Contents
Government support of Australian music overseas
(Hans Hoegh-Guldberg)
The Australian Music Office
(Tony George)
International free trade and the issues for music and music copyright
(Richard Letts)
Government support of Australian music overseas
By Hans Hoegh-Guldberg (Economic Strategies Pty Ltd)
Last updated: 30 September 2007
The main federal authorities
The main federal government authorities supporting and promoting the Australian music industry are the Australia Council, the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and its statutory authority, the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade).
While most trade promotion support is offered through DFAT and Austrade, the Australia Council’s International Pathways 2007 aims to assist with strategic international artistic and market development activities by Australian musicians. Applications for support may include the following activities occurring in or after 2007:
- international touring and showcasing (showcase proposals must include multiple performance opportunities)
- development of publishing and distribution networks for the work of Australian composers and songwriters
- support for not-for-profit service organisations in the international market development of Australian music and musicians, with clearly articulated and specific outcomes.
There is a maximum of $2,500 per person for airfares, plus appropriate additional amounts for freight, travel insurance and overseas surface travel. Domestic travel within Australia is not funded. The maximum total request per application is $20,000.
DCITA has several programs for domestic support of music but no programs directly linked to overseas promotion of Australian musicians.
This leaves DFAT/Austrade as the main direct overseas promoter. The MCA encapsulates DFAT’s role as follows: “DFAT is the home of the new Australian International Cultural Council [AICC], which will advise on ways of exporting Australian arts. Its Cultural Relations Section services the cultural activities of Australian embassies and consulates, and links with bilateral entities such as the Australia-China Council. Diplomatic posts have their own modest budgets for arts presentations. DFAT directly funds some international touring by Australian musicians.”
The AICC is presented as Australia’s key cultural diplomacy body. Its grants program has an annual budget of $1 million to provide funding for international arts and cultural projects that align with AICC’s objectives: to reinforce Australia’s standing as a stable, sophisticated, tolerant and innovative nation with a rich and diverse culture; and to promote an accurate and positive image of Australia’s Indigenous people.
AICC’s grants program focuses on priority regions: 1 Asia, 2 South Pacific, 3 Middle East, and 4 North America and Western Europe. Favourable consideration may also be given to applications that are proposed for the same locations as the AICC’s focus country programs: Indonesia (2008), the United States (2009) and China (2010) (following France and Malaysia in 2007). The AICC will also select second countries for 2009 and 2010.
The main direct support to musicians, however, is at the coalface through Austrade, which is represented in 60 locations in about 140 countries, and in each Australian State and Territory through export assistance (TradeStart) offices.
Austrade’s mission is “to contribute to community wealth by helping more Australians succeed in export and international business by providing advice, market intelligence and support to Australian companies to reduce the time, cost and risk involved in selecting, entering and developing international markets.” Austrade also provides advice and guidance on overseas investment and joint venture opportunities, and administers the Export Market Development Grants scheme which provides financial assistance to eligible businesses through partial reimbursement of the costs of specified export promotion activities.
The main music genres being promoted are pop, rock, dance, hip hop, R&B, folk, country, blues and jazz, according to an Austrade presentation to the Asian International Music Expo in February 2007.
Music offices
While many Austrade offices have arts, culture and entertainment export advisers, the most exciting development from a music sector point of view has been the establishment, since 2005, of dedicated music offices in Los Angeles, London and Frankfurt – as described in Tony George’s article below. This is happening in a crucial time of change for the music industry, as Tony himself has outlined in a recent ‘survival guide for Aussie bands’.
The opportunities for popular Australian musicians seem to be improving quite strongly. Five years ago, just four bands were represented at the South by Southwest (SXSW) expo, which Tony George describes “as the main US networking event for aspiring (and established) artists to broaden their exposure – and perhaps nail that elusive contract that will take them to the top.” By 2007, the number of bands had increased tenfold.
International music expos
The Australian Music Office counts a comprehensive range of Australian music organisations among its partners. They are listed here, with links, and include the Music Council of Australia. Significantly, they also include two of the main international music expos, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference and Festival already mentioned, and the German Popkomm.
