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Better licensing, innovation and a working DEA will safeguard artist investment, says BPI Chair
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 7 July 2011
Noting those stats released by the BPI yesterday, which outlined the achievements of British artists overseas, the Chair of the trade body, former EMI UK boss Tony Wadsworth, has attributed the successes to three things.
First, the abundance of raw musical talent in the country. Second, the strength and support of British music radio, especially the BBC stations – “don’t cut music radio, BBC savings chiefs”, says Tony. And third, unsurprisingly given his audience, the investments made by the nation’s major and independent record companies.
Speaking at the BPI’s AGM and annual member conference yesterday, Wadsworth said: “In 2009, the recording industry spent £200 million on A&R – over 20% of our income. Whilst the industry has been working to adapt to the digital age, our sales income has continuously declined. But, the percentage of income devoted to A&R has remained at the same level or higher”.
He continued: “We have historically enjoyed a virtuous circle consisting of high sales leading to high investment, quality music, international income and continued high sales. This will become severely under threat should income decline much further. In order to avoid this virtuous circle turning into a downward spiral, it is essential that labels maximise all opportunities to sustain the sales levels, and indeed do all we can to pursue growth in some business areas”.
Wadsworth, who recently reviewed the role of record companies for a MusicTank report, had a three point plan for ensuring the future of record labels and their investment in artist development. Firstly, he said, labels must continue to take a “positive approach” to licensing. “The UK licenses more digital services than any other territory”, he said. “But we need to facilitate and encourage more new services if the business is going to build to a scale which works for us”.
Second, and more interesting, Wadsworth pointed out that while physical product may be in decline, it still generates the most revenue, and is far from being dead yet. The BPI chair said he was confident that physical sales could be reinvigorated, even in the digital age, “through innovative approaches with packaging, pricing, retail support and direct-to-consumer initiatives”.
Point three, of course, was for government to get on with implementing the copyright sections of the Digital Economy Act, in particular kick starting the UK version of the three-strikes system, or “graduated response” as I’m sure on-message Tony would have called it. Wadsworth: “I firmly believe the fruits of the new digital economy are within our sights, but like any economy, it needs structure and a level of protection. Without this, the UK risks losing its winning position and could easily slide into becoming just another medium size music market, off the coast of mainland Europe”.
As previously reported, Wadsworth will lead a mini-conference on the changing nature of record companies for MusicTank next week, more at www.musictank.co.uk.
