Leave will screw the music industry, too

While as a nation we try to come to terms with just how self-defeating half of our compatriots are, you might be wondering what it means for music.

Before the vote, Pitchfork warned that it would probably be bad:

British media coverage of EU funding trains a negative focus on all the so-called red tape you have to endure to access it. But there are endless EU programs that benefit the music industry, which Britain excels at securing: In 2012, UK applications (in general, not just for music) had a 46 percent success rate, almost double the average success rate of 24 percent. If the UK leaves the EU, in all likelihood, that funding will no longer be available. The benefits of this money are vast, wide-reaching, and often not obvious to the public. The Village Underground, a well-appointed, 1000-capacity warehouse venue in east London, currently benefits from two EU programs. Liveurope pays them to host emerging European bands support slots on bigger bills, giving these acts the chance to get out of their own countries, and prompting venues to have a more diverse program. Creative Lenses is a four-year investigation into new business models for the cultural sector.

The BPI issued a statement:

“The outcome of the EU Referendum will come as a surprise to many across the music community, who will be concerned by the economic uncertainty that lies ahead and the impact this may have on business prospects.
"However, the UK public has spoken, and once the short-term political and macro-economic consequences have played out, this decision will mean new priorities for the music industry in our work with Government. We will, of course, press the Government to swiftly negotiate trade deals that will ensure unimpeded access to EU markets for our music and our touring artists. Our Government will also now have the opportunity to legislate for stronger domestic copyright rules that encourage investment here in the UK and which will protect UK creators from piracy and from tech platforms siphoning off value through copyright loopholes. We are confident that British music will remain hugely popular across Europe and we will work hard to make sure UK labels are able to capitalise on that demand.”

I think we need to send someone to go round and check on the BPI

The BPI is involved in a scheme called Get It Right From A Genuine Site. It's well meaning, kind of like a Sunday School teacher getting you to colour in pictures of Jesus holding a lamb and believing that this will stop you from becoming a bad person when you grow up. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just it's so disconnected from how the world works.

Reg sits in front of his computer, about to torrent a dodgy Taylor Swift album.

"Hold on" thinks Reg, "before I do that, I should check the BPI's Get It Right From A Genuine Site site, just to check it is okay."

He checks the site.

He realises he is doing wrong.

He goes to Spotify.

He can't find 1989, so he sighs and goes back to the torrents.

There's a site to promote the campaign at getitrightfromagenuinesite.org - snappy, eh? - but this is where the BPI suddenly froze in panic.

What if someone started a site at getitrightfromagenuinesite.com? And they could fill that site up with things that aren't genuine at all. And the people of the UK, who have come to trust getitrightfromagenuinesite.org wouldn't realise, and MUSIC AS WE KNOW IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST.

TorrentFreak has discovered that the BPI has binge bought all the domains it could find:

UK music group BPI owns the GetitRightFromaGenuineSite.org domain but to be doubly sure there are no imposters the group has also bagged at least 17 others, including the .audio, .band, .biz, .com, .digital, .email, .foundation and .net variants.

But what, worried the BPI, if people decided to try and parody our lovely campaign? What then?

And so, they fired up the registration site again:

TF discovered these domains while trawling through WHOIS records this week but it was more of a surprise to see that the BPI had also grabbed a bunch of ‘pirate’ versions too. As can be seen below, the BPI has secured the opportunity for people to GetitRightFromaPirateSite too.

Now, you could say there's wisdom in buying up a domain name that could work against you, but this is a pretty specific wording.

At time of writing, these domains are still available:

getitrightfromagenuine.site
getitrightfromagenuinesite.uk.com
pirateitrightfromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromatorrentsite.com (and all other variants)
getitfreefromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromaginuwinesite.com

You get the idea.

What makes this slightly less funny is that you're paying for this - despite the BPI being a cartel run by some of the largest businesses on the planet, the getitrightfromagenuinesite cybersplurge and the related activity is being paid for by the government.

Additional fun fact - you can still register a domain under the name BritishPornographicIndustry.

BPI want to see the colour of BBC money

Earlier this week Tony "Memorial" Hall made a speech about the future of the BBC where he promised all sorts of entertaining, educational and informative things to come, for all the world like a man whose funding wasn't being choked off by George Osborne.

Amongst the ideas was a music streaming service which would, somehow, offer the last 50,000 tracks played by the BBC for licence fee payers to dip into somehow, and for some reason.