Austrade focuses on the top music expos, which in addition to SXSW and Popkomm include the Winter Music Conference (WMC) in Miami, Florida, North by Northeast in Toronto, Canada, MIDEM, France, and newcomer AIME (Asian International Music Expo) in Bangkok, Thailand.
AIME in 2007 attracted 2,000 registered industry participants and 10,000 persons per day for public sessions. As a newcomer, it remains dwarfed by SXSW, which in 2007 drew 11,750 music industry professionals for panels, industry discussions, demo listening sessions, and trade show exhibits, not to mention five nights of music by more than 1,500 acts hailing from 33 different countries, performing in over 70 venues. The SXSW according to the Australian Music Office “remains one of the largest, most influential, and most anticipated music events of the year. Artists, agents, promoters, and talent buyers mix and mingle with hundreds of media representatives, managers, legal experts, and other professionals to hear music of every genre and conduct crucial business.” Only MIDEM in France attracted more participants than SXSW in 2006 according to the AIME presentation.
By Tony George (Australian Music Office, Austrade, Los Angeles)
Last updated: 27 September 2007
Australian Music Office overview
The Australian Music Office was formed in August, 2005, as a result of the expansion of resources due to the Australia/US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). The Australian Music Office is a unit within Austrade, the Australian Trade Commission, and is funded by Austrade. The first office to open was the Los Angeles office, based in Century City in the Australian Consulate.
The goal of the Australian Music Office mirrors that of Austrade’s—to help Australian artists and music companies succeed in international business through innovative export initiatives. To date the Australian Music Office has been in touch with or contacted more than 500 Australian artists and music oriented companies (record labels, publishing companies, managers, radio stations, and musical instrument companies) regarding export initiatives. Last year we assisted in over 200 export deals done by Australian artists and companies worldwide.
A major focus of the Australian Music Office is artist development and export advice which includes logistics, visas, grants and funding, shopping of material to labels, publishers, booking agents, entertainment attorneys, film/tv/videogame music supervisors, film/tv pitch agents, producers, managers, internet/new media companies, press and other music industry support groups. The basic goal is to help artists export their material from Australia to other parts of the world.
The Australian Music Office website was launched in 2006, mainly as an export resource for artists that are interested in bringing their art to the world. Specific information that is most commonly accessed on the website would be specialist referrals for visa information, as well as the information regarding grants and funding options that are available to artists that are looking for additional support around touring and promotion. The site is focused on business to business, and its aim is not to compete with consumer sites for Australian music discovery.
The Australian Music Office will also engage in educating the industry through emails, video conference seminars, and handouts that will cover the finer points of visas, music conference overviews, travel, and other common questions that artists might have regarding export of music. We have found response to these programs to be positive and we continue to strive in bringing up to date and pertinent market intelligence to those who need it. Austrade has invested heavily into technology that makes this possible (including state of the art video conferencing in all offices). Currently two ‘bootcamps’ happen each year, one that covers the major conferences around the world, and one specifically to go over South By Southwest, and some of the strategies that are most useful while on the ground in Austin.
Another function that the Australian Music Office engages in is the oversight of Australian presence at many of the music conferences and festivals around the world, including South By Southwest, CMJ, MIDEM, Popkomm, NACA, NXNE, and CMW. Together, along with partners such as the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR), the Australian Performing Right Association (APRA), Immedia!, The Australia Council for the Arts, and State governments from Australia, the Australian Music Office strives to provide programs and initiatives that can make artists’ trip over for festivals and conferences move more smoothly and be more productive. We often will sponsor the trade show stand, throw networking events, and invite taste-makers to shows and events, gain media exposure, and sponsor additional showcases for artists in attendance. We’ve found conferences to be an excellent way for Australians to learn about the market and make the very important connections that networking at conferences provides.
Current Climate for Export
The Australian music industry has a particular hurdle to climb when it comes to exporting music. The ‘tyranny of distance’ as it is sometimes referred to, can present massive roadblocks to networking and touring, two essential elements of the music industry. The costs associated with overcoming this distance is the main issue. Travel costs and visas can be pretty hefty, so most often we recommend that only artists that have the resources to get overseas often, for extended periods of time, attempt to come over and tackle the market. The successes that have happened in recent memory have been mainly touring stories, with such artists as John Butler Trio, Architecture in Helsinki, The Cat Empire and Xavier Rudd building up respectable fan bases over time and mainly on the road, with an absence of significant radio airplay. Other signed artists that have been radio oriented bands, such as Wolfmother and Sick Puppies, got the support of major record label deals after building significant stories thru wildly different means. In the case of Sick Puppies in particular, the band was signed after a YouTube.com video spread virally to millions of potential new fans.
