Artist's vote for non-penalisation of illegal downloading for fans

• 12th Mar 2009

Musician’s last night met at Heaven for the Featured Artist Coalition aimed at discussing artists rights within the music industry. Members include Billy Bragg, Radiohead’s, Ed O’Brian, Kate Nash and Blur’s Dave Rowntree who is one of the FAC’s directors.

According to the Guardian “Radiohead, Gang Of Four, Robbie Williams and Billy Bragg, who spoke at the EconMusic conference in September, saying about social media: “Everybody's making a shitload of money except us.”
An extract from the FAC's manifesto states: “Digital technology has transformed how we buy and listen to music – in doing so it has radically altered the economic relationship between artists and consumers, and the business world that operates between the two. Record and technology companies are signing agreements to deliver music to fans in new ways – artists should receive fair compensation as part of these new deals.””
Dave Rowntree added that the digital revolution provides both artists and fans the perfect opportunity to ‘make a difference’, ‘as this revolution gathers pace featured artists must seize the opportunity.’
They also mentioned YouTubes row with the PRS as a great example of how fast the music industry is changing and the need for artists voices to be heard.
The NME quoted Bragg as saying after the meeting, to the Independant that most FAC artists had voted against penalising fans who were guilty of illegal downloading.

“What I said at the meeting was that the record industry in Britain is still going down the road of criminalising our audience for downloading illegal MP3s,”
Good news for fans, let’s hope that the music industry starts to listen.