Clearly, Hall was just making up ideas which sound lovely, like news for North Korea and something something Royal Shakespeare Company probably on iPlayer or whatever. Nothing seemed that well thought through, least of all the music streaming.

But this hasn't stopped the BPI from running forward to demand to know the precise financial details of the half-formed idea. Billboard reports:

U.K. music industry body BPI expressed some worries about the plans. “The starting point for some of the BBC’s suggestions, around how such a service might work, involved launching such a service but paying no money for it," CEO Geoff Taylor said, according to music business strategy and information company Music Ally. "I just don’t think that’s viable."

He added: "There will have to be a sensible deal behind it if it is going to happen.”

I wonder if Geoff Taylor was ever asked out on a date:

- Hey, Geoffrey, I...
- Geoff
- Sorry?
- I prefer Geoff. It's funkier.
- Uh... right. Well, I was wondering if you'd like to go to the cinema with me sometime, maybe to...
- I insist you tell me now how you propose we fund the raising of any children which might result as actions set in train following this proposed event
- What... I...
- Tell me now, or there will be no cinema dates.
- I... uh... how about we make musicians sign punitive contracts which takes huge fees off them for services, one of which could be funding a self-important lobby group that can pretend it speaks for "music" as if it was a democratic body, which you could run for a huge salary?
- Hmm. Good plan. I'll pick you up at seven on Saturday, and we can go see The Goonies.

Tony Hall hasn't yet addressed BPI concerns, but has been heard muttering about "why shouldn't chickens be connected to a creative journalistic nexus?"

65daysofstatic won't be your project

Catching up with a couple of stories from earlier in the week. First, the mighty 65daysofstatic were surprised to see themselves being named on a government press release:

So recently 65days received some funding from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). This is no doubt a good thing for us. It’s appreciated and will be put to good use.

The funding was announced yesterday in a press release over at gov.uk, in which we are named along with 18 other bands or artists, as beneficiaries of this public funding to help “export [our] music abroad”.

Sometimes when you list things alphabetically, numbers appear before ‘A’, and so 65daysofstatic is at the top of the list of bands and artists, and not far below a quote from Business Secretary Sajid Javid declaring that this Music Export Growth Scheme is the government “banging the drum” (see what he did there?) for music and the UK’s culture industries.

The idea of 65daysofstatic being held up in any way as evidence that this hyper-Dickensian, fucking nightmare of a Tory government is apparently supporting the arts, when in actual fact they are destroying any kind of infrastructure for future creativity at the grassroots level and plunging the most vulnerable parts of society into further misery, leaves a bad taste in our mouths. So here are some notes from us, just for the record:

• Spending public money on the arts is clearly not a bad thing. It’s better than spending it on Trident, bailing out banks, subsidising sketchy right-to-buy tactics to help private landlords get richer, and so on.

• Arts-based public spending is so often justified, as it is again in today’s BPI press release, as being ‘good for the British economy’ (“an approximate return on investment of £8.50 for every £1 invested”). This entirely misses the point of why we need to support arts and creativity in the first place.

• The press release mentions that this public funding will be matched by the music companies behind the acts. This is the first we have heard of this. Either this is accurate, which seems unlikely at least in our case because if any of the music companies we work with were actually giving us money for nothing, they’d presumably have told us about it. On the other hand, it could be that the idea is music companies ‘match’ the funding figure, but then that money is actually added to the band’s ‘recoup’ with them via a record deal or whatever. This also seems unlikely, as it would mean that, on paper, if it is ultimately the artist that is required to match whatever funding they get, then actually they’re not getting any help at all. (Unlikely, but this is the music industry we’re talking about). The third option would be that this ‘matching’ is entirely fabricated for the purposes of the press release, which would suggest that somebody, somewhere, is so scared of the wrath of the Daily Mail, or whoever, for having wasted money on something as frivolous as the arts, that they literally invented non-existent extra funds from The Music Business to give the illusion of an industry that is growing in rude, capitalist health. To make it clear that this is A Sensible Business Decision and not Commie-Liberal Hippy Indulgence. No idea which of these, if any, is true. But it is odd.

• Similarly, if they think that they’re gonna get 65 to “attend writing camps overseas to help boost the revenues that come from publishing and sync deals” they’ve got another thing coming. Presumably this is more empty press release wrangling; a well-intentioned arts-funding-proposal-writer somewhere knew what business-friendly buzzwords were needed to catch the ear of a business secretary who might understand that ‘publishing and syncs’ as opposed to ‘record sales and touring’ are the remaining deposits of wealth that need pillaging mining in the world of music. But how patronising and wrong-brained this patronage is, whereby acts are given song-writing classes about how to better grow and focus their ‘product’ in order to help grow the British economy. WHO THINKS LIKE THIS? Probably Mumford & Sons. In fact they probably run the writing camps on the grounds of their L.A mansions or something.

• The proposal that 65daysofstatic put in for this funding was based on a hypothetical budget for a hypothetical American tour. It is very expensive to tour in America, but we’ll be eventually be putting out a new album in the shape of our No Man’s Sky soundtrack and we would like to be able to afford to play shows in a country where that game appears to be receiving a huge amount of attention. (To ‘grow our brand’, in music industry parlance). This BPI funding covers maybe a third of the deficit of the budget. Meaning that this hypothetical tour still costs, rather than makes, a lot of money. Furthermore, the majority of these costs are travel-related, so almost all this ‘music’ funding will actually be going to airlines and oil companies. The rest will go to pay our crew (which is obviously right and proper) and to musical equipment hire companies. The only part of it that would come to 65 is what are called ‘PDs’ (per diems), a daily allowance for each of us to be able to buy food, coffee and sometimes, debauched rockstars that we are, extra beer and wine.

They also bring Taylor Swift into it:

But still, until musicians do start getting paid fairly (which will be never), you fear that the conversation will never move on. Thanks to Taylor Swift, 65daysofstatic will now collectively earn approximately £40 for the three months of free Apple Music streaming than we would have earned otherwise. And really, thanks Taylor, that’s cool, it’s honestly better than not-having £40, but did you know Apple only paid £12 million in tax in the UK last year instead of the estimated £400 million that they should have? If you could take that up with them next time you fancy fixing things for struggling artists, it’d be really appreciated. We’ll even do you a remix for cheap in return.

In passing, I think we'd all love 65daysofstatic doing a Taylor Swift remix. I'm not sure we'll get Apple to invest £360million for it to happen, though.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: The stream flows uphill

Our old friend, Gennaro Castaldo - now chief insight-piper at the BPI - has popped up in Silicon Republic making excited noises about how streaming might help turn the decline of physical sales:

“The whole streaming thing, I think, has been a bonus that hasn’t been anticipated,” [he] says, suggesting that these UK results may well equate to similar findings in Ireland.

“It was thought it would carry on the digital trend. It has in one way, as more and more of us are doing it, but it has also permitted the idea that some people can buy music, too.”

Castaldo suggests streaming can actually be looked at as a shop window of sorts, pushing people towards actual purchases, although not to the level of before.

“No, it won’t be the mainstream activity, all of the time,” he said, “but there is potentially a new narrative where you can stream and buy physical. It’s allowing us to think of a new form of music consumption that might not have seemed possible when digital downloads had a decade of growth, fuelled by iTunes.”

The idea that people listening to music they don't actually own could lead to people going out and spending money on music isn't a crazy one. In fact, it's the same thing that most people spent telling the BPI would happen back in the days of the Napster Wars. The BPI wouldn't have it then, so it's nice that it's finally catching up to where everyone else was in 1999.

Obviously, there's a difference in a legal streaming service and a digitally sourced unlicenced track; the latter, the artist made absolutely nothing from the transaction, but with Spotify et al, the artist has to wait for a lot more transactions before their earnings reach even that level.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Looking at Kim Sears' chest

The appearance of Kim Sears at Andy Murray's Australian Open final wearing a Parental Advisory shirt (following being caught on camera swearing like a Gamergater spotting a feminist) was a good joke.

And what do you do with a good joke? Why, you analyse to death. Hence, the BBC used the shirt as a leaping-off point for a piece about the Parental Advisory logo.

And who better to share a thought or two about something music-related than Gennaro Castaldo, once HMV's homme de pensee, now installed on the South Bank as BPI's thought monarch:

But Gennaro Castaldo from the BPI admits that the label can undermine its own purpose. "Yes, there is that badge of honour aspect to it," he says. "The impulse behind it is to make parents and consumers aware of the content but it does have a dual effect - after all we've all been teenagers driven by a need to be anti-establishment and anti-parents. That's not going to change."

It makes you wonder what Gennaro's anti-establishment teenage years were like - sticking out press releases without notes for editors, perhaps. "Screw you mom, screw you dad, I'm not going to indicate where more follows and there's not a thing you can do about it."

