What Support Do Music Makers Have in Wales and the UK?

We do not realise just how much music is involved within our society and how it has an impact on the way our high street looks, how we find entertainment and much, much more. Our government has a lot of control over every aspect of music but so do we as consumers and I’m going to explore this, showing real life examples of music entering our day to day lives.

When researching UK policies that have gone through our government, I found an article from February, 2009. The government had plans to reduce the volume limit in venues down to 70db (to put this into perspective, a busy street can easily reach 80db) using decibel limiters which cuts the system out when the sound goes over that volume. This would ruin any chance of a decent performance from most bands because the average decibel level of a drum kit from 25 metres away is 102 db so they would not be able to play. A lot of unsigned bands will cease to exist due to lack of venues that they can perform in which would have a domino effect on the rate that up and coming bands will be appearing. Another problem is that (obviously) the volume of a sound depends on the distance away from it, this law would have to emphasise how far away from the sound source the reading should be taken from. The damage to peoples hearing is a matter that I think should be their own responsibility but ear plugs should be used more for live gigs. I am glad that this policy did not go through, it looks like the government saw what this would do to the music industry that we have in this country.

Live sound has also been threatened with the possibility of venue owners and/or event promoters having to fill in an application for a 'Temporary Event Notice' in order to provide live performances. There is good and bad points in this that I can see. The good is that it would put more control over live events however, it may cause them to dwindle as some countys only allow 15 licences per year and it seems a lot of paper work that venue owners will not want the hassle of sorting out. Again, this has been ruled out and doesn't look likely to happen in the future.

The government are overlooking the working times directive for the creative industry for extended work hours when working on productions. This means that people working on recording, practicing, mixing albums or working on multimedia sound for huge productions can work on their projects for longer with the option of opting out without the worry of losing their job. I think this is a good and a bad thing. Employers can allow their workers to work more hours if they wish to however, people who are intent on getting the work finished, could over-work themselves to exhaustion.

The state of the economy has done severe damage to our high streets as the government are issuing more and more cuts and people are tightening their belts as it looks like prices for most products are looking likely to soar. For the music side of the retail industry, this is adding more pressure to the dent that online downloading created. Over the last 5 to 6 years, more and more music record shops are disappearing from our high streets (such as Zavvi, Virgin, MVC and, much much more). Due to these reasons and it seems like there is only HMV out of the big music retailers left on our high streets.

Sadly, recent news is that HMV are closing 60 of their stores. This is not good news, it shows that the company are struggling despite efforts to cover the internet shopping criteria, too. However, this Christmas period showed a 10.2% downfall in sales which proves that not enough customers. It seems that the digital age is cancelling out the record shop. With HMV, the strain on music equals a strain on the retail of literature as they own Waterstones. Needless to say, independent record retailers are also struggling to survive. The statement “one closes every three years” looks to me that its going to get a lot worse in the coming months due to the increase in VAT and added pressure of digital downloading. Its a sad thing that walking into a music shop and spending time routing through the masses of choice on display and coming home with a shiny new CD to listen to seems a thing of the past.
Illegal downloading was and still is a major contributor towards the downfall of the record shops and something that makes most musicians angry. You can hardly blame them, they're not getting the money they should be from record sales. The government do have regulations in place to stop people receiving music illegally which is 3 warnings and on the 3rd, the caught offender has their computer and internet access removed.

All of this could have a huge domino effect of the rest of the industry with disastrous effects for record companies, artists, recording studios, producers, publishers, everyone! All this bad news makes you wonder what is being done to preserve the rich music community in Wales and the rest of the UK.

The Welsh Music Foundation is an organisation which has a website with lots of useful news for people of all parts of the music industry. It advertises events aimed at providing help, advice and training to contribute to the success of the music industry that exists in Wales. There is also a lot of similar help from Unions (such as; Musicians Union, Music Producers Guild, Music Publishers Association and more) for their members.

Support for welsh musicians from all genres comes from the “Welsh Music Information Centre” which is based in Cardiff Bay's Millennium Centre where it runs a recording studio. Its aimed at encouraging welsh performers and raising awareness of Welsh music. It gets funding by the PRSF (Performing rights society foundation) for various events.

Music has a very important place in Society but it seems difficult for people to want to keep it at such a high status with the way it seems to be pushed around and not thought about thoroughly enough when considering policies. Having said that, the bad policies I found whilst doing my research were all thrown out. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the government are working towards keeping the music industry safe. One can hope!