Drax black and Oxford blue. Coal on the agenda

Sometimes it's not what you look at but how you look at it that's important...

Climate Feedback reports an interview with Oxford economist Dieter Helm, the salient point of which is that in tackling climate change it's not comparatively small investments in renewables that will make a difference (and certainly not improving things at home by shipping manufacturing abroad!) - it's what to do about the BIG pollution that comes from other sources - most notably coal.

Coal is cheap and often readily available (in a fairly low tech sort of way). If you need energy and have big coal reserves you are going to burn them. As Dieter puts it "It's time to realize that coal is where the core of the problem lies, and to think cleverly about solutions towards that.".

By coincidence this week the courts sentenced the protesters that in June set out to highlight the environmental issues with burning coal by hijacking a train on its way to Drax powerstation - the UK's largest coal powered power station. Sentences were fairly lenient - but it still seemed to me to be a little surreal - had the protesters parked a few dozen tractors on a motorway protesting about farm subsidies, or parked fishing boats at a dock gate, or oil tankers at a terminal gate then the economic consequences would be as great - but it would probably be seen as lawful protest, not criminal activity. Wouldn't it? And at the end of the day the message they wanted to put across matters.

The point is that they are both right. Burning coal is a BIG long term issue. Coal fired power stations continue to be built and they will be in service for decades. Investing in polluting technologies is not the answer - not at home... nor in the farthest Orient.

Factoid: Power generation in Yorkshire & Humberside (including Drax) is 58% of the regions emissions and accounts for almost 7.5% of total UK emissions (2005). This is more than four times the impact of the total road and air transport in the region.

Also blogging on:

coal,environment,Drax,

Democracy & the Internet

Democracy and liberty are things we take for granted... take a moment to watch this clip from PPUK and think about what's at stake as governments seek to control who does what on the net. Protecting net neutrality protects our democracy.

Privacy first: The Pirate Party and Piratpartiet working to protect your rights on the net.

Innovation, Freedom, Telecom

The Greens and Piratpartiet are hosting a seminar at the EU under the title "Telecoms Package – Preparing for a 3rd reading". This is coming EU legislation which has consequences for both net neutrality and privacy on the Internet.

More details on the seminar here...

7th September, 14:00 to 18:00 CET (an hour ahead of the UK).

The seminar will be streamed live on the Internet so there's no excuse not to get informed. This important legislation will have consequences for all of us.

Be informed and MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD....

Links:
Voice on the Net
La Quadrature du Net

Why it doesn't pay to be a musician.

Back before the summer... well, my holiday at least... I watched the debate on Internet Filesharing on Al Jazeera between Christian Engström (Piratpartiets MEP) and Richard Gibbs, an American composer supporting artists rights.

Watching the debate about the impact of filesharing on the music industry I was struck that really the whole subject is missing the point. Filesharing isn't why it's hard for artists to make a living...

I was reminded of it again tonight reading the comments on the Guardian article linked in my last piece. Someone there opined that we will look back on the last 50 years as the golden age for popular music. And the thing is, they could be right.....

There are some fundamental facts about recorded music that mean that it will be increasingly hard to make a living out of recordings.... which boil down to that old favourite, supply and demand.

There are today millions of recorded tunes. Each year there are tens of thousands of new ones. The costs of creating a recording are dropping. The rate of new recordings are increasing. Recordings don't go away.

What does this mean? Supply is BIG.... and growing. The number of artists competing for income grows and grows - and even if an artist retires their recordings are still there competing for the customer's attention. Consumers on the other hand don't have endless pockets - there's only so much they are going to spend on recorded music.

And you want to release a record and make it big? That's really not a healthy market to be trying to take your share of..... not least since oversupply will inevitably lead to lower prices.

