Thanks to Adele, Mumford & Sons and Marsha Ambrosius topping the US charts, British artists now account for 12% of the global music market
While it's not been a good week for our tabloids, the British music industry has fared better. Virgin Media finally announced a partnership with Spotify (not the originally planned ISP music service, but close enough), and, according to new figures from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), British artists accounted for almost 12% of global sales of recorded music.
In the US (the biggest music market in the world), British acts accounted for one in 10 of all albums sold, while in the UK, almost half of all album purchases were of UK artists.
In March, for the first time since the mid-80s, UK acts held the top three slots in the US Billboard chart: Adele, Mumford & Sons and former Floetry member Marsha Ambrosius. Adele (who this week became the first artist this decade to sell a million copies of a single, with Someone Like You) and Ambrosius both attended the Brit school in Croydon.
In addition, to help support the next generation of artists, the UK music industry in collaboration with the government has announced a nationwide competition for people aged 11-19 to find "the next Brit thing". The scheme, said to be the brainchild of David Cameron and Gary Barlow, will see young people competing for three awards: general (pop, rock, urban, folk and jazz), classical and an award for composition. Global Radio is a media partner for the competition and will feature contestants on stations such as Heart, Capital, Classic FM, Xfm and Choice FM (anyone interested in entering should go to facebook.com/nextbritthing).
There were plenty of reasons to celebrate at Wednesday's BPI AGM. Yet there was plenty of frustration when it came to actions being taken to tackle sites that illegally peddle music. BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor, said it would be impossible to maintain the current level of investment in new artists if revenue keeps plummeting. Keynote speaker Ed Vaizey, minister for culture, communications and the creative industries, was sympathetic, asserting that government has a role as a protector of the creative industries. He favours voluntary action by ISPs in battling piracy, and hopes to make them understand why the option of site-blocking is important.
Arriving after a morning meeting with the Open Rights Group, he lamented the view of some music industry critics that "you can't be a real artist and make real money". He criticised "armchair critics" who aren't willing to make any compromises and who refuse to cooperate with the government and the creative industries. It's understood that, in government round-table discussions with ISPs and the creative industries, Sky viewed site-blocking as a reasonable response to piracy while BT preferred that rights-holders sue customers instead. "It would be nice if BT put as much effort into creating great new music services for consumers as they do into overturning a parliamentary act," said Vaizey, referring to the Digital Economy Act.
Of course, ISPs already disconnect tens of thousands of internet subscribers each year for not paying their bills or because computers become bots after being infected with malicious software (it seems internet access being a "human right" only applies in instances where it doesn't affect the ISP bottom line). And this week Google removed over 11m co.cc sites from its search engine results, so filtering is not impossible for them.
Vaizey hopes the Virgin Media/Spotify deal is a game-changer, and sees the subscription model as the future of music consumption. But many in the music industry have serious doubts that streaming services such as Spotify will stem the downward spiral in revenue. Total revenue from recorded music in the UK last year was �800m. Of that �200m came from digital, and only �26m came from streaming.
At a time when newspapers are haemorrhaging money, it's understandable that legal music streaming services find it difficult to compete with the "completely free" that illegal sites offer ? sites who can simply pocket ad revenue instead of paying artists.
The keynote speaker at last year's BPI AGM was Google's president of global sales operations and business development, Nikesh Arora. He promised that Google would prioritise legal sites on the search engine. Google didn't follow through. Hopefully, this year's AGM keynote speaker's words won't be as empty as Google's. I'd like to see UK acts continuing to conquer the world. Talent alone is not enough ? it takes financial investment too.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jul/08/british-music-industry
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