For artists in today’s climate, it is absolutely essential that they build what is referred to in the music industry as a ‘story’. A story is basically a list of varied achievements that people in the industry can refer to as proof that there are potential fans waiting for new music. Some elements of a story could include number of tickets sold in particular venues, number of friends on Myspace, number of EPs or albums or singles sold, key film/tv/videogame placements, large numbers of downloads, or an important or influential executive or producer taking an interest in the project. Without a story, the artist can easily be lumped in with other artists, and is in the unfortunate position of being at the whim of whether a tastemaker likes the music or not. It’s really best to take ‘guesswork’ out of the equation—that is, prove that your songs and material is export ready, because there is evidence that suggests that it will be liked by a large number of people. In the end, a record company wants to know that they will be able to make money from the artists it signs, and what better way to show that than a clear sales ‘story’ that has been achieved outside of the record company? It will also prove in most cases that the artist is hard working, has competent management, is resourceful, and their business is in order—something that is crucial to success.
The advent of the internet has certainly broken down some of the barriers that previously tied the hands of many bands and artists. It has allowed artists to communicate and build fan bases without going thru an intermediary such as a record label. It has allowed artists and bands to sell music and merchandise direct to the consumer. It has allowed artists to build significant online databases of artists, allowing for more effective routing of tours and overall a more satisfying artist/fan relationship. The most amazing part of it all is that it is virtually free, as a cost of business. We are seeing internet marketing plans as an essential link of the story now, equal in weight to touring, radio and press. However, even with phenomena such as the enormous success of YouTube and Myspace, there is still no substitute for the live experience. The live end of the music business is booming, which would indicate that there is still very much a need for the artist and fan to communicate on a more intimate level than a computer screen or iPod. For that reason, it is still essential that artists be excellent live, and pays equal weight to there most important form of promotion, the tour.
The biggest hurdle to touring is obviously the money involved in travel. There are several grants that can be taken advantage of, most of which are outlined here. There is an Austrade grant (EMDG), national funding (from The Australia Council) and State funding (various). Artists should pay close attention to deadlines and make sure their applications are professionally presented.
Visas are obviously another huge issue right now, especially when entering the United States. Our recommendation is to consult with a professional visa attorney or specialist, and work through the various aspects that are unique to each and every artist. Recommendations for visa specialists that work with US issues can be found here.
Other very important developmental points for artist to consider before attempting export are summarized in the bullet points below.
- Have manager come over in advance of bringing the entire band over. Significant networking and market intelligence can be gained thru an informational trip.
- Make sure you appoint a competent manager with good business skills (strong international connections are a plus). An artist can then focus on performance and creative aspects, not logistics and networking.
- Online marketing presence is an absolute must (be savvy, you need to stand out). Make sure to be across new technologies and platforms.
- Have an updated website and myspace page.
- Use artist’s fan base to help spread the word. Fan can be used to do many functions of a street team, helping to spread information about the artist.
- Must have time, dedication, patience and money to invest in US market (3 or 4 visits).
- Bands should consider basing themselves in the US for 6 months – 1 year to make an impact on the market.
- Music hubs in the US are LA, New York and Nashville (for Country music).
For more information please visit the Australian Music Office website.
International free trade and the issues for music and music copyright
By Richard Letts (Music Council of Australia)
Last updated: 23 August 2007
Based on a paper given to the International Association of Music Libraries conference in Sydney, July 2, 2007
In 2005, the General Assembly of UNESCO voted that UNESCO would host a Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, or, for those of us with short attention spans, the Convention for Cultural Diversity. (1)
This Convention has basically two intentions. The first is to give each country the right to ‘cultural sovereignty’ – that is, to protect and promote its own culture or cultures as it sees fit. Well, you may think, doesn’t every country automatically have full cultural sovereignty? – just as it has sovereignty over its territory and its legal system and its education system and so on? I’ll come back to that question.
