Harms, Feist and Von Tilzer. Sales were fantastic, profits unimaginable. But while the music publishing industry enjoyed this first glorious hiatus something was wrong, something that within two short decades would dismantle and decimate and that very industry.
In a laboratory in West Orange New Jersey one Thomas Alva Edison had just spoken the words “Mary had a little lamb,” into a machine. A machine which instantly played the recording back and the phonogram had arrived.
By 1927 sales of phonographic records in North America alone had reached a staggering 75 million units per year and Tin Pan Alley was all but gone. Witmark, Harms and Feist had become nothing more than faded corporate identities.
But just as records had threatened the sales of sheet music the record industry even in its infancy found itself with a sinister new companion, radio. There was, at the time, a very genuine fear that radio would irreparably damage this industry.
In the 1930s the global music industry almost entirely collapsed triggered by the depression in North America, but it survived and after the Second World War rebuilt itself helped by the introduction of a new modern component, plastic, vinyl.
The 1980s of course saw the introduction of cheap CDs and the industry once again experienced some of the phenomenal growth it had known in the early 1900s.
Now there is a thread to all of that. It is not for the first time in our history that the music industry has been faced with some incredibly tough challenges, challenges which will and do require some very tough decisions, but note, through it all this, through everything this industry has survived.
It might be no accident that technology would appear to always need content and content appears always seems to need technology. Success in the music industry has always been driven by partnerships, by the successful adaptation, exploitation and management of technology to our advantage.
But for the first time something has changed, we have. For the first time we are failing to fully take control, failing to set the agenda, failing to dictate the destiny of our own industry. For the first time we are now been told by others what to do, when to do it and how to do it.
The music industry has always been influenced by external events, changing consumer tastes and interests, new technologies, dynamics of international markets, national politics and never more so than today.
All of us know that the incredible, inherent value of recorded music has yet to be realised in the digital era.
That value has and is been sucked away through unlicensed, unapproved sharing and copying. The status quo is unsustainable.
The health of the recorded music sector is a vital and an essential cog in the wheels of our industry.
And the vibrancy of its future impacts upon all of us
Now more than ever this industry needs to have a clear, single, unified vision of our destiny and coherent voice.
And it is now perhaps more that at any point in our history that our creators must come to the fore. They are the key to our success, as they have been in the past, in the present and in the future.
And believe it or not, but most musicians, songwriters and composers I know are actually quite reasonable people, they don’t really have very high demands. But they do feel that the world should recognise their ownership over their work. They do feel that they should have the right to be reasonably compensated for their endeavours. If we fail to provide them with that basic support they then in turn will fail to provide for us and that has long-term implications for users and lovers of music everywhere.
Yet it would appear that there are some who feel that even these most basic of rights are nothing more than some form of cancerous growth on the very foundations of society, an obstacle to free expression and the free economy.
We appear to be faced with an ever growing chorus of pseudo -intellectual cyber professors who feel that even that basic right of ownership is one right too many.
To such academics, copyright viewed predominantly in economic terms is seen as an obstructive monopoly and one that must be challenged and dismantled.
Perhaps they forgotten or didn’t even realise that copyright is a unique, globally accepted system where each individual person involved in the creation of IP can be justly rewarded regardless of their status.
Yet some demand a model of copyright where free market ideology dominates the global economy, where robust IP protection is be seen as nothing more than a obstacle to growth and innovation. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it is those who believe in the commodity model that object most strongly to European principles such as moral rights and the rights of the creator.
What is quite clear though all of this is that their purpose is to create a system where the price for using copyrighted material is driven down, and that is not necessarily for the benefit of the consumer.
It is all too easy for businesses who want to obtain rights as cheaply as possible to simply blame others when in fact all they are doing is trying to find economies at the expense of the creator.
It is now clearly time we stop playing the game according to their rules, it is now time that we make the world understand music and creativity in terms which transcend the language of economics and utility. But are we big enough to welcome change.
Is it perhaps a damning fact that just about every major copyright policy initiative that has brought real, true, lasting benefit to the UK’s creative community has emanated not from the UK, but from one of our European cousins.
Quite simply, other governments in Europe, and I’m thinking particularly of a rather large French-shaped land mass that we all seem to be standing in at the moment, would appear to hold their creators in far higher esteem than some others.
Some, arguably, may go too far – but why is it that when it comes to all things copyright, whether it’s ensuring that a private copying exception is met with some sort of compensation mechanism, something already available to creators in 22 other European countries, or term extension for sound recordings or simply protection of a creators moral rights, why is it that UK creators are constantly having to seek support from Brussels and not on our own doorstep.
Why is that, why is that, why is that?
It is true that we will have to make some difficult decisions over coming months, but we need to remember that the decisions we will all make will send a clear signal to our artists. It will tell them exactly how highly we value their talent, it will tell them exactly how highly we value their creativity, it will tell them exactly how highly we value their ability, how highly we value their contribution our lives, our society, our national economies and to what ultimately for many what lies at the very heart and soul of what is our national identities.
It’s now time for UK Music; it is now time for this industry to do what it has always done: to be bold, to be strong, to create, to innovate; to rise, to have confidence, to have faith; to have faith in our own destiny to seize the promises of a new horizon.
In the words of one of Dublin’s prodigal sons, one of Ireland’s finest poets, Brendan Behan “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done everyday, but they are unable to do it for themselves.”