I'm not sure Gennaro's statement makes much sense - if parents are seeing a sticker and going 'ooh, this is a rude record, I shall not buy it' and teenagers are seeing a sticker and going 'ooh this is a rude record, I shall buy it', I don't think that's a dual effect; it's alerting both sets of passers-by that there is a rude record on sale.

Obviously Gennaro knows in his heart that most teenagers will see a CD carrying a parental advisory sticker not in a shop as they go about making music purchases, but as they go through their parent's record collection going 'so you had to put these in, what, a BluRay machine? Is that how it worked?'

To be fair, not all youngsters wouldn't recognise a disc if it was sharpened to a point and used to slice their modish beards off. There's the subset of The Kids buying vinyl, and it was this "trend" thatsaw the Telegraph seeking Castaldo's counsel. What's going on, asked the Telegraph:

Vinyl-record sales are booming, too. Last year they hit an estimated 1.2 million – the highest for 20 years, and a five-fold increase since 2008. Threatened by seemingly superior technologies, the old discs seemed headed for extinction, but – as with books – it is the “soul” of vinyl that has been its salvation.

In particular, fans like the covers – once an art genre in their own right and now being rediscovered by a new generation. “They are one of the key reasons people are buying vinyl again,” says Gennaro Castaldo of the British Phonographic Industry. “They help to transform a record into an artefact fans like to own and collect.”

Yeah. What Castaldo doesn't warn The Kids is that when they come to move out of their parent's homes, the purchase of vinyl is going to add boxes and boxes of weight to every time they shift from house to house in the future. Good luck with that, The Kids.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: One Direction sell a lot of records

It's been a while since we've heard from Gennaro Castaldo, former HMV think-speaker, in his new role as BPI thought-pronouncer. But the Internation Business Times has secured a few words from the great man on the occasion of One Direction selling records:

Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for the music industry trade body BPI, said: "For home-grown talent to have recorded the world's biggest selling album six out of the last seven years is a phenomenal achievement that says a great deal about the popularity of British music around the world.

"Aside from the obvious contribution to British exports, this success underlines the vital role our music and artists play in promoting the appeal of British culture around the world."

I'm not sure the contribution to British exports is that obvious. Isn't most of the One Direction crap sold in shops made overseas and, thus, the band's success is actually harming - rather than helping - the UK's balance of payments? And the CDs sold overseas aren't made in the UK; nor are the downloads normally housed on British servers. There's the intellectual property, of course, but the songwriting and production credits on One Direction are drawn from an admirably wide range of territories, so at best represent money flowing through, but expressly out, of the UK economy.

But, regardless, suggesting that One Direction are - narrowly - a British success is a bit of a fib.

BPI use 'right to be forgotten' to bang familiar drum

Oh, here's the BPI, taking the European 'right to be forgotten' and using it as a platform to remind us about piracy again. And again. And again.

That removing links to a specific piece of information is different from blocking piracy sites doesn't seem to occur to anyone:

Critics say that Google drags its feet over carrying out measures such as stripping pirate websites from its search results, yet the move to allow users the "right to be forgotten" proves it can take serious action if it is forced.

"It's 'Don't be Evil' 101," says Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the music industry's trade body, the BPI. "The principle at stake here is when you know someone is acting illegally, you shouldn't continue helping them by sending them business."

That's kind of the point, though, isn't it, Geoff? Because Google does take action when you ask it to:

The BPI made 4.6m requests to Google to remove pirate websites from its listings in the past month alone.

And Taylor even seems to understand that unlicenced music sites are a moving target...

Dealing with Google is often a fraught process, Taylor adds, and the illegal websites reappear in the same, or a slightly different, guise almost immediately after they are taken down.

... but not enough to process that he's expecting Google to know to take down a site before its brought to their attention somehow.

Maybe he should have checked the Google right to be forgotten form before talking about this, as he'd have understood then that all you can do is point to a URL you want quashed and provide a reason why. It's not having a whole category of things (for example, 'anything about Mike Smith') dumped from the index. So wailing 'why can't they treat "pirate" sites they way they treat embarrassing facts from the past' is a wail of a digital ingenue - because they're actually treating those facts based on the way they treat "pirates".

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Softcore porn is business

Ah, we hadn't heard from Gennaro Castaldo since he left HMV. He did leave HMV, although he hasn't updated his LinkedIn profile. Perhaps like other parts of the HMV social universe, the password was handed to an intern and never surrendered?

