In the last couple of weeks, while everybody’s attention has been upon Kevin Rudd’s conflict with the States concerning taking over the GST and the Hospital system, and with his failure with the roof insulation and the Carbon Emission Trading Scheme, there has been a series of meetings between the members of the Labor Party and the Greens Party to form an alliance that will seek to push through Parliament some unacceptable legislation in the next few months before both State and Federal elections. This has not been reported in any newspaper or radio program, but has been secretly proceeding, designed to catch the Opposition and the Crossbench Members off guard.
Their reasons are different. Premier Keneally, a member of the dominant Right faction and her supporters are seeking to wrest control of the NSW Labor Party by attracting to it the support of more radical citizens in its fight against Barry O’Farrell and the Opposition. Meanwhile the Greens’ Lee Rhiannon is standing for election in the Federal election for the Australian Senate and she wants to shore up her numbers from the same group of citizens.
So both have formed an alliance that will win them support at the State and Federal Elections from the Gay and Lesbian Lobby. In this they have the support of lesbian members of the State Labor Party.
The issues are on the table. The Premier’s Department, it is said, has ordered the Department of Community Service Minister Linda Burney, to meet with Greens Lee Rhiannon to get up legislation allowing for same-sex child adoption and same-sex “marriage” registration. The Greens have said they want legislation to abolish prayer in Parliament and are also working on a number of measures to reduce funding for Christian and Private Schools.
Elections make parties aggressive and desperate. The numbers are close. In the Lower House the Labor Party has a clear majority. In the Upper House the numbers are unpredictable. Some in the left wing of the Liberal Party agree with these propositions and Barry O’Farrell may not be able to hold all of his members in line. It does not require someone to “cross the Floor”. It only requires someone to be absent for a short time when the vote is taken.
The Shooters can usually be counted on for a conservative vote, but they will trade votes on some measures for which they want Government support. Rev Fred Nile of the CDP, and I, as leader of Family First, will stand resolute but we may not be able to carry the day. Now is the time for people who value traditional family life as we have always known it to “watch and pray”. Otherwise you will wake up one morning soon to a totally different society to that which you value.
ST. PETERSBURG, FL- Charlie Crist, who started the day as the sitting elected Republican governor of Florida and a GOP Senatorial hopeful, announced this evening that he is leaving the political party that he has called home since he began his succesful political career, and officially declared that he is now running as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate.
“My decision to run for the U.S. Senate with out party affiliation says more about our nation and our state than it does about me,” Crist said, describing the current political system as a “broken” one .
“I know this is unchartered terroritory. I am aware of that and I am aware that after this speech ends, I don’t have either party helping me. But I need you, I need you the people more than ever, ” Crist said to the enthusiastic cheers of his hometown crowd. ” I was never one who sought to hold elective office to demagogue or point fingers. For me, public service has always been about putting the needs of our state and our people first.”
As a GOP candidate Crist was badly trailing Republican rising star Marco Rubio in the GOP primary.However, as an independent candidate, Crist is in a statistical dead heat with Rubio, and Democrat Kendrick Meek for the Florida senate seat, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.
“Price competition will drive Electric Cars mass market. Chinese companies will have yet to prove that they can claim auto brand properties, but cost wise they are out of competition. Once thousands of engineers working in China on lithium batteries, safety and design of Electric Cars convert quantity into quality this market will take off in iPod fashion.”