The second intention of the Convention is to encourage countries to foster cultural diversity within their own borders. Signatories to the Convention are not committing themselves to do so. I suppose you could say that by signing, they agree to allow themselves to be encouraged. As further encouragement, the Convention proposes to set up a fund to support projects that foster cultural diversity. Presumably this fund will be supported by rich signatories for the benefit of poor signatories.
So why do we need a Convention to achieve these two objectives?
Firstly, there seems to be a general agreement that cultural diversity is a good thing but that it is threatened by various changes in the contemporary world. In particular, there is a great concern for traditional arts and crafts. Many of these are threatened with extinction because the social context in which they took seed and whose purposes they served, is changing. Rural life is changing with the introduction of new technologies and people are moving to the cities. There is no use for a rice pounding song if the rice is now milled mechanically. And there may be no-one to sing it if the workers have moved to the city. But even if everyone stayed put in the village, the complaint is that the young are not interested in the traditional music. It’s much cooler to sing the international pop songs promoted by the major transnational record companies.
So secondly, people and countries want to find some way to keep their own culture alive and that can seem to depend upon subduing the influx of foreign songs.
In Australia, decades ago, practically all of the music we listened on the radio came from other countries – firstly the USA, and then beginning with the Beatles, Britain also. Most of the television drama came from the USA, and our national channel was full of British TV drama. Our solution to that has been to impose requirements on broadcasters that they must fill some specified minimum amount of broadcast time with Australian productions. In the case of music broadcasting on radio, the maximum requirement is 25% of the time given to music. The requirement for less popular genres is as little as 5%.
Note that these regulations are not intended to keep foreign music out. There is no specification of the source of the 75% or more still available to foreign music. The purpose is to create some broadcast space in which Australian music can continue to exist. And the mechanism has worked despite a lot of complaining from the radio broadcasters. A fairly healthy recording industry has grown up, which did not exist before. We have done some research that shows the link between airplay and CD sales. Australian artists occasionally make it into the international ratings charts and so on.
It should be noted that in the case of television, the regulations are needed to combat what almost amounts to dumping by the USA. Because of its huge domestic market, US television productions can recover their production costs at home. They are then offered cheaply for export. It would cost Australian TV stations 6 to 10 times more to produce an hour of television drama than they would pay to rent an existing US production. Why would commercial stations produce any local drama when that is the case, were they not required to as a condition of their television station licences?
The argument from a free trade philosophy hangs basically on the concept of comparative advantage. The countries that are the cheapest and most efficient producers of a particular product should be allowed to prevail in the marketplace without hindrance from protective barriers, such as local content requirements, set up by other countries.
On this philosophy, then, we should all vacate the production of television drama to the USA; all the world’s television programs should come from there, because it is the most efficient producer.
But this is plainly ridiculous. It’s one thing to agree that we will open our markets to the most efficient producers of wheat or computers or cars, but another thing altogether to agree to give up our own cultures. We cannot contract with the USA to produce Australia’s culture. Only we can produce Australian culture, and we very much want to do so.
A few years ago, Australia negotiated a so-called free trade agreement with the USA. In our negotiations, the USA objected to these regulations on the grounds that they are a restriction on trade. Those broadcast hours that are reserved for Australian content are ipso facto closed to US content. According to the principles of free trade, to which of course the US religiously adheres, this is a no-no.
As an aside, the US assiduousness in the cause of the principles of free trade in culture are at odds with its practices in other areas. For instance in agriculture, it subsidises its farmers to produce food, subsidises them NOT to produce food, subsidises the exports of food, all of which lower the price of US food compared with the price of food produced elsewhere including the poorest third world countries. In case all of that is insufficient, the US bars or limits admission of foreign-produced food to the US market. If anyone can think of an additional way in which the US can limit free international trade in food, let them now raise their hand.
But going back to the cultural issue, it is pretty clear that the US policies brought to bear in free trade negotiations come pretty directly from the US audio-visual industry, and therefore, incidentally, the copyright owners. It wants to maximise its profits through totally unfettered access to foreign markets.
The effect is that cultural policy in Australia and other countries negotiating trade agreements can be determined by the trade ambitions of another country. This is a bizarre and unacceptable proposition.