Anyway, you can't keep a good thought-wrangler down and we've got the first sighting of him in his new home, defending porny pop videos for new employers, the BPI.

He appeared on ITV news:

Explicit music videos should be made available to the public in a responsible age-appropriate way but should not be banned completely, Gennaro Castaldo of the British Recorded Music Industry told ITV News.

Now, obviously, there are music videos which are explicit because the music they represent is explicit - and banning things is bad. I guess that far we can go with Gennaro.

The problem, though, is that the music industry is using sexist sexy videos for songs they're aiming largely at kids. That's what we need to talk about, surely, and the conversation Gennaro didn't seem interested in having:

"We have been speaking to digital service providers about whether they could introduce age-based filters. That could be one way of solving this problem," Mr Castaldo said.

"Rather than trying to stop content by banning or censoring it, it’s about how to make it available in a responsible fashion."

You see? The problem isn't the music industry selling Robin Thicke by getting women to show their tits, it's the fault of "digital service providers" for not stopping kids from seeing it.

This is similar to the way that guns don't kill people, it's people failing to have bulletproof skin that kills people.

But, hey, just to drift further from the point, maybe a spot of meaningless cultural relativism could help?

Mr Castaldo said the industry takes the issue extremely seriously, but pointed out that "values move" on and that "back in the 50s, people were scandalised by Elvis Presley."

Yes, Gennaro. Values move on. Back in the 70s, people thought it was okay to sell any product - cars, nuts, shock absorbers - by sticking a woman in a bikini into an advert. We've moved on from there. When will the BPI join us?

BPI, RIAA ignore licence terms on their website until it's pointed out to them

Interesting: copyright farmers the RIAA and their remote-controlled UK equivalent the BPI have been caught using code on their websites which violates the licences of that code.

TorrentFreak has been poking about in the source:

The websites of music industry groups RIAA and BPI also use infringing code.

On both sites we found open source JQuerys scripts that are released under the MIT license. This license permits any person or organization to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, or even sell copies of the software. There’s only one condition users have to agree to; that the original copyright notice stays intact.

Ironically, the scripts used on the RIAA and BPI websites have the copyright licenses removed.

BPI uses the depreciated template script jQuery.tmpl.min.js, and as can be seen below, yesterday there was no reference to the MIT license or the copyright holder listed at the top of the file.

Oddly, after TF contacted the RIAA, the copyright line appeared magically on the RIAA and BPI sites.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Gennaro Castaldo is the story

For years now, we've delighted in the work of Gennaro Castaldo, as he clambered onto the Official Opinionator of HMV and shared the fading retail network's viewpoints.

But no more, for Castaldo's 27 year-run with HMV is coming to an end.

The good news, though, is that Castaldo isn't falling silent.

Oh, no. He's now joined the RIAA's UK client group, the BPI:

Gennaro Castaldo said, “I'm really looking forward to this exciting new challenge - working with Geoff and his team, Tony Wadsworth and, of course, the BPI members to communicate the exciting developments taking place in our industry during this dynamic time of change.

"I can't leave HMV without saying what a privilege it's been for me to have worked there and particularly with so many wonderful colleagues and associates past and present, who I will always think of with great affection. I will look to bring the same passion and commitment to my new role and build on the strong foundation of media engagement that is already in place."

Well, it's tricky days for the BPI. But you can't argue that during the last couple of days, HMV hasn't been in the papers. Gennaro is the man for the job.

BPI hails digital

The BPI has, at least, resisted the temptation to describe the 19% of UK music buyers who only ever download as "digital natives". Let's be thankful for that.

They seem thrilled by this news, as it gives it something positive to say after a grim couple of months.

"There has rightly been a lot of focus in the past few weeks on high street music retail. That will continue – we must do all we can to serve music fans who love CDs and vinyl," said the BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor.

I'm not sure what he means here - does he mean that high street retail will continue? Or the "focus" on it will continue? And whose focus? Ours? The BPI's?

If it's the industry's focus, last month Taylor was kind of vague when talking to Billboard about what the BPI was doing:

We're working very hard together with AIM [Association of Independent Music] in talks with the administrator of HMV. Secondly, we are talking to [U.K. collection society] PRS for Music about the way that publishers approach mechanical royalties on stock for which labels are not being paid, or only being paid a fraction of its value. It's important that the publishing community help labels ensure that HMV has a viable future and that as much of HMV can emerge as a viable ongoing concern as possible.

