Right symptom, wrong diagnosis: Lily Allen on music piracy

Lily Allen has made the headlines talking about the impact of filesharing on the music industry - but while she recognises the symptoms she really is pointing to the wrong diagnosis...

(The original post has dropped off her blog.. but it's widely quoted - like here at the Times...)

In her blog in an article targetting the Featured Artist Coalition opposition to stricter measures against filesharers she complains that new musicians are finding times hard...

Quoting...
"The coalition also says that file sharing is good because it “means a new generation of fans for us”. This is great if you are a big artist at the back end of your career with albums to flog to a new audience, but emerging artists don’t have this luxury."
..and further on
"They (music executives)have been complacent about new technology and spent all the money on their own fat salaries, not industry development. As they start really to lose out from piracy, they’re not slashing their salaries, they’re cutting what they invest in A&R (artists & repertoire). A&R people won’t have the funds to take risks, which again makes British music Cowell puppets."

New artists struggling, artists with back catalogs doing nicely thank you, and record companies unwilling to take risks are precisely what you expect - not from piracy - but from the structural change that online digital music has made to the business.  New artists compete not just with their contemporaries but with every artist ever released.  Back catalog sales suck sales from new artists, and record companies get better returns selling old tracks than developing new talent. 

Lost sales to piracy are hypothetical...  (no one really thinks a teenager would cough up another $800 for all the downloaded tracks on their mp3 player do they? ) Competition from millions of back catalog tracks is  real and the key element that puts new music at risk. (Why total music sales are dropping is a different question for another post)

Two things are needed...

• Musicians.  Stop expecting record companies to discover you and market you.  The internet gives you direct access to the public... 
• Cut copyright terms. Hard.  The only thing that will persuade the industry to invest more in new talent is to take away the crutch of a fat back catalog and focus them on finding new music and artists to promote.  Copyright is supposed to promote creativity not stifle it....

 More on Why it doesn't pay to be a musician.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform