COOL FOR STATS...

Obviously this business runs on creativity, passion, gut feel, and the drive to relentlessly champion the acts you believe in.

On a digital business and industry PR level, a new maxim is emerging: research. Digital services are appearing and developing with relentlessly quickly, and with both music and the Internet so obviously beloved by everyone, it would be strange if issues relating to file-sharing and how copyright works in the digital age weren’t hugely interesting to the general public (think SOPA, Wikipedia Blackout, MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom et cetera). And that means so-called 'informed' commentators like me stringing together and churning out whatever thoughts we can, usually in an information vacuum, and so often talking, well, a load of pseudo-intellectual crap.

Neither are we (ok...me) young enough to really know what’s going on in the playground; we’re certainly not omniscient, and you’d need to be in order to make a respectable prediction or offer any truly nuanced analysis.
This information vacuum, and the confusion resulting from compound misinformation, is the reason we set out to demystify streaming services in our forthcoming think tank . Quick plug: with EMI, Spotify, FAC, One Fifteen Management and Mark Mulligan joining Beggars and Kudos, the event, which sets out to explain how the streaming model actually works and shed light on artist payments, is set to be one of the best we’ve ever held.

So it was good to hear Universal’s Rob Well’s speaking at IFPI’s launch of its Digital Music Report on Wednesday, citing analysis carried out during the last six months on four key Universal artists across different genres. Wells dismissed the argument that streaming services have a negative impact on download and physical sales as "absolutely bogus." Whilst he’s not sharing the results, Universal’s scientific approach is to be welcomed.
Continuing the research theme, Keith Jopling talked through some consumer insights research the BPI Innovation Panel had just released, back in December’s newsletter. (Incidentally Keith is taking a short break this issue – and back with his third editorial in the February’s newsletter)

And research is a topic we are going to keep coming back to in 2012, with an exciting analysis into the energy consumption of music traffic from streaming and file-sharing coming soon – watch this space.

Set against these examples from within the biz, some of you may have read an interview with the Pirate Party’s Rick Falkvinge in Sunday’s Observer . The article quotes Falkvinge as not having any truck with the argument that file-sharing hurts art and artists. "It's just not true. Musicians earn 114% more since the advent of Napster. The average income per artist has risen 66%, with 28% more artists being able to make a living off their hobby. What is true is that there's an obsolete middle market of managers. And in a functioning market, they would just disappear." Uh OK, well I’m glad the debate is all over, and MusicTank can close down.

So where did Falkvinge, and by association the Observer get their stats?

Well the opus is a 2010 thesis by students analysing music revenues from 1999 – 2009 from that powerhouse of music sales, Norway, the world’s 20th largest music market (just behind Poland in physical, and Mexico in digital).

Sarcasm aside, Norway has a vibrant music scene, and in the words of our live course tutor, Andy Inglis "knows how to nurture their grassroots", but guess what - the stats include state subsidies. Which MORE THAN TRIPLED from 51m Norwegian Krona in 1999 to 160m Norwegian Krona in 2009, representing 29.4% of total artist revenue!

Factor this in, and Falkvinge's piece starts to look like Blair’s dodgy dossier, although admittedly more like a cock-up than a conspiracy. A globally respected newspaper like the Observer should be challenging these sort of stats rather than blithely reporting them.

But that’s what tends to happen when operating in a near-vacuum of decent information. OK, there’s been various studies into the effects of file sharing on music sales, one from Harvard in 2004 and this from University of Kansas in 2007.

Often PhD theses, one-off studies cropping up every few years, are far too sporadic to do more than tilt the debate one way or another for a couple of years. Oh and here’s another, The Telegraph’s head of technology Shane Richmond linking to a 2009 Times Labs study suggesting file-sharing isn’t hurting artists that much – shame the original study has been taken offline.

What the industry, and the media, could do with is something a little more consistent, building year-on-year and covering all key markets. Given the amount of schizophrenic coverage the issue generates in key broadsheets, some of whose articles published just days apart teeter so much between one point of view and another that they cannot possible both be correct, it would surely be worthwhile organisations like the Guardian getting involved to help clear the muddied river of tangled info.

For an industry still suffering a hangover from its fat-cat past, more constant, reliable figures might help the music biz refresh its relationship with a better-informed public.

And let's face it, that 95% IFPI piracy figure is now three years-old...

Joint study anyone?

Editorial by Sam Shemtob

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COOL FOR STATS...