Obviously, you wouldn't expect Taylor to detail exactly what moves were being made, but given that's an interview with a trade magazine, you'd expect something more than "we're having chats with the people managing the decline" as a roadmap.

Still, back to today, and Taylor's embrace of the new figures:

But as well as great music stores...

You're going to have to speak up, Geoff, we can't hear you above the sound of boards being nailed over HMV windows.

...Britain is blessed with a world-beating array of digital music services, which fans rate very highly for ease of use and value for money. And this is just the beginning."

Only a puritan hides his fear of Springtime by pretending to celebrate it. There's a hollowness to this embrace of digital from an organisation whose members struggled against the tide for so long.

And the suggestion that Britain is somehow at the heart of things is surprising - perhaps he's thinking of America's iTunes or Amazon, or Sweden's Spotify. (True, Spotify is headquartered in London now, but its heart is still Scandinavian.)

And the value for money claim is surprising.

In the US, Spotify premium costs $9.99. At the moment, that's £6.38. The same package costs £9.99 here ($15.65 in USD.)

In the US, the top tier of iTunes pricing is $1.29, equivalent to 82p. In the UK, the top rate is 99p - $1.55 at current exchange rates.

When Geoff Taylor hails the value for money, it'd be nice if he could explain what the extra value UK customers are getting for this hefty mark-up.

Pirate Party UK ducks fight with BPI

The Pirate Party UK has closed its proxy access to The Pirate Bay, rather than face a ruinous battle with the major labels.

The decision came after the BPI chose to make its battle personal - rather than attacking the party, the BPI chose to take action against six individual members of the organisation.

Obviously, the BPI is legally within its rights to do this, but it distorts the battle - a well-funded music industry business against private individuals stacks the odds completely in the favour of the business, making it effectively an impossible fight.

BPI take on the UK Pirate Party

Since the BPI's miserable failure to try and close down access to The Pirate Bay, the UK variant of the Pirate Party has been running a proxy service.

The BPI is now trying to get that closed, too, reports Torrent Freak:

Referencing the Party’s pro-freedom stance, [Geoff] Taylor apparently told Kaye, “Freedom of expression is not an absolute right. It comes with a duty to respect the rights of others, including those whose talent, hard work and investment help to create music and other entertainment.”

That's so true - who can forget how Evelyn Beatrice Hall caught Voltaire's stance - "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, providing you don't somehow impinge on an investment by Vivendi while you're doing it."

It's not clear how far the BPI intend to take this - The Pirate Party UK say they've only had a vague email so far, and no formal demand; given how trying to stop people in the UK going to the Pirate Bay resulted in a massive upswing in traffic to the site and the government going cool on the idea of blocking webpages, a wise organisation might choose to do nothing.

But then, when has the BPI ever been wise?

BPI puzzled by Google Play

Google is bringing the music store element of Google Play to the UK. Rather than welcoming another legitimate source of digital music, the BPI is feigning confusion:

The UK's biggest record labels say a new, legal music service from Google "doesn't make sense" because its search engine still helps piracy.

The BPI's [British Phonographic Industry's] chief executive Geoff Taylor, said: "We don't think it makes any sense for them to be doing something which does support artists and then, on the other hand, undermine artists by referring consumers to illegal sites."

This is, in effect, the BPI banging on about the way if you search on Google you can find links to music, some of which might not be officially licenced.

Obviously they're going to carry on chewing away at this - I think we've long since passed the point where the BPI/RIAA is suddenly going to understand online behaviour, and that if people want to snaffle tunes without paying, they will always find where to go.

But just look at the concept: pretending it's not worth being able to sell their products to Google's enormous user base, because it's possible to put 'One Direction torrents' into the search engine and get some results.

It's like Yale saying to B&Q "I don't know why you bother selling our locks, when you have crowbars on sale as well."

Oddly, none of this angry confusion has lead to the BPI taking a principled stand and having its labels boycott the sevrice. Almost as if it can understand the difference between two parts of a very large company, and is just pretending it can't.

The British music industry discovers what victory tastes like

How has the battle against The Pirate Bay gone? The BPI's expensive legal blockade might not be a roaring success, according to TorrentFreak:

Yesterday, The Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, providing a golden opportunity to educate users on how to circumvent blocks. “We should write a thank you letter to the BPI,” a site insider told TorrentFreak.

