Martin Goldschmidt, Managing Director of the Cooking Vinyl Group, used his keynote speech at The Great Escape in Brighton on Friday to call for direct tax breaks for music production from the UK Government.
Goldschmidt explained: “The tax breaks that currently exist to help the music industry actually give the tax break to private investors. As exists for other creative industries, why not also have a scheme that gives the break directly to music?”
“Support would be best targeted as a tax break for recorded music production. Many of the tax breaks offered to film, video games, theatre and now orchestras were designed in part to mitigate the damage done by piracy and market failure.
“But what creative industry has been hit harder by online piracy than recorded music?”
Goldschmidt encouraged the Government to direct tax relief in the direction of recording studios, who he suggested had suffered the most in the post-Napster years.
“Record companies have been hit hard, but recording studios and their workers have been hit the hardest.”
Martin Goldschmidt, Cooking Vinyl
“Record companies have been hit hard, but recording studios and their workers have been hit hardest,” he said.
“This is about putting value back into the whole recording ecosystem of studios, session players and importantly, self-funding artists. Given music’s leading export value, the move would make clear economic sense.
“More importantly it makes cultural sense – as an industry, we’ve grown very risk-averse in terms of what gets signed, what gets played on the radio. Let’s get help to fund more of culturally diverse, crazy, exciting stuff that so often gains wild popularity.”
Goldschmidt said it was vital that the music industry delivers a clear message to Government: “The reason the tax break currently goes to the financial services industry and not the music industry is that we fight among ourselves and are very bad at talking to government.
“We have to have the discussions behind closed doors, agree the common ground and send a unified message to government .”
Other speakers at the session included Martin Elbourne (Co-Founder, The Great Escape), Meredith Cork (Artist Manager, Yellowbrick Music) and artist Dan Le Sac.Music Business Worldwide
