PGM: I can't compete with a free offer

Never before has so much music been consumed as today. However, music label sales have fallen by 67 % in the last ten years. The decline is inversely proportional to the increase in broadband Internet connections in Swiss households. In 2010, in its response to the Savary postulate on the protection of copyrights on the internet, the Federal Council came to the conclusion that no additional measures were necessary. This assessment led to those affected coming together to form the Swiss Music Creators Association. Last year, Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga set up the AGUR 12 working group to examine the current copyright situation and identify possible solutions.

The first part of the PGM session was held by Lorenz Haas, lawyer and managing director of IFPI Switzerland, the industry association of Swiss music labels. He explained the business practices of unfair music download websites and possible countermeasures, such as the warning notice model used very successfully in France. (Incidentally, a striking number of such globally operating piracy sites are based in Switzerland. And renowned Swiss companies are often present on such sites with advertising). Haas emphasized that it was not about new legal provisions, but about better enforcement of existing ones. The central point of Swiss law, i.e. downloading without penalty, remains untouched, but uploading, which is a criminal offense, is to be effectively combated. Haas considers the work in AGUR 12 to be rather disappointing at this stage, as too many groups are involved and the discussions are correspondingly unspecific.

In the second part of the meeting, Stefano Kunz, Managing Director of the Swiss Music Council, interviewed singer-songwriter Ivo Sidler. He has been a freelance musician for 12 years, founded his own label in 2007 and is a board member of the Swiss Musicians Association.

Stefano Kunz: What prompted you to get involved?
Ivo Sidler: One example: 20 minutes has been advertising links for years where you can download music for free. I always wondered why the music scene didn't stand together and fight back. The bottom of the barrel was the Federal Council's report, which saw no need for action. In the Swiss Musicians' Association, we felt it was an affront and a lack of appreciation that our state was making it possible for people to obtain our work for free.

Why is it the free download that hurts you so much economically?
Why would it hurt Swatch or Novartis so much economically if consumers paid nothing for their products? As long as people can get something for free, they certainly won't pay for it. None of us can compete with a free offer.
I took part in the European Song Contest last year with my latest song, not necessarily because of the ESC, but mainly because it's one of the last opportunities in this country to get your music on TV. Composing, producing, recording, mixing plus the TV show ultimately cost a total of 27,000 francs. The day after the broadcast, the song was legally available to buy on iTunes. But on the same day, it was already available illegally on various free sites. According to my accounts, I have sold this song around 500 times to date. I can't refinance 27,000 francs from 500 x 1.60 francs.
Now, of course, you could say that I made a bad calculation. But nobody can tell me how many people have the song today without having paid for it. If we had won, we would have been invited to Azerbaijan. We came second. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. But it's a completely different risk if I have to live with the fact that people in this country have the choice of whether they want to pay the price I've set for an album or a single song, or whether they can get it somewhere for free.

So the Internet is clearly distorting competition?
Not the Internet as such. But the legal regulations. The very fact that people are led to believe that they can have our work for free contradicts everything that is otherwise commonplace in our lives and on which our society has reached a basic consensus - namely that anyone who provides a service must also be compensated for this service.
I am not fundamentally against free offers. These are entrepreneurial decisions. If someone invests 50,000 francs in a CD, finds a label that spends that much again on marketing and promotion, and then ultimately wants to offer the product for free, then they should be able to do that for all I care. But I don't want that. And neither do many others with me. The Copyright Act states that we as authors alone can decide to whom and at what price we offer our product. It is therefore not acceptable for consumers to be able to say: We don't care, we're getting it for free anyway.
I go into school classes from time to time and ask specifically: Where do you buy your music? The young people just laugh at me. They are encouraged in this attitude by the legal regulation that downloading - from wherever - is legal. Not everyone here thinks that's right. This attitude may not be opportune, we realize that, but that's where the problem actually starts. If we are no longer prepared to change this situation, then we must at least finally tackle all those who make our work available without permission.

Is there an ideal solution from your point of view?
We don't want to become a subsidized "fringe group" at the expense of the state, which is why most of us don't want a flat rate that would ultimately force every citizen to pay for something they may not even want.
So the solution has to be that we get our market back, that we can set the price for our work ourselves again and run our business as every trader in this country is entitled to do. If the price is too high and nobody buys our songs as a result, we've probably written bad songs. That is our business risk, which every entrepreneur has to live with. But it doesn't legitimize anyone to get our work for free without being asked and approved by the state.
In addition, streaming is not the future model for every author, because not every author is also an artist. As an author, you would have to pay per
month to generate 10,370,000 downloads to reach the minimum basic income of CHF 2,800. In Switzerland, this is simply an illusion.