Copyright Extensions Rejected – The Music Industry Response

The coverage of the Government’s rejection of extending performance copyright in Music Week (the industry trade magazine – all behind a paywall) is surprisingly muted. There’s just a piece on page 6 indicating that the fight must now be taken to Europe, and an editorial that somehow saw this singular decision as a failure to show that “the superficial years of Blair spin were over.”
I may be wrong, but I somehow suspect that Gordon Brown has better things to worry about than this. And instead, the new minister, James Purnell, has simply read the Gowers Report and made his decision off the back of that. The music industry would have preferred that the Government listened to the DCMS Select Committee. The problem is that they rarely get to the bottom of issues in quite as much detail. While they can have decent question and answer sessions, my watching of them tends to lead me to believe that they don’t tend to be as informed as someone independent like Gowers, who had time to fully explore the issues.
There is one hilarious piece in the editorial which I think the author, Music Week editor, might have re-appraised before sending to the print:
“The signal from the Labour Government is that it is happy to take all the Brits tickets and boozy nights out on the Thames, but when it comes to delivering on a point of great importance to pretty much everyone in the business – and how often can we say that? – Gordon Brown and co will turn their back.”
Far be it from me to tell an industry how to respond if it’s disappointed with a Government decision, but I’d humbly suggest that they don’t just throw all their toys out of the pram. I wonder which ministers will want to come to the Brits next year?
By the way, there was a great documentary about The Beatles losing their own publishing rights to their songs in a Radio 2 documentary, Only A Northern Song. You’ve got until Tuesday evening to Listen Again (A shame that there’s no radio on the iPlayer to allow downloading and replay without necessarily having internet access).


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