Search

‘Somewhere right now, in this country, a young person is scribbling on a scrap of paper or tapping on a keyboard, composing a song that will resonate far beyond the page. The industry may change, but that simple act of creativity remains, and will always remain, immortal and timeless’ (Feargal Sharkey, Chief Executive, UK Music, 2010) The quotation above from Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of the Undertones, appears in the Foreword to UK Music’s Liberating Creativity policy statement. The document captures a familiar dilemma. On the one hand, Sharkey-the-romantic holds dear to the belief that there is something magical or mystical about the act of creativity, a moment in which an individual, or small group of individuals, are inspired to create. On the other hand, there is Sharkey-the-lobbyist arguing for the need for government intervention and investment for the purpose of ‘liberating creativity’. Sharkey is by no means alone in wanting to combine these two thoughts. But can they be? What contribution does public policy intervention make to creativity? Does it liberate it, or stifle it? This is a familiar question, to which there are many answers. We discuss some of these below, but our main concern is with the contribution to creativity of a particular institution – the Collective Management Organisation (CMO)1, and the public policy designed to regulate its performance. We also concentrate on a single sector of the creative industries: the music industry. In doing this, we examine the European Union’s attempt to reform the CMO in the name of creativity (among other goals), and we compare the performance of CMOs in different national settings. Our argument is that, by these two routes, we can contribute to an understanding of the part played by public policy and institutional intermediaries in fostering creativity. This narrowing of the focus is necessary for any reasonable answer to the question as to what a particular policy regime and its component intermediaries contribute to creative culture. Key to the operation of such a regime is the management of copyright, and our analysis is concerned with how intermediaries themselves understand and justify their contribution – for example, it is notable how the word ‘creativity’ is often parsed as ‘cultural diversity’, a rather different, if equally important, goal. In what follows we begin by justifying our emphasis upon the CMO, a justification that is couched both in terms of the neglect to which CMOs have been subject and the importance that they are assuming in a digital economy (Towse, 2013). This importance is recognized by the EU in its recent Directive on CMO reform (2014/26/EU), and by the recommendations of inquiries – like that by Ian Hargreaves (2011) – for greater transparency, among other things, in CMO practice. We also consider other attempts to reveal the role played by institutions and institutional structures in facilitating creativity, and the problems entailed in measuring the key terms and identifying the key causal mechanisms. 1 Collective Management Organisations are also referred to as Collecting Societies, Authors Societies and Performing Rights Organisations.

International audience

This is the introduction to the collection Music by Numbers, edited by Richard Osborne and Dave Laing. It outlines the use of music statistics in the music industries, details the chapter contributions and provides a tribute to the work of Dave Laing, who died during the editing process for this collection.

No abstract available.

This chapter explores claims that the live music industry generates more revenue than the recorded music industry in the UK. To do so, it takes a close look at statistics compiled by PRS for Music and UK Music, addressing four questions: (1) What is the purpose of their statistics reports? (2) What do they include in their totals for ‘recording’ and ‘live’? (3) How is the statistical information categorized? (4) Are performers able to assess their share of the money?

This chapter provides a history of the statistical compilation of the UK singles chart, detailing who is responsible for compiling the singles chart, the breadth of the survey, the representation of the results, the frequency of the chart, and how a ‘single’ is defined.

This chapter looks at sales awards in the music industries. It addresses some of the standards and variables relating gold discs, silver discs, platinum discs and diamond discs. It looks at the history of these trophies and examines the rules by which they can be acquired. It looks at the record company accounting that the sales awards tend to obscure. It addresses the continuing use of these awards in the digital age. It looks at the musical culture that they endorse, examining their impact upon artistic creation and audience reception.

This chapter explores the recording industries statistic that only one in ten of its projects will succeed. It begins by outlining the origins of the one-in-ten statistic, before tracing its prevalence within the recording industry and its analyses within academia. It next examines the uses of the ratio when coupled with the employment of ‘new’ music. Finally, this chapter looks at the promotional literature of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is deploying these tropes to defend the purpose of record companies in the digital age.

The chapter takes its inspiration and starting point from Simon Frith's writings about song lyrics. Extending Frith's focus on lyrics as performance, it argues that lyrics can be approached independently from their performed context (without being treated naively as poetry). It also argues that the practices of songwriters, briefly discussed, should be more central to popular music research and study.