Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A proposal to help struggling musicians

: "With the support of local authorities and perhaps the extravagantly-funded Regional Development Agencies, such schemes could be sponsored by the music business itself, with contributions from the mechanical collection agencies (who have stockpiles of undistributed royalties, much of which is collected on behalf of obscure artists); major record companies (whose enormous profits are partly generated by voracious feeding on talent nurtured by the independent sector); and free download sites such as YouTube and MySpace (whose entire business model is based on exploiting free content generated by its users).

A good example of what can be achieved for relatively little is in Wrexham, north Wales, where an inspired collaboration between the Live Music Forum, the local council, the Welsh Development Agency and the music business (which provided an impressive array of equipment and instruments free of charge) saw the fitting out of two low-cost rehearsal rooms (free to under 18s) that, in under a year, have already been used by close to 20,000 young musicians.

The economics of the live scene could be transformed by a cut in rates for small venues that put on music combined with an outlawing of the extortionate practice by which many venues charge bands for use of their in-house amplification system."


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