David Farrell
Watching the Grammy Awards Sunday night, one would never guess the music industry is in a state of free-fall. That the business model is all but decimated by the pervasive and corrosive virus brought on by the digital era. Open access to the internet, a culture of free, a generation weaned off purchasing durable goods in favour of attaching itself to ear buds and iPods, like babes to teats, have all contributed to the meltdown facing the global music industry.
Total revenue from US music sales and licensing sunk to $6.3B in 2009, according to a Forrester Research report (The end of the music industry as we know it). In 1999, that revenue topped $14.6B. That’s a decline of more than 50% – largely attributable to file sharing, a discussion point corroborated in a recent report distributed to subscribers by Big Champagne which tracks internet file traffic.
The Recording Industry Association of America will report its official figures in the early spring but the trend is more than clear, even to a blind man. A summary of Canadian music sales is expected to be released by Soundscan this week and it is a given that the statistics will show yet another decline in album sales, which just happen to be the revenue-drivers for the record industry. Without the profits spun from high-margin albums, the record industry finds itself in crisis, and without investment dollars to sign, develop and market new acts.
The culture of free (legally defined as piracy), and a long-standing inability by intellectual property owners to mobilize governments to act in their interests have stymied the process of curbing what some call a ‘virus’ in our culture.
The most expedient and obvious way to significantly curb online piracy is to have  internet providers act as gate-keepers willingly or by legislated fiat. How this works is that the Rogers of this world would install filters that can monitor and track file transfers. Depending on the sophistication of the filters, the files can be deemed to be lawful or otherwise. The end-game is to create a revenue stream to compensate the creative communities for the trading of goods that today are hijacked and pirated.
It has been a long and winding road gaining the ear of the legislative bodies around the world. The music industry may be good at hustling tunes and creating stars, but it has proven to be its own worst enemy when it comes to promoting its own interests in the corridors of power.
Canada’s history of copyright reform is a text book example of broken promises and blind stupidity. Successive governments have fumbled the ball in bringing Canada into the 21st century, most in the corridors of power more concerned with short term fixes to farm subsidies than creating a forward thinking strategy that harnesses the power of a digital culture in a knowledge-based economy. The fact that the Canadian Recording Industry prefers to act furtively and eschews transparency has played into the hands of others that know how generate consumer action and curry favour in the arena of public opinion.
Tactics aside, the Harper government has proven to be as short-sighted as any number of empowered governments before it. With Obama in the White House, Silicon Valley and Hollywood have at last found an ally in America to affect change. Sadly, where Canada could have been a world leader in transforming an Old World economy into the digital age, Ottawa will almost certainly to told to follow in lock-step and toe-the-line with any and all copyright reforms deemed necessary by powerful Washington interest groups.
The public and the punters have had it good for a very long run and the boom is soon to come down on the proliferation of pilfering. Alarm bells are sounding in the book, TV and movie industries as once buoyant business models are shattered by online piracy. The Apples of this world have grown fat off the carcasses of content companies, and now the content owners are in unison, joining the choir to sing a Twisted Sister song-and it goes like this:
“We’ve got the right to choose, And there ain’t no way we’ll lose it, This is our life, This is our song, We’ll fight the powers that be, Just don’t pick our destiny, ‘Cause we’re not gonna take it, No,we ain’t gonna take it, Oh we’re not gonna take it anymore.”
We’re Not Gonna Take It © Snidest Music Co Inc
