Why The Music Industry Needs To Engage More With Outsiders
Last month I went to MIPIM in Cannes, the world’s largest property fair. At MIPIM, I hustled around the conference meeting property developers, real estate investors and local authorities, arguing that if they utilised music and the value of the music industry’s network within their work, they would benefit.
For example, take a large, mixed-use development featuring new homes, shops and leisure facilities. If a developer wanted to market these homes effectively or create a community space, using music is a tool to do so. And when we — as an industry — are starved of the cultural infrastructure we need to develop talent, engaging those who own, manage and develop the land at the earliest possible stage is as good for us as it is for them. Same goes within the ‘placemaking’ industry, a sector also prevalent at MIPIM. Here, music is oddly absent. Most consultants offering placemaking services to developers trade in public art, mass participation, outdoor film and theatre. Music is there, but we are a passive participant. I was the only music industry person at MIPIM. There should be more of us.
I believe a missed opportunity the music sector often ignores is the value we have on other sectors. Our definition of value to secondary sectors is based on a singular, immediate transaction value — i.e our content being bought to be used to sell something else, right now. Otherwise, we’re obsessed with our internal value of ourselves, whether it is through streaming rates or percentages. I know this is integral to the success of our sector, but I believe we’re ignoring potential revenue sources, talent development pipelines and an opportunity to enlarge the penetration of music across its holistic value chain. Take property development and urban regeneration as one example. Music is often bolted onto new land uses, rather than built in. And when music is featured, it is often done so in large-scale projects, often ignoring the incubators we need to develop talent, such as low-cost office space, rehearsal and recording facilities. At the same time, planning law has not caught up with the speed of the development sector, which prioritises the highest value use as the best. In this case, a small music venue can’t compete, and they close. This is because there is a lack of understanding, and engagement on our part with how cities, their governance mechanisms (and the areas within them) are changing. In London, there are 15 prospective venues in development across the capital, but many may not happen. This is not because the developer doesn’t want it to happen. It’s because we, as a sector, have not recognised this as an opportunity, to assuage, at the earliest stage, issues of covenant, market rate and viability.
If we were to engage earlier in the development process — when places are master planned — we will create more spaces that work for our artists and audiences, widening the availability of places to develop talent. And it is at the earliest stages, even in the phase when landowners are bidding to purchase a particular site, we can influence covenant arrangements, design and viability.
Tourism is another sector we’re ignoring. Around the world over, cities and regions are using music to sell hotel rooms, experiences and guided tours. For those involving music, the vast majority of these are focused on heritage artists — dead and alive — and are housed within a sector separate to the mainstream music community. They are not at SXSW, they are at ITB (big travel event in Berlin). By focusing on heritage, many places unintentionally ignore their living culture — those artists who could (and we hope, will) become the heritage of the future. For example, no tourism, or ‘heads in beds’ tax in the United States is allocated to developing new talent. In only a few countries — like France and Colombia — ticket taxes are used to support venue restoration and new talent. We should be lobbying for such a tax to be dedicated in some part to the reasons people travel, of which music is a large part. But without a dedicated lobby to engage the tourism sector, our content remains an active driver of tourism, but we’re passive agents in the economic uplift.
If the music industry engaged more with other sectors, from our chambers of commerce to our economic development authorities, tourism bodies to global governance institutions, we would be better placed to steer the conversation to them recognising our value more, ultimately increasing the value and long-tail impact of our content. This is not to reallocate resources away from intellectual property and promoting fairness, gender equality and diversity in music, but we must look above the parapet more, to enhance music’s reach. If there’s no music policy at the United Nations, for example, how can we engage in their sustainable development goal objectives? If no music representatives engage with tourism, or development authorities, how can they be aware of our wishes and our impact? Instead, we focus on an internal definition of value — what the value of music is to use us as a sector — rather than an external value — to recognise how what we make everyone else’s lives better.
