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FAC Co-CEO Crispin Hunt addresses BPI AGM

By | Published on Thursday 5 September 2013

Crispin Hunt

Former Longpigs frontman turned songwriter extraordinaire, and co-CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, Crispin Hunt, called on the music business to improve its image at the BPI’s AGM in London yesterday. And not just by staging a big PR campaign, but by addressing the negatives, in a bid to combat piracy and the people and services which capitalise on the industry’s bad rep to gain support, like that “chubby Che Guevara” Kim Dotcom.

As reported by Music Ally, Hunt said: “One thing we can do, both as labels and artists, is strip Kim Dotcom of his argument for piracy. We can reveal him as the self-interested privateer that he is, and not allow him to hide behind the mantra of ‘Fuck the man, it all goes into the coffers of the brothers, the artists get jack shite'”.

To do that, Hunt said, the industry should “make an effort to rehumanise music, to connect with the real fans of music, to educate the casual corsair away from a life on the high seas and offer better music on land – not just as some kind of guilt-driven charity where the listener feels sorry for the artist and feels he really ought to pay for the music or the band will starve – but to successfully rebrand the music industry as the good guys who give us great music, rather than the bad guys who exploit young talent”.

Adding that he wasn’t “sure how the industry ended up with such a reputation, but there’s probably no smoke without fire”, he said his call for a rebranding of the industry didn’t just “mean some re-spinning of the biz only to revert to form once the battle is won, somewhat like caring Conservatism”.

He went on: “I think we need an actual sea-change, a reinvention of the internal culture of music. The age of ‘don’t you worry your pretty little heads about all that nonsense, you just concentrate on playing the guitar, and what hair product you’ll be using today, we’ll take care of the cut’, so to speak, is thankfully over”.

Read Music Ally’s full report on Hunt’s speech here.



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