Pete Wishart
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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.
Thangam Debbonaire
The hon. Gentleman is making some excellent points. Does he agree that the online industry’s domination of the income—it is keeping so much of the income and allowing the artists so very little—is equivalent to the person driving the van full of CDs having most of the income and the artists having very little? The online platforms are the vehicle. They are the last bit of the process between creation and consumption. Does he agree that it would be better if we tipped the balance back towards the creators, without whom the industry as a whole would be nothing? We need creative people and the creative industries that support them in getting their output recorded.
Pete Wishart
There is very little on which I would disagree with the hon. Lady. We must restructure that relationship, but I caution her and others. The music industry in this country has a successful business model, and we are world leaders. We produce the artists and ensure that they are supported. I have nothing against record labels and the music industry investing in that talent and bringing it on in the usual paternalistic way. That is what happened when I was a recording artist, and the model is still successful. Rights holders should be properly rewarded for their investment in artists.
That brings me to my next point, which is probably the most substantial point in all this. Several Members today have raised the issue of safe harbour, which we have to tackle; of all the things that the Minister takes away from today’s debate, I hope that it will be that one. Safe harbour is a useful innovation, because it has encouraged a number of people who were tempted by piracy and illegal sites to come across to a legal framework where they are able to access some of the content.
The music industry’s suggestion of distinguishing between active and passive safe harbours is a useful one. We all know what a passive safe harbour looks like: that is where people find a store of music, access it and do all the usual things. But when it comes to the manipulation of that music and to designing things in a particular way to try to create some sort of income for it, we get into the realm of an active safe harbour. At that point, royalties should be paid, to ensure that something comes back to rights holders and artists. I very much support copyright being extended to what could be considered as active safe harbours.
I am also attracted to the idea that streaming sites should be treated pretty much as a radio player—we heard about that from the hon. Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), and it is a feature that we should be looking at. When I access Spotify, for example, I mainly use the radio services. I still do not see a distinction between listening to the radio in the morning and listening to the radio service on Spotify—I think they should be treated the same.
I am conscious of time and am obviously very keen to hear from the Minister, but I have a couple of things to say about where we find ourselves after the decision we made a couple of weeks ago about the European Union. The fact that we will not have access to the European Union is an absolute and unmitigated disaster for the musicians of this country. We will now be excluded from most of the debates about the digital single market, which is one of the biggest innovations in the placing of content online that we have ever seen in any part of the world. We have now taken ourselves out of that conversation about the structuring of the digital single market. That is a disaster for musicians in this country. I am not going to mince my words about this.
Another issue related to remuneration for artists that we will have to consider carefully is free movement of people in the music sector. One of the great innovations in the music industry in London is that we can draw in so many creative people who have so much to offer our industry—
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, especially using my English rather than Scottish tones, but he really must restrict his remarks to the topic under discussion today, which is remuneration for musicians for online services, rather than the wider issue of the effects of Brexit on the music industry.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful for your comments, Mr Gray. I will restrain myself, but we have to acknowledge that at the heart of this there are significant issues and challenges for the remuneration of musicians because of the decision taken. The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned the right to equitable remuneration. A huge conversation is going on in the European Union to ensure that that is progressed and, again, we are now denied access to that conversation. There are massive issues when it comes to online remuneration of artists. The massive challenge incumbent on the Minister is to see how we design things so that our musicians do not lose out in the online environment, given that we are now in a very difficult set of circumstances for the way our musicians operate.
I finish by reiterating that this issue is really important. Our job—our main function—is to ensure that we set the best parameters in an environment for our musicians to develop and thrive. We have a fantastic product and resource in this country: some of the finest musicians in the world. We have enriched the souls of populations throughout the world with the wonderful works our artists produce and we have to ensure that we do nothing to further disrupt their ability to make that wonderful music. I appeal to the Minister to look at where we are, to ensure we make the right decisions on behalf of our artists and to consider the strong points made by hon. Members today.
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Many hon. Members have asked what the position on the copyright framework will be going forward, given that as a member of the European Union we have sat within the EU copyright framework. They will know that the situation is currently being considered to ensure that the right balance is struck between providing the right incentives and having the right protections.
The European Commission is considering reform in this area as part of the digital single market package. Clearly, circumstances have changed in the last fortnight. The UK was a leading voice in the debate on the future of the digital single market, and the Government and individual Ministers have built strong relationships with the Commission and with leading nations such as France and Germany, which obviously also have strong voices in this debate.
It is my personal view that we will continue to have some influence on how things develop, because this is a very public debate and the UK, along with a number of other countries, submitted a letter a few weeks ago to make the point about platform regulation. We argued first that not all platforms are the same, so we cannot simply have one-size-fits-all regulation, and secondly that we must ensure that we do not throw out innovation. I have said consistently to the commissioners that the UK Government welcome a debate on platform regulation. We are not saying that the Commission should not examine the issue; at this stage, we are simply raising some of the concerns that exist.
Pete Wishart
People have suggested that we may be trying to use France and Germany as a proxy for our influence, to achieve our requirements in the digital single market. Is there any truth in that suggestion? If there is, is that not evidence of how we are being further reduced and diminished in our relationship with Europe, such that we expect others to do our bidding on our behalf?
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
I call the Minister to speak with reference to the subject under debate.