TONO about new culture report

The government is preparing a new cultural report, and in this regard, representatives of a wide range of players in the music industry gathered on Thursday to present their thoughts on this. Here you can read TONO's contribution to the meeting.

It has been 14 years since the last cultural report, and now the Ministry of Culture has initiated work on a new cultural report. The cultural report, which is planned to be discussed in the Storting in the spring of 2019, will form the basis for an overall political debate on cultural policy challenges in the coming years, and outline the goals for future national cultural policy. The Ministry of Culture has invited kick-off conference May 3.

On Thursday 27 April, representatives of a wide range of players in music Norway gathered under the auspices of the Music Industry Business Council to present what is expected of a new cultural statement. Representatives from the Ministry of Culture were also present at the meeting, which was held at Music Norway. TONO participated with Communications Manager Willy Martinsen who presented TONO's input. You can read a summary of what was presented below.

TONO welcomes the initiative with a new Cultural Statement. An active cultural policy that takes into account the digital revolution, globalization and general social development is crucial to creating good framework conditions for TONO's members – composers, lyricists and music publishers – in the future.

Challenges in the digital area
TONO has had revenue growth for many years. Although digitalization has been an important driver in this, there is no doubt that digitalization has also created major challenges for many of TONO's members. We see this particularly within user-generated services – typically platform services and social media. Here, enormous amounts of protected music are uploaded and shared without the rights holders being asked for permission, and without the services sharing the revenue with those who have created and owned the content. They can do this under the cover of EU legislation, which they claim exempts them from liability for the content. In the fall of 2015, the analysis company Roland Berger, commissioned by the European "TONO companies" lobby organization Gesac, conducted a comprehensive in-depth study that showed that approximately 52 percent of Facebook's advertising revenue is directly related to artistic material. For platform companies on average, the direct effect of cultural content on their revenue is 23 percent. 23 percent would normally mean approximately 48 billion Norwegian kroner or 5 billion euros for the European arts sector. What does this tell us? Yes, that the digital economy is not yet functioning – despite legally licensed services such as Spotify, Tidal, etc. A functioning digital economy will be of fundamental importance for Norwegian rights holders and many other cultural actors in the years to come. The transfer of value from rights holders to the large global IT companies must end.

There were indeed positive signals in the copyright package published by the EU last autumn, which show that the EU is aware of the problem. Unfortunately, the problem is only mentioned in the explanations to the law, not in the actual text of the law. At the same time, there is still some way to go before a new directive is adopted. Thus, it is still an open question whether such services will be covered by a good and balanced regime – also for the rights holders. TONO encourages the Norwegian authorities to take an active role in addressing this – both towards the EU, but also nationally and to develop measures that can strengthen business opportunities within the digital area for Norwegian authors and the music industry in general.

New copyright law
It is essential for creators to have a solid foundation in the form of a robust and good copyright law. The Ministry of Culture recently presented a proposal for a new copyright law, and we unfortunately see that several of the positive signals and proposals in the draft that was presented last fall have been changed or removed in the final bill. Here it is obvious that producers, distributors and broadcasting interests have won over the ministry..

Cultural VAT
In recent years, we have seen many Norwegian creators and artists succeed well abroad. Hopefully, this is the seed of even greater success abroad in the future. We must work to ensure framework conditions that make it possible to run their business from Norway. We must prevent artists and creators from leaving, and ensure that rights remain in Norway. We therefore believe that incentives must be created for this, because there are strong forces abroad that are happy to welcome Norwegian music creators. Here, both the industry and the authorities must work on measures that can help ensure that rights remain in the country, and schemes can include funds, support and scholarship schemes that can provide financial backing for promising projects. However, TONO also encourages the ministry to look more closely at introducing a cultural VAT. Those who charge VAT on their own services can deduct the VAT on the goods and services they purchase, and it is TONO's view that this would be an advantage for cultural life, provided that we get a low VAT rate. TONO has sister societies in some other countries that have cultural VAT, which gives them a competitive advantage. It is also worth mentioning that the introduction of cultural VAT must be seen in a natural context with an increasing degree of professionalization in the industry, where more and more people are organizing their businesses into professional units.

Maintain the width
Ones are not created without breadth. We see this not least in Norwegian sports, and if we look at Sweden, there is a success story that Max Martin pointed to in his young years in the state cultural school as important for his path into music. TONO believes that it is crucial in the work on cultural policy to have a broad view and to cultivate breadth. An active music life at the grassroots level must be stimulated, and a good apparatus of instruments is necessary. Artists, musicians and creators need contexts, arenas and stages where they and their music can grow. In this context, it may be worth pointing to a European survey, mentioned on Ballade.no on April 25. There you could read that Norwegian venues are at the bottom of Europe when it comes to support for year-round concert activities. Only Spain and Germany have lower percentage support for organizers as a share of total income. And as the Norwegian Concert Organizers stated in the case: "The year-round organizers are the springboard for many artists (…) You can't travel without practicing on a stage."