The music industry has transformed itself into a predominantly digital, growing industry. To achieve this, record companies have worked tirelessly to adapt, innovate, and invest, to drive a new digital age for music. However, for this positive development to be sustainable, there must be a fair digital marketplace where all the participants play by the same fair rules.
The sustainable and balanced growth of the digital content market continues to be undermined by a fundamental flaw in legislation underpinning the market that has created a ‘value gap’, a mismatch between the value that online user upload services, such as YouTube, extract from music and the revenue returned to the music community.
It is currently the biggest policy challenge facing the music industry. For music to thrive in a digital world, those that are creating and investing in music must be able to negotiate fair commercial terms for its use. Furthermore, digital music services that are licensing music on freely negotiated terms, must be allowed to compete on a level playing field – something they currently do not have.
The global music community is united in its call to fix the value gap and is campaigning around the world for a legislative solution.