Rockol Tracks: New UK music minister Sajid Javid has tough act to perform
It took just one scandal-riddled week early this month for the British music industry to gain a new government culture minister with a significant hold on the sector’s long-term fate.
His name is Sajid Javid, the former financial secretary to the nation’s Treasury. On 9 April, he had immediately replaced the current Conservative government’s ousted culture minister Maria Miller. Only a week earlier on 3 April, she had been ordered to repay £5,800 after being accused of abusing the expenses system for members of parliament (MPs).
To paraphrase a statement attributed to a former British prime minister, “A week is a very short time in politics,” so short, the music business barely had any time to digest the implications of Miller’s replacement.
First, let us establish why Javid’s appointment matters to the business of sound recordings (labels), musical works (publishers/songwriters) and live performances. He is now officially the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, which oversees a portfolio of the creative industries, including music and the “digital economy.” He is also the Minister of Equalities at the same governmental department.
He will have influence over the fate of the 2010 Digital Economy Act, designed to protect copyright in digital media; that means anything from Spotify, YouTube to Megaupload.
He will have a say in the development of the Copyright Hub, the public-funded initiative to simplify how creators obtain the licenses required for using copyrighted works; that means talking to copyright organizations PPL and PRS for Music.
He will be lobbied about tax reliefs to encourage private investment in the creative industries, a special consideration already given to the movie and video-games sectors, but not the music industry.
When confounded music executives discovered Javid’s background, they did not know what to make of it. He is a banker. Following the 2008 collapse of the global economy, what is there to like about bankers?
Javid’s resume includes making a fortune from a high-flying career at US financial institution Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and Germany’s Deutsche Bank in different divisions around the world.
On the other hand, no one knows his experience in the arts.
No one knows whether he has ever picked up or plucked a guitar in his life, but there is a good chance he has been to concerts. No one knows whether he has attempted to write a book, paint a landscape, develop a mobile-games app, or organize a fashion show. But there is more than a good chance that, at the age of 44, the graduate from one of the country’s best universities understands what it takes to do so.
There have been several opinion pieces in the national newspapers attacking his qualifications. What does a banker know about creative works?
However, he should be given a chance. With his financially savvy experience, he could turn out to be the best person to appreciate the monetary value of the music business.
Of course, the politician has messed up before. As an ordinary MP a few years back, he made the awful mistake of openly supporting ticket scalpers and the controversial but money-making (£1 billion a year) secondary-ticketing market.
He was quoted as saying: “Ticket resellers act like classic entrepreneurs, because they fill a gap in the market that they have identified…. As long as those tickets have been acquired genuinely and lawfully, it is an honest transaction, and there should be no government restriction on someone’s ability to sell them.”
Since that quote’s re-emergence, the recorded and live-music sectors have been very wary of Javid. He might have said it out of naivety, ignorance or the sheer ambition to get noticed with a sound bite.
Whatever the truth, someone should tell him how some artists feel about ticket touts. LCD Soundsystem, the US dance group that disbanded in 2011, publicly loathed illegal ticket sellers.
When told organized scalpers had exorbitantly hiked the prices of tickets to their farewell concerts, lead singer James Murphy did not hold back with the tweets. One said: “You are parasites. I HATE you." Another said: “NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, IT IS NOT WORTH THAT KIND OF MONEY ($1,500) TO SEE US!”
Tickets for the comeback gigs by Kate Bush, her first in 35 years, are being resold for the astronomical price of £1,000.
As a former banker, he must see the folly of promoting such practices. Fans get hurt, they stop trusting the music industry, which then continues to suffer.
But Javid will learn, especially from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse, who will disabuse him of any misunderstandings about the seriousness of ticket-touting’s harm.
Undoubtedly, other music-industry lobby groups like the Concert Promoters Association, IFPI, AIM, PPL and PRS for Music will have their respective concerns for his attention. So, he better be a quick learner.
Javid’s predecessor Maria Miller’s alleged problem with her expenses was creative accountancy. His alleged problem could be too much accountancy.
He should leave real creativity to the artists and musicians and focus on understanding the financial contribution music creativity makes to the national economy.
[Juliana Koranteng]