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Major chiefs reckon Queen’s speech is a deadline for P2P action
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 17 September 2009
By the way, EMI as well as Sony had meetings this week to lobby the managers of their artists on the P2P issue. As previously reported, the majors are very keen to talk artists and managers who oppose measures to suspend the net connections of persistent file-sharers around to their way of thinking, or at least to shut them up while government gives serious consideration to such proposals.
It seems that the top guard at most of the majors see the government’s sudden change of heart on the file-sharing debate as a major but very short-lived window of opportunity. The consensus seems to be that if things haven’t moved on sufficiently for anti-P2P legislation to be included in the Queen’s Speech in November then the opportunity will be lost, given the political system will shut down next May for a General Election and then there may well be a whole new gang in government. The major label chiefs fear that if there’s too much public disagreement in the music community on the issue, government types will get cold feet and the Queen’s Speech deadline will be missed.
It will be interesting to see if said major label chiefs also realise that their own actions regarding the aforementioned Virgin Media and Sky all-you-can-eat download services could have an impact on this. Even supportive ministers need strong signs that the record industry is seriously considering radical new business models to make music available online before pushing more draconian anti-P2P measures onto the statute book.
Pointing to deals with iTunes, MySpace and Spotify may not be enough, and if EMI, Sony and Warner scupper Virgin Media’s all-you-can-eat ambitions – just as the Queen’s Speech is being written – the major chiefs may find it’s their decisions rather that the Featured Artist Coalition’s statements that closes the window of opportunity without any change in the law.