Now... if you sell cars you get rid of last years' model when you start selling your new one. As we see though that doesn't really happen in the music business. Not any more at least. Record labels have had a grip on distribution and production and previously have been able to restrict the artists reaching the market by not making new pressings of their back catalogs. This makes a natural restriction on the range of artists in the market at any time. But that has all changed. Digital techniques mean back catalogs are now just as accessible and marketable as the latest artists.

Ten years ago an artist's recordings competed with all the other music that was in current release. Today you have to compete with every record that has ever been released. Doesn't that sound like things are much tougher than they used to be? For the artists...

How do things look over at the record company?

Well.... if we look at all that music you can reckon that `BIG slice of consumer spending is going to go on old recordings... simply because there are so many of them. So, if you are sitting on a big back catalog this is great news... a bigger catalog translates to a bigger market share and more revenues. No new recording costs and very little investment needed in promotion and marketing.. Is it a surprise that they have lobbied so hard for copyright extensions?

Making back catalogs available does though have consequences even if you run a recording company. If releasing older tracks takes a bigger share of the market - which seems intuitive, but I've not yet tried checking in the figures - then new recordings are fighting for a smaller share of the pie. Returns for record companies are lower and risks are higher - and that too is not good news for artists looking to hook a contract (if you need to these days?).

So.... don't give up the day job.

Green Electric. Make the right choice

Somewhere deep down in my mailbox I found a newsletter from Greenpeace with a link to a nifty comparison table on how green is your electricity supplier.... alway assuming that you're living in Sweden.

And if you're not in Sweden? Check it out anyway to get an idea of how your electric supply could be. (The figure on the left i the percentage of electricity suced from renewables fom that supplier).

Enlightening are the figures for Eon. In Sweden they report around 73% of electricity is from renewables... but for Eon international the figure shrinks to just 9%.

The sad part is that it's that last figure that represents the norm in much of the rest of the world. Go check it out and make the change!

The light dawns. Artists speak out.

There's a really interesting piece in the Guardian today that's picked up by both HAX and Michael Geist. It covers vocal opposition by artists groups in the UK to recent government proposals to retable 'three strikes' and internet bans for persistent filesharers.

The article is interesting on a number of levels...

Firstly it's welcome to see artists coming down on the side of their public and opposing the demonising of non-commercial sharing - and the equally welcome conclusion that sterner legislation is not the answer.

Secondly, it highlights the changing balance of power between artists and distributors (the record companies) which it attributes to the falling value of recorded music - You could see it another way too... with reproduction and distribution on the Internet being so cheap (free...?) the value of a distributor disappears - not just the value of the product.

Thirdly, it highlights evidence that tour revenues are up significantly - showing that there is healthy interest in seeing live music and real sources of income for bands in doing what musicians do - make music.

The recording industry meanwhile are cast in their traditional role.... in full support of the government proposals... while trying to lock in their artists to '360 degree' deals to take their slice of artists income from tours and other promotions. No one likes losing control.....

Last but not least of course, its great to see the insights of the mainstream press beginning to see the music industry in the same light as The Pirate Party and Piratpartiet. The internet makes it all but free to distribute all forms of 'digital' culture. Businesses need to adapt to that new reality. You can't put the genie back in the bottle - and legislating to protect outmoded ways of doing business is not the answer - not least when it means private policing and infringing peoples rights to privacy in the process.

Who wins by restricting choice?

I was thinking..... A dangerous habit, but it happens from time to time. ...Thinking about online music, and 'personalised radio' in particular. That's sites that stream music to you based on the sort of music you like . It was prompted by a piece at the Digital Audio Insider on revenues from Lastfm - an interesting artists eye view of getting paid for putting music online.

Now on sites like Lastfm royalties get paid for each streamed play... Which means that if I like an artist it's in their interests that I can choose to play just that artist, and in the songwriters interests that I can play just that song. But what happens in practice is that what I get is a different artist playing a different song.. And the revenue I might have generated for an artist I like goes instead to someone I never really asked to listen to.

So who wins by not letting me choose?

Answers on a postcard please