On June 23, the UK will vote on whether to remain in the European Union. The in-out referendum was one of Prime Minister David Cameron’s promises in the 2015 General Election, ventured in part to stop the extreme right of his Conservative party from fleeing to Eurosceptic UKIP, which has gone from a national joke to an unfortunately legitimate concern over the past few years. (Sound familiar?) Cameron is urging the public to vote Remain, but daily polls show that the vote is incredibly close. We may be headed towards leaving—what’s become known as “Brexit”—even though nobody really knows what the other side of that massive decision looks like.
So far, music has played a fairly minor role in the campaigning. The vote is on the Thursday morning of iconic music festival Glastonbury, and its founders urged their 200,000 punters to register for a postal vote after they were told they couldn’t install polling booths on Worthy Farm. There’s also been the shambolic Bpoplive concert, a tragic attempt by the Leave campaign to influence young people by featuring “some of Britain’s hottest artists as well as speeches from leading personalities and politicians who support leaving the EU.” In a move that by no means illuminates the short-sightedness of the whole sorry affair, none of the acts were actually told that they had been booked to play a political rally, leading two glittering lineups to drop out: first Sigma and Ella Eyre; then Alesha Dixon and reformed boybands 5ive and East 17. (A third attempt, featuring the group fka Bucks Fizz and an Elvis impersonator, is planned for June 19.)
Britain’s creative community seems to be erring on the side of staying in—Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys released a love song to the Union, “I Love EU”—though one dissenting voice came from Foals’ Yannis Philippakis in an interview with BBC Radio 1. “My main concern, and I guess this is the thing the Brexit people are playing upon, is a fear that the population will expand to 80m people in Britain,” he told the Newsbeat program. “And when you already have problems with the NHS, you have problems with schooling, there are problems within British society’s infrastructure, my concern would only be that you don’t have sovereignty, you don’t have the ability to control what is happening in your own country.” Philippakis’ family are from Greece, which in 2012 launched history’s largest sovereign debt default. “They held referendums to not go along with the austerity measures, but you start to realize that what you think of as your country and your democratic say has been stripped away. And that’s not to say that I’m with the people that are Brexit, but I think there are very legitimate concerns.”
Evidently, there’s little worse than shoehorning pop stars into commenting on political events. But given the fact that the UK’s music industry outperformed the rest of the British economy by five percent last year (possibly thanks to Adele’s unprecedented Q4 sales surge), it’s a community whose collective voice should be part of the debate. A spokesperson for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) emphasized the importance of the EU and Europe “to UK recorded music and to the music sector generally, particularly when you consider the importance of live music and touring.” Last year, British artists accounted for over 17 percent of album sales in the six largest European markets after the UK—Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands—where they enjoyed nearly a third of the share. The BPI explained that this is broadly in line with the US, but that physical sales—which typically producer higher royalties for artists and labels—tend to be more pronounced in Europe.
Pitchfork enlisted experts across the music industry to help break down the potential impact of a decision that will affect trade, free movement, and international support networks—i.e. every aspect of their business. It’s important to note that this is speculation based on existing precedents, but that interviewees were universally concerned about the prospect of Brexit.
Live Music
If Britain leaves the EU, we could find ourselves excluded from having free movement across much of Europe’s mainland. That could have two expensive, complex implications for touring bands: individual visas to enter each EU country, and the introduction of the carnet, a document detailing every single piece of equipment on deck, to prevent the import or export of products without paying VAT. It costs between £1000—£2000 (approximately $1400—$2900), and lasts just 12 months.
“We’re talking total chaos, not to mention hours of time wasted, and a serious knock-on effect to the scheduling of back-to-back tour dates,” says Bryony October, who works in live sound and tour production management. And that is if bands can get the necessary visas in the first place: “If we end up with the situation where UK artists need a Schengen visa to perform in the EU, it will be hugely detrimental to developing artists as Schengen rules require proof of funds, either in the form of travelers checks, or bank history,” says booking agent Isla Angus. “If promoters also need to be visa sponsors they could be far less willing to take a risk on artists.”
Chris Panayi, an accountant and business advisor whose clients have included Foals, Disclosure, and Emeli Sandé, explains that, at present, artists and crew do not currently have to file tax returns in EU countries, but that tax is often withheld at the source and passed back to their home country in order to comply with current tax legislation. This probably won’t change, but the possibility of new restrictions may replicate what happens in America, where touring parties require a social security number, and individual tax returns have to be filed in each country to provide greater accountability.