China’s automotive fleet is rapidly expanding. Last year the Chinese market overtook the US to become the world largest automotive market, and sales are expected to continue to expand 55% to 13.55 million passenger vehicles per year by 2015. The country is currently the third largest consumer of oil in the world with all of Europe a close second and the US number one. As China’s volume of vehicles continue to increase along with economic growth so too will their oil demand. China will pass the US and become the world’s largest oil consumer within a few years and thereafter continue to expand consumption. China is already importing more than 50% of its oil. Fortunately, there is already great demand among the Chinese population for electric cars. GM plans to sell the Chevrolet Volt there and several Chinese automakers including BYD have already begun to sell electric cars in the country. Nissan is considering selling the LEAF in China as well. A recent poll performed by Ernst and Young revealed that a shocking 60% of Chinese consumers are interested in purchasing a plug-in car. This is five times the rate in the US or any other country. The Chinese government has also expressed great interest in promoting plugin cars, to help stave off foreign oil dependence. The government has already designated 20 cities to deploy extensive plugin charging infrastructure, and have set a production goal of 500,000 “new energy” cars by 2015. A massive series of incentives and subsidies to encourage electric car adoption will be announced in July. Despite all the obvious benefits, one leading Chinese auto executive isn’t so sure this is a good idea. Huang Xiangdong, who is vice president of Guangzhou Automobile Group Corp that has ventures with Honda, noted that 83% of Chinese electricity is produced by burning coal. “Battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids do not save more energy than conventional cars on a well-to-wheel analysis,” said Huang. “We think in China it’s not the right time to promote pure electric vehicles.” While reducing CO2 production is important to some, as in the US, concerns of oil dependence loom large. “There are broader benefits of electric vehicles, such as reducing the dependence on foreign oil,” Henry Li, general manager of BYD’s auto export trade division. Irrespective of any naysayers, clearly the Chinese electric automotive market is poised to become extremely large and profitable to automakers who are successful there. As the first foreign firm to get a foothold there, GM has much to benefit from selling electric cars there, and much of the company’s future profit could be tied to it. “China is currently a larger market by volume than the US,” says GM spokesperson Tom Wilkinson “It is probably our second or third most important market and growing faster than either the US or Europe,” he says. “In short, it is pretty important.” So although we’d all like to see the exciting new Chevrolet Volt MP5 concept go on sale in the US, it should be fairly apparent why GM chose to unveil it in China. In fact it was actually produced in partnership with venture partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Anyway the MPV5 according to GM spokesperson Dave Darovitz “is a concept only.” “No plans for production,” he adds. Source (Detroit News) , (photo from Autoblog)”
This is an edited version of the Gerald Ward Lecture given by Phil Glendenning at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra on 20 November 2009.
I believe over the course of our history we have discriminated most consistently against two groups of people in Australia – those who were here first, our Indigenous peoples, and those who were here last, especially refugees.
We have had new terms of derogatory language to accompany each new group of arrivals, whether it was with the Irish ‘paddies’ and the ‘coolies’ in the 19th century, through to the ‘wogs’, ‘dagoes’ of the 1950’s and 60’s to the other ugly terms used to describe those who came from south-east Asia in the seventies, those from the Middle East in recent years and from Africa now. Such characterisations were used in order to say to people, “you are less equal than me.”
However, I will make a prediction. In 10 years from now, one of Afghan children who arrived by boat this year will be playing fullback for the Rabbitohs, and his sister will be scoring for the Hockeyroos. They will be embraced by Aussies. Others will be at uni, or working hard in the community. This is what happens in Australia.
Yet whilst attitudes shift towards the last to arrive, Indigenous people continue to find themselves at the bottom of every social indicator in the nation. In NSW, Indigenous people make up 2 per cent of the population but make up 52 per cent of the jail population. Enough. Enough. Enough.
You’d think we could learn from our history rather than continue to repeat it. The apology in Parliament to those taken by the state as children is a reminder of the great unfinished business stemming from the apology in 2008 to the Stolen Generations.
Saying sorry is the very least we should do – sadly, for many, that is the only thing that has been done. It is not enough to say that present generations are not responsible for the actions of previous generations, since present generations benefit from that original dispossession and its ongoing repercussions.
We should also recognise that no compensation could ever be satisfactory because, as Peter Adam said in a powerful speech in Melbourne earlier this year, what was done was so terrible, so immense, so universal and so pervasive, so destructive and so irreparable. But recompense we must. The idea of recompense is not alien to our society. James Hardie had to recompense workers harmed by asbestos. There was widespread support that this should be the case. If this recompense is right, then surely it is also right to offer recompense to the Indigenous peoples of Australia.
The Bringing Them Home report into the removal of Aboriginal children from their families noted that compensation or reparation had to be part of the holistic approach towards delivering justice and facilitating healing. It recognised the enormous barriers that face members of the Stolen Generations in seeking to now make claims of compensation for emotional, sexual and physical abuse. It proposed a national tribunal to facilitate these claims and assist people with a legitimate legal right in accessing compensation. The proposed tribunal would be a partnership between governments, churches, Indigenous organisations and the Stolen Generation’s community, but would also be independent.
As we have seen concerning boat people lately, there is a crisis of moral leadership in the country. Where are our moral leaders with the courage to advocate with passion for necessary changes, rather than continue to start from a fear of offending the powerful, or the static desire to maintain the status quo?
