Yesterday the organizers of one of Europe’s largest music conferences “Popkomm” publicly announced its cancellation for 2009. Originally it was to take place in September at “Station Berlin”. In an official press statement Ralf Kleinhenz, Managing Director of Popkomm Gmbh gave the following reasons for cancelling this year’s event:
“A situation that was becoming clear early this year at Midem in Cannes also seems to be affecting Popkomm in Berlin. Despite positive reactions to the new event location and a satisfactory number of bookings by exhibitors, because of the economic situation we anticipate a considerable decline in trade visitor attendance. Out of responsibility towards the exhibitors we have therefore decided to postpone Popkomm for one year.”
While this reads like a reference to the overall economic crisis, Dieter Gorny, head of the Association of the German Music Industry, tried to reframe the cancellation into a political statement later that day:
“The digital crisis fully hits the music industry. Because of Internet piracy many companies cannot afford to take part at the Popkomm any longer. […] We want to point the way that politics finally must act to stop theft of intellectual property on the net.” (Handelsblatt, translation L.D.)
This strategy of blaming Internet piracy for all of the music industry’s problems is not new. For years this is the chorus sung by music industry representatives whenever there is bad news. But probably piracy is too good an excuse: if one has the impression that business models and strategies are only threatened by criminals and would work otherwise, this may not be the best starting point for (self-)critical reflexion and innovation. Couldn’t it be that the music industry fails in coping with digital challenges because its major proponents have a “perfect excuse” for their management failures? In a way, their defeatism might thus performatively cause their eventual defeat. Just consider this an alternative explanation.
(leonhard)
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February 25, 2010 at 10:21
The “Series” Series (2): “How Evil is File-sharing?” @ musikwirtschaftsforschung «
[…] the music industry. Unsurprisingly, new practices such as online file-sharing (see also: “Internet Piracy: A Perfect Excuse?“) play an important role in his research as well as on his blog, where he started a series […]
April 25, 2010 at 20:10
Free Culture Research Conference 2010 in Berlin «
[…] April 25, 2010 in Copyright Regulation | Tags: Berlin, conference, Free Culture Research Conference | by leonidobusch Not least because of ongoing research projects in the field of copyright regulation, nearly half of all posts that have been published in this blog so far fall into this category. Among the issues discussed are private regulation in form of digital rights management (“DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“) or alternative licensing (“Alternative Licensing: Subverting or Supporting Copyright?“), copyright abolitionism (“Reflections on Abolitionsm: Copyright and Beyond“), the concept of a cultural flat-rate (“Extending Private Copying Levies: Approaching a Cultural Flat-rate?“), and, of course, piracy (“Internet Piracy: A Perfect Excuse?“). […]