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.

This Wired UK article explains:

But a government-backed, independent review of copyright doesn’t agree. A 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property said, “The European Commission should retain the length of protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights at 50 years”

In its conclusion, the review says, “it is our view that a term extension will likely result in a net loss to UK society as a whole”, arguing that while retrospective extensions would line the pockets of the largest record producers, money to individual performers would be minimal and the cost to the consumer would be massive.

But that report has mattered little, as regulators in the EU have given the thumbs up to extending copyright terms to 70 years. On 12 September 2011, a Council of Ministers will have the final say and if they rubber-stamp the changes, member states will be required to write them into law by 2014.

What this might mean is that people who played on the tiny fraction of recordings from over 50 years ago that are still commercially viable may be able to sustain a trickle of income from it. If they were 25 when they played guitar on a pop hit that still shows up on compilations, they might be able to buy themselves a beer as a result of that in their 90s. Hooray.

Of course, most of them won’t because the deals they signed at the time means that virtually all income returns to the major labels instead. But let’s leave that inconvenient fact aside for a moment.

What this also means is that the overwhelming majority of music from over 50 years ago that is NOT commercially exploited by the major record labels also remains out of the public domain. And because it is still owned by the labels, it is retained in their vaults. On magnetic tape. Decaying – never to be heard again.

Deleted by legislation.

As Steve Lawson points out, the compositions are still life of the author plus 70 years, so reissuing the recordings in the public domain would generate more for the songwriters. But this decision is not made for the benefit of songwriters, composers, audiences, music researchers or for the benefit of culture.

It is a profoundly anti-music decision.

Worse, the Musicians Union – a body purporting to represent the interests of their members – have decided to side with the BPI in their support of this copyright extension, confirming their status as pro-popstar, pro-corporate entertainment complex and pro-copyright maximisation… but utterly anti-music, and anti-musician.

I know some good people in the MU, and I can think of good reasons to be a member. But at a public policy level, the Musicians Union has become complicit in some of the worst decisions and campaigns that are not to the benefit of their members at all, but solely for the good of the corporate record industry.

I don’t think they have been fooled by BPI rhetoric. I don’t think they’re stupid. I didn’t say “deluded” – I said “complicit”.

So the question becomes… why?

These days he lives in Bangkok doing all manner of interesting things, but he still dabbles. On his blog this week, he talks about an email he received from Google…

Last year – whilst hunting through junk – I found a disc of old punk video footage. Amongst it was the video in that YouTube clip. I contacted the band members and, with their approval, uploaded it. I guess I thought I was in the clear. Nothing on that video actually came from the album, and even if it had done so, I had written approval from the band, who now own the copyright in all recordings.

Warners have never owned it. Ever. Never.

Unfortunately Warner Music Group don’t see it that way. Without any proof, legal right, paperwork or substance, they’ve claimed the rights to that (and another similar Toy Love video uploaded with permission) and, according to the letter, they have the right now to run advertising with the video if they want. In other words, they’ve stolen the clip’s copyright from Toy Love and are now asserting a right to profit from something they don’t own.

Piracy is a good word for that. It has currency these days.

The whole post is worth a read. He’s rightly angry.

Both Warner Music and Sony Music Entertainment have asserted copyright ownership of things they do not have any claim to, and have gone about removing it, taking away public access to it, and attempting to profit from it through advertising revenue where it is available.

This is not an administrative oversight. This is a business strategy. They’re not just deleting their own music through neglect – they’re actively seeking and destroying everyone else’s wherever they think they can get away with it.

Little Miss Sunshiine #27 feat. Jazzman by Laid Back on Mixcloud

My friend Orsii from the Little Miss Sunshine show on Laid Back Radio talks to Gerald from Jazzman – a man who collects the rarest and coolest of records from around the world and makes them available through his reissue label – always with the artists’ permission, and often as a result of great personal effort and a good amount of detective work.

Amazing stuff contained within. Listen and enjoy a whole lot of things you might never otherwise hear.

This is the furthest reach of the stuff I’m talking about on this site, incidentally. This is the stuff that is being deleted, and without heroes like Gerald – none of it would survive at all. It’s not all this great of course, but some of it is.

This bit leapt out at me:

Gil Matthews is probably best known as the drummer for Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, but he has also built a solid business giving many classic Australian albums new life on CD. Since 2005 the label Aztec Music has released about 60 titles, each with high-quality packaging and a 28-page booklet, creating a business with a yearly turnover of about $250,000. ”There are an incredible number of titles we could release if we had the time,” says Matthews. ”If we had a catalogue of 300 titles, this would be close to a million-dollar business.”

Each release is a painstaking process, requiring Matthews to go back to the ageing master tapes — or even vinyl if tapes are unavailable — and restore them for the digital format. ”Sometimes it can take 40 hours alone to remove all the clicks and pops from the original source — it’s almost a labour of love,” says Matthews.

