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It’s the logo that really matters
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 25 March 2010
So, it turns out the Music Matters campaign launched yesterday is rather more confusing than we originally thought, which is a shame for something that has seemingly been set up with the aim of presenting the wider world with a nice simple message regarding music piracy, and why people should pay for music rather than nicking it.
Actually, at the core of the project is a Music Matters logo – or “trustmark” if you like stupid words that no one understands – which licensed download stores and streaming services are now carrying to communicate to their customers that they are a legit digital music operation paying labels and publishers and artists and songwriters for the music they use.
This is a decidedly sensible idea, which we’ve suggested here in CMU on several occasions in the past, most recently when professional moaners Consumer Focus released that research which claimed the average consumer had no idea which digital music services were legal and which ones were not.
Unfortunately, the music matters’ logo is a bit rubbish, the words “music matters” doing little to communicate the all important message to the uninitiated web-user, that “this shit is legal”. But still, that a logo exists and has been adopted by most legit digital operations is a step in the right direction.
So far, so simple. The reason we got so confused about the Music Matters campaign, though, is that all the publicity surrounding the launch of the logo seemed to focus on the previously reported Future Shorts-coordinated animated films which tell the stories of eight artists from the last century, from Blind Willie Johnson to Sigur Rós.
In reality the videos are a means to an end to promote the ‘trustmark’, but instead the trustmark seemed tagged on as a side thought to an undeniably interesting short film project. Which is why our initial report, like all the initial publicity, focused entirely on the Future Shorts-led videos and not at all on the industry-led initiative to clarify to the public which digital music services are legal.
The videos themselves are, I think, also meant to convince punters that they should access music from licensed and ‘trustmarked’ digital services rather than downloading tunes from Limewire or via The Pirate Bay or nicking them off a mate’s computer. Unfortunately, while lovely to watch and very well made, the videos fall well short of communicating this message.
Half of them focus more on ‘why music mattered’ to the creators being documented than why their music mattered to others, and even those that do explain why music matters to the wider world – to bring together communities in times of strife, to promote love and peace etc – don’t then go onto explain why this means you should pay to access music rather than taking it for free.
Presumably the message the project hopes to get across is this: Good music costs money, so if you want good music tomorrow you need to pay for good music today. But none of this is communicated in the videos, or the accompanying website.
Music Matters is seemingly an effort to create an anti-piracy campaign that involves credible artists, and which avoids the temptation to compare file-sharing music fans to car thieves. This is a good thing. The problem is, the ‘file-sharing is evil’ message has been replaced with a load of wishy washy nonsense which will communicate little to its target audience.
Not that it’s really clear who that target audience is. The sorts of people who will be attracted by arty videos featuring Sigur Rós, John Martyn, The Jam and Louis Armstrong are probably some of the record industry’s best customers already, while the file-sharing kids or Magic listeners who are new to the digital music thing won’t give the Music Matter’s website a second look.
So like I say, very confusing. Music Matters: a lovely art project, a sensible if slightly rubbish ‘trustmark’ initiative, and a rather poor communication campaign.
