Artistic Remuneration for Online Content

Debate between David Warburton and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray. I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) on securing the debate.

When Thomas Edison shouted “Mary had a little lamb” into his phonograph in 1877, he precipitated a musical earthquake, to use modern parliamentary language. By the time I was a teenager in 1977, buying albums and singles was not only the only way to get hold of the music we all wanted, but the primary way in which many of us defined ourselves. Artists then enjoyed an incredible boom. Someone might record an album on to cassette now and again, but that would usually result in a trip on the bus to Our Price Records—where I worked for five years—to get hold of the real thing: the 12-inch record, with all its magnificent gatefold glory, in all its splendour. When we got our hands on this object of desire, the artists would in turn get their hands on all the rewards for the joy that they had uncorked, but that is not so today. Now, the songwriting artist can uncork just the same degree of joy and deliver it to the world, which can receive it with the same degree of rapture but without paying a bean. We can click on YouTube and watch or listen to pretty much anything we like anytime and anywhere—unless we are in Somerset, where there is no internet or mobile signal—and do so for nothing.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not the case that people have always been able to listen to music for nothing? We could listen to music on Radio 1 for nothing when we were teenagers in the ’70s. In a sense, streaming is the equivalent of that, in that it does not involve ownership. The issue is the lack of reward for the artist under this new way of listening to music for nothing.

[David Warburton]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman hits the nail with all of his head. He makes a perfect point, which I am just about to come on to; he is reading my mind.

When we click and listen, not only does the artist’s music become more ephemeral, more fleeting, less substantial, less physical, less tangible, but it also becomes commoditised, losing its uniqueness, brand and differentiation. In the way of the digital world, the user feels it is only right that the content should be provided free of charge. So now we have artists who attract huge audiences and whose content is played and shared millions of times, but who receive just chickenfeed—nothing more than a trace of recompense, having entertained people across the globe.

This began perhaps 15 or more years ago with download sites such as Napster and Kazaa—for which, incidentally, my company in a previous life provided all the mobile content globally. The music industry was slow to pick up on this revolution, but having got to grips with the download model, and with sensible paying business models finally emerging through iTunes and so on, it is now facing a new assault from the online streamers.