UK Music Industry Unites Against Piracy

As part of efforts to combat piracy, a new umbrella organization has been formed to represent the entire British music industry. The organization recently committed to a five-year plan which has been aimed at assisting this battered sector play things a lot safer.

Up until this point, music predators have been able to get their way largely due to the fact that the UK music industry did not present a very united front. Those bodies that have represented the industry have been confusing and have had very different viewpoints, resulting in very little actually being done to protect members of the music industry on the various levels. However it seems all that is about to change.

Former Undertones lead singer and music policy lobbyist Feargal Sharkey is the chief executive of the new organization. Sharkey announced that the group would present a united front for the music industry, enabling the industry as a whole to lobby policymakers and to talk coherently to the press on various issues. He also remarked that the organization would mark “a bold new chapter for the UK’s commercial music industry.” The organization has already started to tackle issues such as the extension of the current copyright term which is limited to 50 years and being more submissive to the government with regards to illegal file sharing.

The founding members of the organization include all the major names in the business, such as The Association of Independent Music, the Music Managers Forum, the BPI, The British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, The Music Publishers Association, the MCPS-PRS Alliance and the Musicians Union and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). The still relatively new Features Artist’s Coalition has also been invited to join the board. The organization has been appropriately named UK Music – a broad name that embraces the scope of the roles the organization hopes to play in the industry. Apart from amending some of the current legislative rules and combating piracy, the organization hopes to act as a central point for all the education, skills work, research and analysis that is undertaken by the various members belonging to UK Music.

According to Sharkey, the various music moguls realized that “we all agree with each other 95% of the time.” Therefore coming together to form a united front against the many issues that plague the industry was the next logical step in the process. All eyes will now be watching UK Music as it gets underway and starts to implement some of its first strategies.