Limiting artists’ access to Europe would also be artistically detrimental, says Rob Challice, a director at top booking firm Coda Agency Ltd. “[Leaving] would affect live music, the music business as a whole, and I think on a creative level, it would set back the UK by a number of years. Music from the UK is so exciting, it's so cross-pollinated—why would you wanna pull up the drawbridge on that?”
Colin Roberts, Big Life Management (Bloc Party): “Getting visas an absolute minefield and it costs a lot of money, and it’s the reason that a lot of people don’t get to tour America. Even going to a country like Japan where visas are quite easy to get, I know how difficult it is having to factor in the cost and the time to acquire a visa. A large part of the PRS [Performing Rights Society] fund goes towards helping bands get to America. Are we gonna be at a point where they’ll have to start a fund to get people into Europe? What a fucking horrible idea that is. I can’t see a world in which that isn’t a backwards step. Britain is a hugely important music market, and I think it would be a two-way street, where not only would our acts struggle—and it’s the small acts that would really struggle—but we would miss out on a hell of a lot of interesting artists that potentially wouldn't be able to come to the UK either.
“I can certainly see a time that if we continue to put up shutters, be it through Brexit or whatever, it's gonna get more and more difficult to export something that we're all quite good at. Recently there was a showcase with a load of bands who had been in town for the Great Escape, put on by the Canadian state of Manitoba. Can you imagine if Cornwall Council went and took a load of bands to Toronto for Canadian Music Week?! It just wouldn't happen, because we think, ‘We're so much better than everyone else, we don't need to do this’. But there will come a point where we will have to, if we keep making it more and more difficult for people to do it organically.”
Paul Reed, general manager, Association of Independent Festivals: “The festival market has developed as a truly European market and that is a great strength, especially when you consider the incredible festivals that have emerged across Europe, aimed at Europe-wide audiences. There is an argument that if Britain votes to leave Europe, it will become more complicated to work across borders in this way. We could also potentially see a reduction in so-called ‘music tourism’, which generated £3.1 billion [approximately $4.5 billion] for the UK economy in 2014, with a 39 percent rise in overseas tourists attending music events in the last four years.”
Sarah-Anne Grill, independent tour manager and festival organizer: “I am from Austria—touring the UK is really shit, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. You just get the bare minimum. [Venues] pay for no production, no backline, and everyone’s like, ‘You should be happy you’re allowed to play in the UK.’ Even though the UK is built on festivals and musical culture, they don’t really put a lot of funding into it, whereas in the rest of Europe, they fund it. So I think if the UK leaves the EU, there will be even less emphasis on cultural programmes and how to deal with touring artists, because they’ve got no comparison, and they don’t need to compare themselves because they stand alone.”
British DIY punk band Personal Best just got back from touring Europe on a shoestring budget, so we asked them to break down their budget to see if it would be doable with these extra fees.
Katie Gatt, singer/guitarist, Personal Best: “We started tour £270 [approximately $390] down for the Eurotunnel, our last practice, full tank of petrol etc. That's all out of my own pocket, for now at least. We give everyone in the band a tiny per diem, just so we can get coffee and a snack, and we got fed most mornings and for the evening shows. We skipped lunch or had pretzels at service stations on long drives. We stay on floors. For days off we would put maybe €20 [$23] towards having a band meal. It’s fun, but as you can see, it’s pretty fucking tight money-wise. We came back with £840 [$1200] to pay into the band account, for four people, for two weeks’ work. So we have £570 [$830] left over to put towards recording the next album. If we had to pay around £100 [$145] each to get into even one country, we would have come home with nothing.
“It would be such a shame to prohibit the relationship between UK and mainland DIY music communities. When we were on tour, I suddenly realized how incredible it was to have a friend in almost every city we went to—and if we didn’t have any friends, we were already making them. That’s just amazing—to know all these great Europeans who you’ve met at gigs, or you share a mutual friend who’s in a band, or they run a blog who supports you, or they’re putting your next single out. It’s not just a pleasant experience—we need that to continue. And it works both ways too—I hope that those bands get the same support when they come here. Imagine how extremely boring all these scenes would be if there wasn’t that relatively easy passage of bands from one country to another.”
Record Labels + Copyright Issues
According to a recent BPI survey, 68 percent of participating British record labels wish to see the UK remain in the EU. “British music accounts for a quarter of the total market in Europe for recorded music,” said chief executive Geoff Taylor. “This success helps to create jobs in the UK and fund exceptionally high levels of investment by British labels into new music.” BPI label members were also concerned about retaining influence over the protection of the music they create: 90 percent believed it was important to remain involved in the discussions surrounding proposed new pan-EU copyright rules.