I have developed this argument here around the activities of the USA. This might be seen as intemperate and biased. So let me bring in another piece of interesting information.
Before the Convention for Cultural Diversity was to be presented to the General Conference of UNESCO, the USA went to rather extraordinary lengths to derail it or to modify it so that it would have no power. Nevertheless, or perhaps partly because of this, the vote was as follows. 154 countries were present. 148 voted in favour. Four abstained – Australia, shamefully, and three other very small countries whose motives I leave to your speculation. All of two voted against: the USA and Israel.
Furthermore, consider the subsequent history. In order for the Convention to come into force, it had to be ratified or accessioned by 30 countries. This ratification apparently took place faster than for any preceding convention, in March this year. Furthermore, it was said that in order for the Convention to have any sway in the real world, it would need to be ratified by at least 60 countries. Only four months later, it had last week been ratified by 62 countries plus the European Community.
It is reasonable to ask what might have caused such an enthusiastic alliance of virtually the entire world, and opposition to that alliance by, in effect, only one country. And consider that it must have taken a certain amount of courage and resolve for many small client states to vote in a way that clearly the US did not want.
For our purposes, then, I think that we can say that it is the US position in the negotiation of so called free trade agreements that is of special interest and is problematical for most of the rest of the world.
It must be acknowledged that the US has softened its position. It is not insisting on the total abandonment of protection or special treatment for local cultures. It is quite happy for a country to protect its poets, for instance, because there is no money in poetry. It seems not to object to cultural subsidies, probably because it assumes that a country’s enthusiasm for subsidies will be limited. Its own certainly are, with its allocation to the National Endowment for the Arts being a small percentage of the cost of say, one fighter plane. But in any case, it is on unstable ground objecting in principle to subsidies when its own practices, in say agriculture, are so thorough-going.
Most interestingly, though, it is now willing to concede that countries might be able, for instance, to retain some protective measures in the audio-visual realm (and it is that realm that is its greatest concern) in the interests of the survival of a local culture. So Australia was able to retain a right to a local music quota on radio (although it can never exceed the present level, and if it is ever reduced, it can never be increased again even to the level currently in place.) South Korea built a very healthy film industry by requiring cinemas to include in the programs not less than a certain percentage of local films. This was called a ‘screen quota’. The US took direct aim at this regulation and actually said that unless the Koreans removed it, the whole trade agreement would be called off. It was a long and traumatic fight and Korea did back big time, although I think it has still been able to retain a local film quota, but at a lower level.
These concessions have been accompanied sometimes by words of soothing understanding. Of course we poor things would like to maintain our own cultures. The Americans understand that.
I was talking with a man who was Australian Trade Minister at the time of the Uruguay Round in the early nineties. He told me that even back then, the real position of the US was that it was willing to let go some of the provisions that I have spoken about because it saw that they were linked to obsolescent technology. They would simply disappear along with the technology, in the not too distant future. The real game would be in the digital realm. In the digital realm, the Americans were determined that there would be no barriers created for their product.
It is interesting, then, that in the Australia/US Free Trade Agreement, the section that deals with ‘new media’, renamed ‘interactive media’, allows Australia to take steps to protect local culture, but they are so hedged about with provisions and qualifications that it would be a brave Australian government that would ever attempt to take any action.
True, it is not clear how we might go about supporting local culture accessed through the digital realm. It may not be possible, who knows. But in the negotiation of the agreement, the Australians proposed that Australian-based providers of film or music on demand could be obliged to reserve what we called ‘shelf-space’ for local product. The consumer could and of course should not be forced to purchase local productions. But at least we could try to ensure that they are available.
The Americans refused point blank to agree to this apparently harmless measure.
I mention also in passing that the US seems to have shifted its energies to getting bilateral agreements rather than multilateral agreements under the WTO. This is not a good thing for smaller countries because the negotiating partnership is so unequal. The benefits to the partners in the Australia/US agreement seem so far to be rather unequal.
Copyright. I think the proposals came from the US side.
The first concerned technical protection measures. The thrust here was to criminalise attempts or successes in evading the measures. It is interesting that so short a time afterwards, the world has moved on and copyright owners are focusing more on other ways of securing their property.
