Beggars Group boss calls on governmental support for artist rights

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Beggars Group chief, Martin Mills has called on governments to lend better support to music rights owners.

Mills, who made the speech after winning Billboard’s Industry Icon Award, said that politicians currently favour “tech giants” instead of the music labels that own music or artists that create it.

Speaking at the MIDEM conference in Cannes, Mills said:

“I want to address the lack of support that governments, politicians and bureaucrats worldwide show to the creative industries. Many pay lip service to the value and importance of the creative economy, but most fail to match that with their actions. Creative industries are built upon strong and defendable intellectual property rights, and without that they will inevitably wither and fail. It is impossible to make the investments to produce new creative goods without the security that ownership of them is protected.”

Continuing:

“We do not need to have control of our rights taken away from us, to be forced to licence that in which we have invested at uneconomic prices, to simply allow huge tech firms to make even huger profits. We do not need illegal services to be made more visible than legal ones. Tech companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters. And we value them enormously as such, our partnerships with them are fundamental to our business now – as is our content to theirs.

As someone who invests in music – and when I looked at the numbers a few years ago we had written off £25m in unrecouped advances to artists over the years – it makes me fume when politicians cosy up to the big techs at our cost and spout philosophically about the needs of the modern world, about us being dinosaurs, and about music’s irresistible urge to be liberated and free. All in life needs balance and vision, and the likes of Neelie Kroos miss that point. When businesses make money out of music, music rights owners must have the right to a fair share of that income.”

The Beggars boss – a well-known critic of greedy major labels – said he was “not here today to attack the majors” though his views “on the perils of consolidation for the market” was “as strong as ever”.

Beggars Group own and distribute several labels, such as 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, and XL Recordings.

Read Mills’ full speech on the Billboard website.