Some more key figures from the survey:
47 percent indicated that at least a quarter or more of the revenues they earn outside the UK come from the EU—and for 18 percent, the figure rises to over 75 percent.
59 percent believed that leaving the EU could make it more difficult to successfully promote British music and artists in Europe.
56 percent believed that withdrawing from the EU could have negative consequences for fans.
Michael McClatchey, co-founder, Moshi Moshi Records: “Europe is our main market, and the argument that a lot of Brexiters are putting forward is that emerging markets are going to be the future for British commerce and industry. That well may be the case for music as well, but at the moment that feels like a very long way off. As a nation, switching our focus from trading with Europe to trading with Brazil, China, and India doesn’t really work for the music industry because we’re making very small inroads there, and I’m skeptical about how much we can enter these markets when they have such a different pop market and a strong historic music identity of their own.
“Copyright is a very broad question and a big fight. The battle these days is between the copyright holders—and that is both majors and indies, I think there’s a sense that we’re all a bit more in it together now—and these enormous companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, who have enormous resources, and some of them don’t really have any respect for copyright. In fact, you suspect that the opposite is true, and they actually want to be the gatekeepers of all artistic endeavor themselves. So in that respect, I think both on a national level and an international level, the bigger the organization that we can put together to oppose it, the better, and I think having the EU negotiate with Google is gonna be more effective than having the UK negotiate with Google, especially when you look at how we got on when we negotiated with them about how much tax they should pay, for example. It’s a combination of both the size of the organization and the amount of clout, and also the sense that maybe Europe is more willing to take on these companies than perhaps the UK government is.”
Gregor Pryor, partner, Reed Smith law firm; co-chair, Entertainment and Media Industry Group: “What Europe wants to do is try and make copyright in Europe much more uniform. For example, the big complaint is, ‘If I am a Netflix user in France, I get different content than I would get if I was a Netflix user in Germany.’ What Europe’s trying to do is called the Digital Single Market: It’s trying to create a much more homogenous environment for copyright, so it facilitates free movement of digital content. There’s a lot of opposition to that—the movie companies don’t like it, the music companies don’t particularly like it, and the digital services don’t particularly like it either because they don’t wanna be forced to carry particular content in a particular country. If Brexit happened, we wouldn’t have to listen to any of that. And the benefit of it is hard to identify. The downside of it, I think, would be that there wouldn’t really been any insensible requirement for companies in Britain to then offer their content in a similar way across Europe.
“I don’t think Brexit would automatically result in any change in copyright laws in the UK or in Europe. The big difference would be that we’re not bound or required to listen to what Europe decides in relation to things like expiry of copyright. I think some countries in Europe are perceived by rights holders as being more benevolent towards them. France is the best example because France holds intellectual property in such high regard, and from a legal perspective, tends to give broader rights to creators. I think it’s fair to say that the UK government hasn’t been as warm or receptive as some of the other governments in other European countries. I think the European Commission has been far more sympathetic to rights-holders than the UK government would be. Every time the European Commission hears anything from record labels, publishers, artists, they jump up and go, ‘Oh god, we have to do the right thing.’ I think they are inclined to vilify big technology companies.”
The Production + Sale of Physical Music
Accountant Chris Panayi admits to being old enough to remember a time before Britain entered the common market, which then became the EU. Back then there were tariffs: If you bought, say, a record in Germany and brought it home, you had to declare it, and pay tax. “We’re all surmising what might happen if we leave, but I certainly think there will be some form of import duty for us, and export duty if we want to send stuff over there,” he says. “If we’re importing large quantities of British product from Germany, or exporting large quantities of recording and sound equipment, there will be tariffs.” Given that the majority of the vinyl we buy is made in plants in mainland European countries, the cost could escalate both at the point of manufacture and sale.
Karen Emanuel, founder, Keyproduction, UK-based music manufacture agency: “We use a lot of the pressing plants in mainland Europe. They were saying there could be whole different tax and duty implications, it might make it a lot more expensive for us, which would really badly affect our business. There aren’t many British companies to turn to and they don’t do a quarter of the vinyl that is needed in Britain. And then what happens? A lot of people still buy CDs now when people thought they would die off, but if we can’t get them as quickly, or their price goes up immeasurably, will that escalate them disappearing? Ditto with vinyl—it’s difficult and expensive enough to make as it is. We don’t want to make it any worse.”