Great news, then: in effect, the BPI have spent a small fortune on giving the Pirate Bay a luxurious advertising campaign.

I was amused to spot on Saturday that the BPI share a doorway with the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial fund - the charity which lost a fortune pursuing a pointless battle against a manufacturer of tacky plates. You have to wonder if the two organisations swap legal advice when they bump into each other in the corridors.

Pirates repelled

The BPI has won a historic High Court judgement forcing UK ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay.

This isn't great news - the idea of access to any website being blocked on the say-so of a cartel run by three-and-a-half multinational organisations would always be an affront to natural justice - but, obviously, the BPI are delighted:

BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale.

"Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them.

"This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."

Geoff Taylor must know, in his heart, that this isn't a win, though. It's not even locking a stable door after the horses have bolted; it's turning up at stables that have long since been turned into holiday homes and putting up a 'No bolting' sign.

Not a single extra penny will find its way to a sound engineer as a result of this; the only people making money are lawyers. So much effort still being poured into a policy that failed in the early days of the century.

BPI almost sound upbeat; fall back on to wailing about piracy

Half a point for making the effort to the BPI for trying to make their New Year press release about 2011 sales sound slightly upbeat:

MUSIC SALES SLIP IN 2011 BUT DIGITAL SINGLES AND ALBUMS GROW STRONGLY

In the past, that headline would have been written the other way round, splattering the silver lining with the mud of despondency.

Does this mean the BPI is slowly coming to terms with the new world; accepting that they're lucky to have emerged out of the last ten years with any sort of business at all?

Nope. Much of the press release is given to the usual wailing about the nasty pirates. Chief Executive Geoff Taylor starts it off:

“British artists continue to produce incredible music that resonates at home and around the world. But while other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our Government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of US tech giants. The UK has already fallen behind Germany as a music market. Unless decisive action is taken in 2012, investment in music could fall again – a creative crunch that will destroy jobs and mean the next Adele may not get her chance to shine on the world stage.

Yes, god forbid that the government doesn't do as the BPI orders, lest the music industry lose out to American owned tech companies. Which would be a tragedy for the Japanese and American owned music industry, of course.

Taylor isn't an idiot, and he knows that it's probable that Germany's music industry has benefited not from any magic measures against piracy - "ooh, those umlauts are too hard to force through a torrent filter" - but from having had (for much of 2011) a stronger economy. Germany is a larger economy; it's got lower unemployment and lower inflation and the average German earns more than the average Brit - surely its surprising that it took so long for the UK to fall behind Germany in terms of music purchases? Taylor isn't an idiot. So why does he allow a news release to be circulated that makes him sound like one?

Tony Wadsworth, who chairs the BPI, also has something to say. The second paragraph of his thoughts at this magic time of year focuses on piracy:

“Led by Adele, Jessie J, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and others, records by British artists in 2011 achieved both critical and commercial success both at home and around the world. But the challenge of sustaining this performance against a backdrop of chronic piracy means that Government action remains absolutely crucial for British artists and their labels.”

Adele again. In fact, Adele had the whole of Tony's first paragraph just dedicated to her success:

“The spine-tingling performance by Adele at The BRIT Awards 2011 fired the starting gun on her incredible and well-deserved year of success. Her achievements are phenomenal – the biggest-selling album this century, the best seller of 2011 by miles, her debut album also making the year-end top five, not to mention her fantastic success overseas

As the press release points out, Adele's sales aren't just the impressive for this one-eighth of a century; they're just impressive, full stop:

Adele’s 21 reaches 3.8m sales – the biggest-ever selling album in a single year.

Unfortunately, this does tend to fire a big hole in the heart of Geoff and Tony's demand that something must be done about piracy to save the music industry. Despite all this "chronic" piracy going on, Adele's album has sold more copies in a year than any album has ever sold. More than a Michael Jackson album managed in a year, even the good one. More than a Beatles album ever managed to whisk out the shops in twelve months. More, even, than the third Charlatans album sold in a year.

So, how come Adele's album was not only immune to the chronic piracy, but thrived in a world so stricken? Had there been secret umlauts sewn into the hemlines of the choruses, rendering it impossible to torrent?

Were any of the many pirate-busting measures deployed? Did the pre-release circulate solely on a tape glued into a Walkman? Was every copy watermarked? Did a fleet of fake files get launched onto the internet to foil downloaders? Did Derren Brown hypnotise the world so that if they typed 'Adele 21 free' into Google they'd die?

