infectious. And the heart-warming image of entrepreneurial dance record and publishing pushermen scurrying for sub-licensing friends from around the globe still brings plenty of nostalgic cheer. There are, however, far less welcome sights. Take away the
Cartier and the Prada shopfronts, and Cannes quickly becomes every grain the grubby, chintzy Clacton clone. Stroll up and down its soulless Croisette, and you’re confronted
by a parade of desiccated, sun-scorched old faces, twisted into permanent peevish scowls by their super-rich owners. (Unless those expressions are just reserved for me - entirely possible.) But the most upsetting aspect of all is simply the price. The British music industry and its global counterparts are currently in an understandable perma-pose of cap-in-hand. We want breaks from government, from YouTube, from consumers. We’re bleeding, oh harbingers of our former riches - please, won’t
you think of the creators. Which all doesn’t quite compute with the sickening amount of
money being spent on hotel rooms and bog-standard booze throughout Cannes in January. In our last issue, Universal International boss Max Hole told us the music industry of a decade ago risked coming across as “second-hand car dealer spivs on champagne”. He should try the Carton at 3am. It is without cheek that I reflect on one £60, three-drink round in this oh-so-damaged industry’s favourite Cannes watering hole - and humbly compare it to what the average songwriter receives in their perennial royalty cheques from Midem partner YouTube. A man who is the walking antithesis of a second-hand car dealer
spiv, Martin Mills, warned with both skill and passion at Midem that music rights-holders could soon be left to “wither and fail”. I’m not sure the fact he did so in a venue that charges £20 for a gin and tonic does any of our causes much good. Midem, then, can stay. But Cannes? Nah. That dive’s becoming seriously irrelevant.
Tim Ingham, Editor Do you have views on this column? Feel free to comment by emailing
tim.ingham@
intentmedia.co.uk
www.musicweek.com
BEGGARS BOSS MAKES ROUSING SPEECH IN CANNES
Mills left ‘incensed’ by global government treatment of artists
MIDEM B
eggars Group co-founder Martin Mills spoke passionately at Midem
2013 over his anger surrounding the treatment of artists and rightsholders by both government and tech giants. Speaking as he collected his
Billboard Icon award in Cannes, Mills began his Sunday morning briefing by discussing Beggars’ independent roots, and praising the internet for “leveling the playing field” across the music trade.
Those expecting that angle to segue into major-bashing would have left disappointment, as Mills clearly stated that he was, in fact, on the side of “the majors in all the creative arts”. He did, however, raise his
concerns over consolidation, not least “Sony Music’s recent deal with Pandora, which illustrates succinctly why we’ve been ringing alarm bells for so long”. But the majority of Mills’ ire
was directed at “the lack of support that governments, politicians and bureaucrats worldwide show to the creative industries”. He said: “Many pay lip
service to the value and importance of the creative economy, but most fail to match that with their actions. “Creative industries are built
upon strong and defendable intellectual property rights, and without that they will inevitably wither and fail. It is impossible to make the investments to produce new creative goods without the security that ownership of them is protected. Yet governments are seduced daily by elements of the new technology industry into diluting and compromising that security... These creative works are a priceless national cultural and economic asset, which should be treasured, not dumped. “Rights owners, especially the biggest ones, have certainly made
that income. “And to what economic end
mistakes in their licensing practices. They still do.... But I don’t believe that the present day industry is a reluctant licensor. “It does need help. Cross
border licensing is clearly a problem, and the territorial structures that continue to dominate a global licensing marketplace are clearly an anachronism. We need help in moving beyond that. “But we do not need to have
control of our rights taken away from us, to be forced to license that in which we have invested at uneconomic prices, to simply allow huge tech firms to make even huger profits. We do not need illegal services to be made more visible than legal ones. Tech companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters. And we value them enormously as such, our partnerships with them are fundamental to our business now – as is our content to theirs. “As someone who invests in
music – and when I looked at the numbers a few years ago we had written off £25m in unrecouped advances to artists over the years – it makes me fume when politicians cosy up to the big techs at our cost and spout philosophically about the needs of the modern world, about us being dinosaurs, and about music’s irresistible urge to be liberated and free... When businesses make money out of music, music rights owners must have the right to a fair share of
for society are such tech companies favoured? My small company, admittedly a very successful one last year, apparently paid more tax – at the proper rate – in the UK last year than Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon put together. How can politicians discriminate in favour of companies who most citizens would perceive as cheating the taxman? In what way does that make any sense at all for society? “There are certainly industries
which developing technology has turned into dinosaurs – coal mining, horse drawn carriages, for example. But the demand for the power that coal generated is higher than ever, the demand for transport is higher than ever. All that has changed is the delivery. “As with music, we are not
wedded to any single carrier, and over the last century have had many – from 1888, when Emile Berliner first created mass audio duplication, and first used the His Master’s Voice Nipper logo, till now. But the demand for recorded music is greater than ever, and I know of no way that the investment of time and money that is needed for new music to be made can happen, other than in the monetisation of how people listen to recorded music. So if government erodes or removes our ability to do that, it will ultimately rob listeners of their new music. “That’s why I decided to
accept this honour and screw my nerves up to speak today. Because I’m incensed about the discrimination and the lack of understanding with which those like us who spend their lives creating art that brings people joy, can get treated by those in power. I very much hope that we can all be a part of changing that, because unless we do, the ladder we climbed will not be there for those who follow us.”
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