The 100 Years of Copyright Festival organised by the Berlin cultural centre Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) provided a platform to discuss the health of the creative ecosystem. HKW asked who represented the interests of the artists and consumers in negotiations of the future conditions for creative work? How is cultural production impaired when copyright and artistic freedom are played against one another?
I was invited to contribute to the festival through a workshop, at a panel with other industry representatives, and in writing, on the edited collection accompanying the festival. I was joined at the panel entitled Music and Copyright, Money and Morals by Professor John Street (University of East Anglia), Helen Smith (IMPALA) and dub music producer Mad Professor.
In the article entitled ‘The record industry as a winner-take-all market: policy implications for UK performers’, I demonstrate that there are stark differences in the interests of the legal category of performers, who can most notably be divided between featured and non-featured artists. My recommendation to policy-makers is that these differences need to be taken into account when designing policies and passing regulation benefiting performers.