Nope. The success of Adele's album seems to be nothing to do with avoiding piracy, and more to do with sticking out an album that people liked and wanted to buy.

Now, it's possible that in a world without torrentsearch, Adele might have sold more copies still of her record. But even so, she has sold more copies of 21 than any album has ever sold, even before home-taping killed music.

The conclusion has to be that if we don't see other records selling in large numbers, it's not because of chronic piracy, but chronic releases.

Look at the other names Wadsworth throws around - Jessie J, who is alright in a Nookie Bear Sings The Black Eyed Peas way; Coldplay, an act who can't even hide their own boredom with their music most days; Ed Sheeran, a singer so devoid of charisma promoters regularly close down his live act mid-set because they simply don't notice he's on stage. And these are the acts that Wadsworth picks out as the marshmallows in the box of Lucky Charms.

Since they're bobbing about on a sea of singing squadie spouses and ten year's worth of build-up of Cowell dung, you can see why Wadsworth felt that was the best he could do. There's people who will always be excited by music, but for big sales you need to get that ripple of connection, of interest, beyond those people and out into the wider public. The people who will buy an album from time-to-time, if it's a better way of spending their money than a computer game, or a bottle of wine, or a chip supper. With the best will in the world, Olly Murs is never going to win a struggle with a pickled egg and a can of Irn Bru.

It's not piracy. There's no need for the government to legislate. Unless the action they take is to pass a law forcing major labels to introduce quality control.

BPI decides to extend its moral guardianship to the internet

As if not managing to find a way to make money online wasn't occupying enough of the BPI's time, it's just announced a scheme which will fail to stop children seeing porny pop videos and hearing bad words in songs.

The risible "parental guidance" sticker - itself based on a weak idea by Tipper Gore - is moving online. New Media Age:

From today (Thursday), online content will have to display the parental advisory logo, for the first time since the scheme was introduced over 15 years ago.

According to the BPI, some digital music stores have already been showing the label against content but most audio and video streaming services, including Spotify and Napster, had not yet implemented a consistent parental guidance system.

Napster hasn't implemented a parental guidance system? That must be worrying news, should anyone under the age of thirty ever find out what Napster is.

The BPI hasn't stopped to think how its system - which, presumably, will only apply to music-related content put online by its members in the UK - could be considered a "consistent parental guidance system". Unless there are people whose sole online activity consists, consistently, of watching music videos made by EMI UK, Sony UK and the other two.

Still, it's good to know that the parents who have hitherto not noticed, say, Rihanna's video being full of S&M-lite imagery, will clearly be checking the little symbol at the start of the video now. "Goodness, now there's a warning at the front, I've suddenly spotted that this video being flung at my popkids is full of filth."

Scottish court convicts woman despite OCD

Scotland has handed down its first conviction related to unlicensed music use, with Anne Muir pleading guilty to one charge. Torrentfreak reports:

On May 10th 2011, it was widely reported that Anne Muir, a 58-year-old woman from Scotland, had pleaded guilty to criminal file-sharing offences. The conviction of Muir, a grandmother from Ayr, represented the first case of its type in the country.
[...]
Today the decision on sentencing was handed down.
[...]
Muir had faced 10 criminal charges but pleaded guilty to only one of sharing music but “not to any extent”.
[...]
“Ms Muir did not make any money. What she did was not commercial,” said the Sheriff. “She is a first offender so imprisonment would not be beneficial.”
[...]
Muir was put on probation for 3 years and ordered to attend mandatory cognitive therapy treatment sessions for her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

So, the court found she had OCD, and decided that even so she had to be given a criminal record as well? If there's an acceptance that she had a mental precondition to hoard, and that this has led her to hoard music (and karaoke tracks), then why is she also being given a criminal record?

There's something else odd about this case:

Muir, an auxiliary nurse, was said to have amassed a collection of media including some 7,493 music files and 24,243 karaoke files which she made available via an unnamed Direct Connect hub. Sources at the BPI and IFPI, who conducted the initial investigation into Muir’s activities, placed a ‘market value’ on her collection of £54,792.

So that's 31,376 tracks with a market value of £1.72 a track. Are there any karaoke tracks which sell online for more than a quid? In fact, on CD, karaoke tracks seem to be worth about 5p a pop. How on earth did the BPI get to a market value of nearly fifty-five grand?

I mean, sure, it must be certain of its figures as it wouldn't be perjuring itself, but that seems a surprising valuation by any stretch.