Rupert Morrison, manager, the Drift, Devon-based independent record shop: “If you start to add 5p, 10p, 20p per record, the whole landscape will change drastically. The first step is that the margins will come down even further. Indie labels, in my experience, will swallow that for the best part, so although they will keep supplying shops—which is positive—their ability to make any sort of money will greatly diminish and their ability to operate will become ever harder. Secondly, the labels who can afford to press things will continue to do so, but will gradually bring up the prices. I can easily foresee a situation where more ‘major’ or ‘popular’ releases will be pressed and stocked by shops who perhaps have other product lines to support them, like a supermarket. The indie sector will be devalued and the bigger retailers will gradually price production out of the hands of the core supporters who have been carrying it for the last 20 years.”
“Domino, Drag City, and Sub Pop have never stopped pressing vinyl, and they carried the plants through the 1990s. In these salad days where the vinyl bubble can seemingly never burst, are you telling me that Tesco and Asda are going to be stocking Sir Richard Bishop and Shellac? Nah, they’ll be racking another version of John Martyn’s Solid Air that they’ll make about 18p selling. Worse is that indie shops can’t play that game so I’d forecast tough times at the counter. From where I stand at the bottom of the business food chain, I can only see it becoming harder and economically less viable. I think much like with tax breaks in general, so long as the Amazons of this world are largely unaffected, then I can see no reason why [Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, and Skills] Sajid Javid would plough any thought, time, or effort into my little sector. Being blunt, I doubt they’ve even considered us.”
EU Funding for the Arts
British media coverage of EU funding trains a negative focus on all the so-called red tape you have to endure to access it. But there are endless EU programs that benefit the music industry, which Britain excels at securing: In 2012, UK applications (in general, not just for music) had a 46 percent success rate, almost double the average success rate of 24 percent. If the UK leaves the EU, in all likelihood, that funding will no longer be available. The benefits of this money are vast, wide-reaching, and often not obvious to the public. The Village Underground, a well-appointed, 1000-capacity warehouse venue in east London, currently benefits from two EU programs. Liveurope pays them to host emerging European bands support slots on bigger bills, giving these acts the chance to get out of their own countries, and prompting venues to have a more diverse program. Creative Lenses is a four-year investigation into new business models for the cultural sector.
Amélie Snyers, office and community manager, Village Underground: “Last year we got approximately €20,000 [$22,580] from Liveurope for putting on more than 30 emerging European artists. For Creative Lenses, we have to provide information about our finances and business model, and then we are going to be part of the second phase, where we have a budget to change a side of the business. It could be anything—audience development, opening a cafe, completely changing how we program the venue. And that is completely funded by the EU. It’s part of this network called Trans Europe Halles, it's all about learning from each other. They do meetings twice a year where everyone meets up, and they do staff exchanges so you can easily go and visit a [partner venue] and learn from them, and vice versa. Cross-pollination from other countries is very important. The staff at Village Underground is very diverse: I’m from Belgium, there’s loads of Spanish people, a lot of people from Poland, and we’re so proud of that. We try and learn from each other and we’re really conscious that there’s not just one way to do things.”
A recent James Blake show at Village Underground; photo by Daddy's Got Sweets.
Fabien Miclet, coordinator, Liveurope: “It was paramount to have a British venue in the founding Liveurope members. The UK is the beating heart of the European music scene—you can’t work on a European music project without the UK. Almost 30 percent of the artists programmed in the context of Liveurope come from the UK. Very often playing the UK is the step that allows small or young bands to get big. We started the platform in October 2014, and as of today, more than 700 shows have benefited from Liveurope. Artists from 32 nationalities have been booked so far: 12 per venue and per year on average. It’s a win-win for everybody. Artists like Iceage (Denmark), Hinds (Spain), John Coffey (Holland), Bokka (Poland), Batida (Portugal)… they are all Liveurope-compatible artists and audience successes. Unfortunately I can imagine that the EU will retaliate if the UK leaves, and exclude it from its funding programs.
“We try to encourage a positive feeling about Europe. Music, culture, traveling, discovering: That’s what makes us Europeans. People don’t really get enthusiastic about the common agricultural policy or the directive on car tires. What people, especially the younger generations, need today is to share something simple and positive together. Live music can do this. Brexit would mean the people in the UK don’t really want to share that with their neighbors anymore. The EU is like a family. If you leave, symbolically you turn your back to these values, to these beliefs. After the tragedy at the Bataclan in Paris, the attacks in Brussels, now is a time when we should really stick together. If the UK leaves, it would be a really wrong signal from that point of view.”
