Copyright (Rights and Remuneration of Musicians, Etc.) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, including some small earnings as a musician, and my membership of the Musicians’ Union and its financial support at election time. I also declare my membership of the Ivors Academy, which represents the interests of songwriters and composers.

Having taken an interest in the music industry over the 20 years that I have been in the House, including completing a fellowship with the Industry and Parliament Trust on the music industry, at one time or another I have probably crossed paths, and attended events, with almost every organisation that is interested in the Bill and its proposals. Some in the industry like to hide the wiring with bright lights and promises, but as policy makers we should want to get this right for our wonderful British creators, the bedrock of the music industry. Let me make clear from the outset that my interest is not to pursue a party political battle, but to work across the House, and across the sector, with anyone who is interested in achieving better remuneration for musicians, songwriters and composers in this new and exciting era of music streaming.

When I was first elected to the House, the music industry was encountering an existential crisis. The new digital technology of file sharing meant that, for the first time in history, it was possible to copy and share recorded music instantly, at zero cost, with no physical medium required. That led some to question whether it would ever again be possible for creators to earn money from their recorded music, and over the years it brought a steep decline in revenue to the music industry.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), who is in his place on the other side of the Chamber, my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and I are occasionally together in a musical enterprise called MP4. All of us as a group, including our former colleague Ian Cawsey, argued strongly at the time—this was one of the reasons we put the group together, apart from to have fun—that it was vital for the UK economy and for creators that we supported the music industry in its efforts to protect, extend and enforce copyright, and to develop new technologies to allow for safe, legal and monetised consumption of music so that rights holders and creators could be paid. Across parties, we supported the preservation of intellectual property when some flirted with the anarchy of piracy.

Eventually, that new technology came along, first with legal downloading and then with streaming on services such as Spotify and Apple Music, which I know many right hon. and hon. Members are familiar with—so much so that that is now the dominant way in which people consume music across the world, and particularly here in the UK. It makes up more than 70% of UK recorded music revenues, generating hundreds of millions of pounds of new revenue for the UK music industry.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill. Many people watching the debate may think it is purely about the household stars and that we are arguing over people who are already wealthy. Yesterday, however, I met a viola player who has played on 20,000 different records that are online but does not receive a single penny for those contributions. Is not my hon. Friend’s Bill not just for the household stars but for every single musician out there?

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and I will go on to explain why. It is interesting that orchestra players often receive nothing when their music is streamed. In fact, sometimes the only person who receives money is the only person who does not make any noise—namely the conductor of the orchestra. That is yet another irony of the system that we are discussing.

Let us be clear: streaming is an incredible technology. It enables us to have almost the entire catalogue of the world’s music in our pockets. To those of us who grew up in an analogue world, carrying around 12-inch vinyl copies of the latest David Bowie album under our arms, it is nothing short of miraculous that we can play music in this way. But artists and songwriters have not had the same boon from this new windfall as the major record companies.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill. Does he agree that it is a scandal that artists are getting perhaps a quarter of what the big record labels are getting from streaming services? As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) said, we are not talking only about the stars, but about people such as music students looking for a career in music, as well as songwriters and performers. Many in my constituency, where the cost of living is extremely high, are getting no money and they have just had a terrible two years.

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I want those young people to have the possibility to earn at least some part of their living from recorded music and not to have to rely entirely on live music. I will go on to develop that point further.

Before he does, will the hon. Member give way?

I will just make one further point and then I will give way to the right hon. Member.

I was saying that artists and songwriters had not had the same boon. I think Members across the House will be staggered to know that the chairman and chief executive officer of one of the three major corporations that dominate the market of recorded music is set to receive more income this year—£153 million, according to industry press reports—than every songwriter and composer in the UK combined, including the rich ones, will receive from the streaming of their music in this country. Such facts, and the desperate plight of musicians who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) was just saying, have been unable to perform live due to covid, have triggered close scrutiny of exactly what is going on with the economics of music streaming.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his Bill and I am happy to support it. I hope that it gets Government support at some stage, if not necessarily today, because we should all see this as an important part of the levelling-up agenda. That agenda will never achieve the things that we want it to unless it addresses the imbalance of power between big corporates on the one hand and the individual and the small business on the other. That is at the heart of his Bill, and it is why all those who purport to support levelling up should support it today.

The right hon. Gentleman is right; our duty as politicians is not only to utter rhetoric occasionally, but to turn it into reality. In the case of the music industry, he is absolutely right that this is a levelling-up measure.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the Bill. Does he share the concerns of some that, although the Bill might increase the income of some artists, there is a real danger that other artists in the sector might see their income fall and that that might affect investment?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; I know that a series of points have been made about the Bill, and I will come on to that point later.

My Bill largely endeavours to bring into law measures that were proposed in a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee report from earlier this year. I pass on to the House the apologies of the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who cannot come here today because he has a constituency emergency. The report, titled “Economics of music streaming”, was unanimously agreed, cross-party, after many months of hearings with witnesses from all parts of the music industry and after hundreds of written submissions on the subject were received. I think it is fair to say that my fellow Committee members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), who is sitting close by me today, were staggered—perhaps those who had not been particularly attentive to music industry issues—by some evidence that they heard and by the seeming unwillingness of those at the top of the music industry to acknowledge the problems that we uncovered, and to act to put them right and rebalance the music industry to support creatives.

I welcome the fact that one of the three majors, Sony, did at least agree to pay unrecouped artists with pre-2000 contracts some money when their music is streamed. Sadly, the other big two, Warner and Universal, have not followed suit, and in the latter case, a public share offering has been issued that will result in the extraordinary £153 million pay-out to the company’s boss, at a time when many artists have been struggling to pay their rent, as we heard in evidence.

I want to outline for the House the main measures in my Bill. It extends the existing Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to modernise the law for the new world of music streaming. One of the features of streaming technology, which I am sure hon. Members are familiar with, is that when someone plays a piece of music on a streaming service, it is not quite the same as the action of choosing to play a record, but neither is it quite the same as listening passively to music on the radio. How this is treated in law is crucial, because it affects how much artists and songwriters get paid.

As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, I worked in commercial radio for more than 20 years and spent much of my time negotiating with record labels as part of a working group. I think that UK musicians are being devalued, and I do not think that there are fair earnings, but I think that ad-funded streaming services are not paying fairly for the music that drives them. That is the issue that we really should tackle.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his well-informed intervention. He is right that there is an issue with ad-funded streaming services and the rates that they pay. The Committee concluded that the fix that I am proposing today was the best way to build on existing UK law to rectify the matter, but there is an issue with how much streaming services pay and with how much they are paid by record companies: about 30%, after the Chancellor has his bit, of the cut from the subscription we pay and the ad revenues. It is a valid point, but the Committee concluded unanimously across the parties that this is the best way forward.

My Bill, as recommended by the Select Committee, would provide performers on a recording with a right to an unwaivable payment or equitable remuneration when their music is streamed, akin to the existing right in radio and broadcast. Importantly, it would not take away the right of labels to value their exclusive rights, which would remain intact. Nor would it dictate what the value of any remuneration should be; that is best settled, as it is now, by agreement between the parties. However, it would make it clear that the payment is an additional payment and could be referred to the existing copyright tribunal where there is a difference of opinion.

I thank the hon. Member for this important debate. In what way would these proposals help in the situation in which Dame Vera Lynn found herself? She was one of the most loved entertainers and icons in the country, yet when there was a revival of some of her most famous and beloved songs, she did not receive royalties under her contract, which had been conceived and signed before the internet had even been considered and built. I would be grateful if we explored that point.