The second was to legislate to make internet service providers liable for file swapping and other activities that evaded payment of royalties on the use of copyright material.
The third was the extension of the copyright term from 50 years, as it was at that time in Australia, to 70 years. I expect that you have heard this referred to as the “Disney Amendment”, for obvious reasons. However, it should be noted that the desire for extension of term does not come from copyright owners only in the USA.
All three of those copyright proposals are clearly in the interests of the copyright owners.
A fourth proposal was that Australia should adopt the US Fair Use system for free use of copyright materials. This deals more in the areas of special interest to libraries and copyright users.
Australia already had a system we call Fair Dealing.
The Music Council of Australia, with a Council of 50 including both copyright owners and copyright users (such as libraries) was invited to make a submission to government on this issue.
We opposed the introduction of a Fair Use system because we believed that for the most part, our constituency would be disadvantaged.
Under the Australian fair dealing system, Parliament, representing the people, establishes the law and the courts apply and sometimes interpret it. Under the American fair use system, Parliament would step back to a degree, providing only an open-ended list of types of use that may be considered as ‘fair’; in effect, the courts then are left to establish the detail of the law, case by case. Because each case considers a balance of particular circumstances, the outcomes may or may not be directly transferable to subsequent, even similar cases. So while the courts are on the one hand writing the law, it is in a context in which uncertainty is inherent.
Those best placed and most likely to take a case to court, and to persist with it through to a conclusion are well-resourced corporations and individuals, including multinational corporations based outside Australia. The great majority of Australians are not so well enabled financially, and even the largest Australian organisations are minnows alongside the transnational corporations that still so dominate the music industry. In many (though of course, not all) cases the parties to a court action may be very unequal in their access to resources to fight a case. It is acknowledged that the courts will act expertly and in good faith to see justice done. Nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to suppose that some advantage does not lie with those who can most afford to pursue these legal means.
To the extent that the courts are used to decide Fair Use issues, there could accumulate a body of case law somewhat biased to the interests of, for instance, large corporations. We hoped that this would not be the case were Parliament to continue to decide the law as is the case under a Fair Dealing regime.
As noted, in the Fair Use system, a measure of uncertainty is inherent. Under the open-ended US system it can be very difficult to understand one’s position under copyright law. For instance, there was at least one case where a decision of a lower court was reversed on appeal to a higher court, and then reversed again on re-appeal to a still higher court. Such a situation is again to the disadvantage of the less resourced party who may, for instance, be unable to proceed to appeal. This uncertainty is especially disadvantageous to the ordinary person or small organisation that can be charged with a breach made inadvertently.
A large corporation may have taken liberties with copyright materials owned by a less wealthy party. But the latter takes considerable risk in mounting a legal challenge, however well justified. True, if there is no challenge there is no new case law – but then industry practice may be altered simply by custom without any consideration of the merits.
Obversely, a less wealthy party may have taken liberties with copyright material owned by a more wealthy party, and be taken to court for that. If the less wealthy party has knowingly breached copyright, he may simply be made to pay for a deliberate transgression. But as noted, under Fair Use, it can be very difficult to know whether or not one is within the law and a breach may have been inadvertent. The less wealthy party could even be used as the fall guy in a legal experiment by the more wealthy party in order to consolidate some aspect of copyright ownership.
The Australian government’s Issues Paper reported that some parties see the introduction of Fair Use as a counterbalance on behalf of copyright consumers to other reinforcements of copyright such as the 20-year extension to the copyright term. However, it is possible to rectify any imbalance through Fair Dealing amendments that grant additional exceptions or limitations. A remedy is achievable not only through a fair use system.
So, in conclusion, that is why the Music Council did not support the introduction of the Fair Use system into Australia.
And also in conclusion, I hope I have been able to shed some light on how culture fares in international trade negotiations and some of the copyright issues that are likely to arise.
(1) Based on economic theory, Hans Hoegh-Guldberg’s paper elsewhere in this knowledge base, Cultural capital as an economic force, demonstrates that both tangible and intangible cultural capital influence economic growth in their own right. Cultural diversity is recognised as a positive economic force whereas diminution of cultural diversity has the opposite effect. Protecting cultural diversity, as the present paper argues should be done, is therefore important for economic reasons.