It sounds like the kind of labour of love that might economically justify opening up the vaults, seeing what’s in there and figuring out if there is, in the first instance, a commercial imperative for reissuing back catalogue that major labels have more or less locked away to rot because they don’t feed the new release, promo, popstar machine.

Yes there is some healthy activity in the area of reissues (both physical and digital), but these tend to be the perennial moneymakers and still-active artists that can leverage big money at corporate levels of turnover. But cottage industry outfits like that of Matthews could be more than sustainable on the number of units that less well-remembered artists might sell – and not only would this create economic value, grow the industry, put more music in more hands and return money to artists… but it would also rescue some significant works of cultural heritage from inevitable decay.

Of course, for this to work, licences would need to be worked out, vault inventories would need to be made available, and – ideally – copyright laws would need to be changed to include a use-it-or-lose-it clause that would incentivise the major labels to maximise the value hidden in their own coffers.

But there’s a lot of catching up to do. This book has been somewhat on the back burner because of three other book projects I have on the go. One was entirely unconnected: it was about whisky, and I have completed my contribution to that particular work. Another is an introduction to the Music Industries for undergraduate students. That’s called Understanding The Music Industries. I’ve written quite a bit of it, but I still have a way to go on that. The other is one I’ve just started called Radio in the Digital Age. I’m quite excited about that one.

But this one here is a labour of love. I have no book contract. I have, as yet, not set structure to the book. All I know is that there should be one, and if I don’t write it, it’s likely that nobody else will – and so I’m collecting my thoughts here.

To encourage me along a bit, I have given the site a bit of a facelift so that I feel more inclined to pop in and express my thoughts. But the problem hasn’t fixed itself in the meantime. Masses of recordings are still slowly rotting away in the vaults, never to be heard again.

So… I think I have some work to do…

News today that Guy Hands has lost his case in court means that bankruptcy seems likely and Citigroup will no doubt sell off the assets to the highest bidder.

That includes, as everyone points out, the lucrative publishing arm of the business. What doesn’t get talked about so much is the archive of all the old master tapes of the back catalogue. And I’m not just talking about the Beatles.

I sort of half-joked when all this started to look like a problem that the British Government should nationalise EMI. Now I’m not joking.

I said:

After all, a case could be made that things that are of significant worth to the British public, economically and culturally speaking, should theoretically be in the ownership of the British public. Especially when those assets are under serious threat as a result of private ownership mismanagement and ‘market conditions’.

Rather than have the rights to some of the most important British cultural treasures in the hands of a billionaire tax exile, a private equity firm and a transnational bank – and in imminent danger of having them simply flogged off to who knows where just to dispense with what has become, in financial terms, a ‘toxic asset’ – it would make sense to put them into public ownership.

Honestly, I don’t care if EMI ever releases another record. What’s important is that the full history of that label (and not just the things currently available in stores) be preserved properly and made available as a cultural treasure for the British people.

There’ll be a firesale price. Pay it, fold the money-losing recording company, release the artists from their contracts, and keep the archives.

My pick? Give it to the BBC and put it in the care of Tony Ageh with specific instructions to make sure it’s digitised, kept indefinitely and made available. Give them the publishing wing while you’re at it, to pay for the cost of digitisation, preservation, curation and stewardship.

And make sure they understand (as Ageh seems to) that ownership by the BBC means ownership by the public. And that means that the recordings themselves are fast-tracked into the public domain.

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UPDATE: Just to be absolutely clear – there’s a strong possibility that if the company is stripped of assets, whoever ends up with the old reels of tape is just as likely to bin or burn those that are not potential sources of revenue. For a commercial investor, a tape in a vault represents little more than an expense. And for the vast majority of what’s in there, these are the only decent copies in existence.

This is well worth a read. The man who gave us iPlayer and Wired UK gave a presentation this past week about the BBC Archives. He talks about a digital public space for public content – and also says almost exactly what I said the following day at the Like Minds conference about curation: “what’s interesting is not up to me”.

Read the full text of his presentation here.

Read the Guardian article here.

“Out of such rude and unpromising clay – and his scores of interviews, research in the archives of professionals and amateurs, pursuing the narrative in Australia and listening to hundred of hours of music – Bourke has shaped a book remarkable in its breadth and historical accuracy, and rich in its its story-telling.

[...]

“Blue Smoke is a beautifully presented book which is reference text, bedside-table read and coffee table page-turner in one.

“Chris Bourke has given us back an important part of our musical and social history, the soundtrack of which was in danger of being lost or barely audible.”

Read the whole review.

Looking forward to reading that.

Now he’s been chosen to help select 25 new entries each year into the National Recording Registry at the US National Library of Congress.

Read the BBC article here.