Artistic Remuneration for Online Content

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Pete Wishart

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, so long as you promise never to do those Scottish accents. I congratulate the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) on securing this important, though short, debate. I commend him for his diligence in chairing the all-party parliamentary group on music. I have an interest as a former recording artist, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

In my 15 years as a Member of Parliament, I have had the great pleasure of speaking in most debates on issues related to the creative industries and the remuneration of artists. I have a sneaking suspicion that, in the future, I will be standing here once again to discuss the same issues and challenges that we have heard so eloquently described by Members on both sides of the Chamber this morning. At the heart of the matter is how we ensure that our artists and creators, and those who are prepared to invest in their talent and creativity, are properly rewarded for the fantastic works they produce. Rights holders and investors should be properly rewarded for all their commitment.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the success of our industry—we have always been world leaders in music. Our incredible success over the past few years is testament to the array of talent across the United Kingdom not only in music but in all our world-leading creative and cultural sectors. As legislators, it is our job to continue to create the best political environment to allow that talent and creativity to grow, thrive and develop. We cannot be the artists, although the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and I attempt it on occasion with the world-renowned MP4. Our main job is to ensure that we do nothing that disrupts the wonderful creation of talent. More than that, we must see what we can do to create the best possible environment and conditions for talent to develop, grow and prosper. We must also ensure that this country remains one of the top exporters of music worldwide, as we have done pretty successfully over the past few years and decades.

I remember securing one of the House’s first debates on the music industry, and at that point it was all about piracy and digitisation. Music was just about the first discipline to get involved in the tensions and difficulties of the move towards digitisation. We were the first creative sector to do so, and we blazed a trail for others. We challenged some of the things that were happening. In the early days of digitisation and the move online, a culture started to emerge that suggested that, because the internet was out there, everything should therefore be free and accessible. Political parties were created to foster that belief. Pirate politicians were elected in several European nations to serve and fulfil that strong political culture. All that was happening, and the music industry tried to find a way through and had to meet many difficulties and challenges as the first creative industry in that environment.

Over the years, music has been relatively successful in meeting some of the online challenges. Piracy is not the major issue, although it is still a big issue—I welcome some of the measures in the Digital Economy Bill, which will treat theft online in the same way as theft of physical products from a shop or supermarket. We have fired a shot across the bow of the good ship pirate over the past few years, and we are making steady progress. I congratulate successive Governments on their vigorous attention, and the availability of streaming services and safe harbours is a real attempt to address some of the illegal activity.

Even with that progress, artists, creators and rights holders still struggle to secure a just reward for their efforts. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others have mentioned that streaming has been a massive success. I am a massive user of Spotify, and I like the way that I am able to access music, as do millions of people across the country who buy into the service, which allows us to listen to music in the way we want. There are all sorts of playlists, and the service is designed to be attractive to users. Such services have been successful, but we must secure a properly functioning digital market that enables creators and rights holders in the music industry to secure the true value of their works online. One of the most important things that we have to do is to address what can only be described as the value gap between rising music consumption and decreasing revenues, which both undermines the rights and revenues of those who create and invest in their own music and distorts the marketplace.

Someone is growing rich off the fat of the creative endeavours of our musicians and artists, and I assure the House that it is not the artists. Somebody is massively profiting from the proliferation of music, and we owe it to ourselves to examine what is happening. I suggest that those who seem to be making the tidiest of profits are the platforms and hosts. Such companies add next to nothing to this country’s creative activity but somehow, because of their design, their algorithms, their marketing and their ability to provide access to this content, they seem to be making the largest profits.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Whenever I highlight the extent to which musicians rely on the income from their work, someone always answers, “Well, they can make money from touring and merchandise.” The big artists can do that, because the people who go to their concerts are prepared to pay vast amounts of money—such artists attract people who have the income to buy the T-shirts—but most bands cannot survive on touring and merchandise alone.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is right. Making records and producing albums seems to be a loss leader for all the other activity that musicians are now expected and ordered to do to try to ensure that they are able to make a living from music. She has seen the figures from the Musicians’ Union that suggest just how depressed is the average musician’s income. I cannot remember the figure, but I am sure she knows better than I do that it is significantly low. That is a real issue for so many struggling artists. I am an unrecouped artist. I sold about 1 million records, but I have never received a penny for any of the records I sold when I was signed to a major record label. There was an expectation that we would make money from all this other activity. I concede that we did relatively well, but we did not do well from record sales. There is something incredibly wrong with the marketplace.

Streaming might be an opportunity for us to consider how we properly reward musicians for the works they produce. I am attracted to the 50:50 concept of the Musicians’ Union. Let us work towards recouping the investment that rights holders and record companies make in the artists, but let the artists start to earn a little from streaming services. Artists earn an absolute pittance from streaming services, and we should at least allow them to make that pittance a little more substantial.

Flooding

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Pete Wishart

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am well aware of the work being done on the Somerset levels, but it is a slightly different picture there because of its basin geography, which perhaps makes it more isolated from surrounding areas. Elsewhere, as we have seen in the north of England, one community after another can be hit.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The SNP really wanted to support Labour’s motion today, but it included unnecessary criticism of the SNP, which is not even accurate: flood spending in Scotland is actually going up. Does the hon. Lady not think it would have been better to have united the Opposition on this issue by getting the SNP to agree with Labour? Is the motion not therefore a little bit unfortunate ?

[Kerry McCarthy]

It is a fact that the funding of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has been cut, as I understand it. We have seen devastating pictures of flooding in Scotland.