I had a great chat with Steve Lawson last night. He’s one of my partners in New Music Strategies. You may know him as @solobasssteve.

Steve has moved from London to Birmingham and is now basically my neighbour – which is great, because although we chat to each other all the time on the internet, now we can sit down and do some solid work together more often – and one of the things we’ve decided to collaborate on is this project: Deleting Music.

It’s something that’s important to both of us, and although it’s been a bit of a ‘back burner’ project for a while now, a couple of things have happened recently that mean a collaboration would be a good and timely idea.

First – the EU copyright extension which comes into effect in Britain today means that the problem, while already critical and urgent, has just become profoundly worse.

Second, some information has come to light that we think warrants serious investigation – and it’s not something I have as much time to give attention to as I’d like. In addition, my other writing commitments have expanded exponentially over the past few months, and so any help with this labour of love (can we call it a ‘mission’?) that I can get is massively appreciated.

But the other thing about Steve is that he’s absolutely the perfect person to be talking and thinking about this stuff. He’s a thoughtful critic of music copyright policy in the digital age, he’s a prolific blogger, a well-connected individual in the arts policy sector… and he’s a musician – someone for whom this stuff has a direct impact on his life, his livelihood, his art and his legacy.

Also, he’s clever with words.

So, step one is complete. Steve is now all signed up to blog on this site, where we’re collecting ideas, reports and information. Step two will be to figure out exactly what the output of this is, how we’re going to develop and support it – and step three will be to figure out the work plan. And there is much work to do.

I’m really excited about this development, because now Deleting Music shifts up a few gears, and we’re going to be working toward something tangible. It also means that whatever the finished work ends up being, it’ll be a vastly superior piece of work because of Steve’s involvement.