The Culture and Education of the European Parliament issued an important report on the state of the creative economy. Our friend Helienne Lindvall, President of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, gives us some insights into the report and the context.

I know ECSA was involved in testifying for the EU cultural diversity report, can you tell us a little about the report, what prompted it and how does it help or hurt?

Streaming and the amount of issues it brought with it has been at the top of the agenda for European songwriters since the launch of Spotify. As an Ivors Academy Board Director, I was part of the inception of the UK #FixStreaming campaign which resulted in the UK Government calling for a complete overhaul of music streaming, and for the creation of music industry working groups to fix these problems. Meanwhile, similar lobbying efforts have been applied in Brussels by music creators across Europe. The EU has a fine history of promoting, supporting and protecting culture – in 2019, legislators proved it by adopting the DSM Copyright Directive. Now we need it to step up to help create a sustainable streaming environment. 

Rapporteur Iban Garcia del Blanco and his fellow CULT MEPs took their time to really listen to and understand the reality that music authors (ie songwriters and composers) face, and our proposed remedies, and I think the report reflects that.

Is the report designed to shape future legislation or rulemaking in the EU?

We look forward to seeing the European Commission work on such a strategy and take concrete actions to build a fair and sustainable music streaming ecosystem for all music creators.. 

MEP Garcia del Blanco said at the press conference that he would prefer if the industry stakeholders could sit down and fix these problems without further legislation, but judging from our experience in the UK, certain areas are easier to get a consensus on than others. The UK metadata working group has set parameters for improvements, which I believe can easily be adopted across Europe and beyond. However, when it comes to remuneration and making it fairer for songwriters and performers, we have met with resistance from labels and platforms – unsurprisingly, perhaps. Getting increased transparency has also proved more difficult. If this resistance remains we will keep pushing for Government intervention and legislation. 

The report calls for a comprehensive and ambitious strategy based on independent data and a structured dialogue with all stakeholders, and we stand ready to work with the entire music value chain towards a fairer distribution of revenues, and we support the establishment of a European Music Observatory to collect and analyse data.

I noticed this language in the report calling on EU parliament:  “Calls for action to be taken at the European Union level to guarantee the visibility and accessibility of European musical works, considering the overwhelming amount of content constantly growing on music streaming platforms and the lack of Union rules to regulate them in a harmonised manner”.  and algorithmic dominance?

It may come as no surprise that American and major label records still dominate on streaming platforms.

Is this designed to keep local language artists from being overwhelmed by English language tracks due to algorithmic bias or Spotify’s stream discrimination plans?

The short answer is: yes. During our stakeholder testimonials in the EU Parliament, Spotify claimed that streaming has increased diversity. And, yes, it may be true that some European countries have seen plenty of local acts in their local charts, though by no means all countries have experienced this, but on an international level there’s still a huge dominance of Anglo-American repertoire. Then we have the issue of the dominance of legacy artists and catalogue albums, such as ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and Elton John. 

In a post-Brexit reality, does the report have any effect on the UK?

The EU doesn’t have any legislative powers when it comes to the UK, due to Brexit, but as streaming is cross-border, as is the music industry, an improvement in either would have an impact on both. Some EU members have already implemented their own versions of equitable remuneration, such as Belgium and Spain – and France is establishing a streaming tax to support local music – but we would like to see solutions and changes that help ALL music creators, in particular songwriters, who currently are at the bottom when it comes to their share of the streaming royalty “pie”, and are finding it next to impossible to survive on their music, despite getting millions of streams. 

Given the attention that the Bad Dog story is getting, would the metadata accuracy proposals in the report help to stop outright fraud and impersonation? 

Yes, it would. Overall, we need more transparency, accountability and accuracy to deal with fraud. These are all words that get thrown around the industry willy-nilly but are rarely truly abided by. In this industry, companies rarely make an effort when it comes to accuracy unless there is an incentive for them to do so. What is the incentive for distributors and platforms to clean up their act and make an effort to prevent bad actors from profiting from fraudulent streams when they still get a share of those streams? I make the comparison to physical stores: If a supermarket sold counterfeit products, they’d be in trouble with the law. Why not these platforms and distributors? And this is before we even get into what’s happening on TikTok, which is the wild west when it comes to unlicensed usage. 

Does the metadata accuracy help to enforce “know your customer” type minimum indentifiable data requirements?

Accurate metadata is vital for so many reasons. Not only because more than 20% of all song revenue is unallocable and won’t go to the rightful recipient, but it will help in the fight against fraud. The way I put it to legislators is: You wouldn’t be able to buy a tuna sandwich in the supermarket without being able to read EXACTLY what is in it on the package, or the trader knowing who to pay for those ingredients. So how can it be legal for streaming services to accept, display and charge for recordings without knowing who created the underlying composition? How can they collect money without having any information on who to pay it to? And, as we’ve discovered with cases such as the Bad Dog story and Swedish criminal gangs using Spotify streams to launder money, that money could even be funding drug and weapons trafficking. 

Anything else you think is important about the report? 

The report calls for action when it comes competition issues and the dominance of a handful of labels and platforms, issues that we believe suppresses our bargaining power. It also stresses that authors, performers and other rights holders should be allowed to reserve and license the rights for the use of their work for AI training, and it acknowledges that this requires transparency. Overall it’s an important report that aims to correct the imbalances that have led to the unsustainable situation music creators find themselves in, and to build a sustainable, thriving and diverse cultural future. It couldn’t come soon enough.