THE SKINNY ON:07, or, where do we go from here?
Titled The Challenge of the New Reality, The Skinny's first music conference was concerned with the hottest topic around: in a digital age, how are we going to get people to pay? A tricky one; lucky we had so much fun in the process of asking...
December 10 2007 was a momentous day for music. Led Zeppelin reunited to perform in front of 20,000 celebrities and businessmen in London, but were upstaged by support star Paolo Nutini (not really); Radiohead's revolutionary pay-what-you-like download experiment officially ended with the closure of inrainbows.com; and The Skinny hosted its first music conference in front of musicians, promoters, band managers, label bosses and assorted music geeks in Edinburgh's Reid Hall.
ON:07 featured a world-class line-up. An introduction from Simon Frith, one of Britain's greatest ever pop music critics and the man who established the Mercury Music Prize, was followed by a fascinating lesson in music biz economics from Will Page, Executive Director of Research for the MCPS-PRS Alliance. That was followed by the keynote speech from Peter Jenner, former manager of Pink Floyd and The Clash among others, the man who staged the Rolling Stones' free 1969 gig in Hyde Park in front of a quarter of a million fans, and the Secretary-General of the International Music Managers Forum. Finally, Bebo's Director of Strategy Evan Cohen gave a multimedia demonstration explaining how the music industry might be able to utilise the advances of web 2.0. Then, being a generous bunch, we gave out free curry and alcohol to anyone who followed us to the pub.
There the discussion continued about the potential effects of uncontrollable internet file-sharing on the record industry. Will Page made a salient point that millions of fans used illegal avenues to acquire the new Radiohead album, even after the band offered it as a legal download for free. How can any label expect to earn money from sales when even the most devoted fanbase on the internet is so entrenched in the habit of stealing music that they refuse that offer? In the chain between the music consumer and the music creator, who will remain relevant enough to continue to justify their jobs? Will the perceived crisis in the record industry be balanced out by an attendant boom for the live music sector?
Peter Jenner posited that broadband customers should be required to pay £2 extra per month to contribute to a fund for distribution among musicians and record producers. This would add up to approximately £1.2bn per year, almost exactly the value of the UK record industry per year. This would render free downloading a legitimate way for consumers to access music, and make Britain a world innovator on this tricky issue. Jenner will continue to lobby parliament on this in 2008.
ON:07 wasn't able to make any easy conclusions, because there aren't any. As Simon Frith said in his introduction: experts have been making predictions about music and the ever-in-crisis industry for decades, and most of these predictions haven't come true. The cassette market was flattened by the advent of CDs, but there are still many who doubt whether the physical CD will be overrun by a desire for incorporeal digital tracks in quite the same way. Unzipping a download for Christmas hardly has the same appeal, does it? In a time of uncertainty, ON:07 sought to ask thought-provoking questions, discuss a few of the many potential angles, and provide the beer and nibbles. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Keep an eye out for more analysis on www.skinnymag.co.uk and in the paper in the months to come.