Perhaps a starting point would be to reclaim the language in the national debate. If we were to go back 25 years and listen to the debate in parliament and in the media, it was clear that we lived together in a society. If we unpack the debate today, we seem to live together in an economy. This is significant because the people who live together in a society are citizens; those who live together in an economy are customer or consumers. Thus every human relationship is reduced to an economic relationship.
The dehumanisation of the language is reflected in the treatment given to those who have come to this country most recently – refugees and asylum seekers. There is something about us as Australians and our attitude to people who come by boat. After all, what they are doing is precisely what all non-Indigenous Australians or their ancestors have done – come here from somewhere else. As one Aboriginal leader commented at a function at Government House in Sydney, it was worth noting that we were gathered a few hundred metres from where the first boat load of unauthorised arrivals landed in 1788!
The politics of fear have characterised much of the debate around asylum seekers and refugees. We have locked people away in remote detention centres, and denied them a face. Again the language used points to the ethos at work: “The Pacific Solution”. If ever there was a chilling policy in Australian policy it was this one, reasonating down the years to Europe in the 1940s. Thank God the Pacific Solution is no more.
The way to deal with the politics of fear is to separate the myths from the facts. There have been a number of falsehoods in circulation led by shock jock radio hosts, the press and politicians with a taste of playing the race card. Separate the myths from the facts by clicking here.
In the light of Christian faith lies a fundamental belief that it is possible to live on this planet like a human being: this is sign of the Good News we can never lose sight of. Ultimately, if we remain close to the people we seek to assist we will also hear the truth that liberates us all.
I realised this again recently in Afghanistan in the strength of an elderly woman who had one son killed and had another missing after returning from Australia. I did not know how I could help her so I reached into my wallet and offered her $20 to cover her costs for travel. She lives on $4 a week. Zahra gently refused and said, “No sir. Sometimes when you offer money it makes it worse. Just because one lives in poverty and oppression, doesn’t mean they live without dignity.” I will never forget her courage, wisdom and strength.
We seek a world where those who come first and last in this country might be able to enjoy an equitable place in the life of the nation. We seek a world where the needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich; the freedom of the weak takes priority over liberty of the powerful, and the access of marginalised people on society takes priority over the preservation of an order that excludes them.
Phil Glendenning is the Director of the Edmund Rice Centre in Sydney. He is also the National President of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation.
It looks like not only Apple has a problem with HTC allegedly infringing a few patents as it looks like Microsofts patents have also apparently been used without authorization by the same cellphone maker.But unlike Apple who has sued HTC Microsoft has decided to sing a licensing agreement with HTC and thus make some money off every Android handset sold by HTC. The financial aspects of the deal have not been revealed at this time but it looks like Microsoft will be making as muc
Motorola announced it’s Q1 earnings today, with the technology company pulling in more than $5 billion dollars! That’s right, $5 billion dollars! Its mobile arm brought in $1.6 billion, shipping 8.5 million phones, including 2.3 million Android smartphones. Nice! While overall Motorola sold less Android phones this quarter, I think that is still pretty damn good! Good job Moto! Personally, I think next quarter we need less Backflip phones and more Droids!
Most recent Canadian Mobile news has rumoured a new service called Social View from Rogers Wireless. Up until now, no one could figure out what it was, although we all could safely assume it had som…
Commencing last week, the NSW Government is running a Foster Care Recruitment Campaign in partnership with non-government agencies.
There are more than 16,000 children and young people in out-of-home care across the State. Many of these children live with relatives but thousands rely on foster carers to provide them a safe and loving home. While the Government is committed to reducing the numbers of children in care, sadly there will always be children who must be removed from their families for their own safety. There is a need for responsible, caring people to take on the challenges and rewards of fostering with a non-government agency or Community Services.
On 25 April the Government launched an advertising campaign to raise awareness of fostering and refer people to the Fostering NSW website www.fosteringnsw.com.au The website provides a one-stop shop for people wanting to learn more about fostering. The website includes information and contact details about non-government agencies that provide foster care in NSW, including agencies that work specifically with Aboriginal carers. People can also find out about fostering with Community Services.
A call centre is being established and potential carers can ring 1800 2 FOSTER to learn more about fostering and find out about local information sessions. Research carried out for Community Services reveals that 78 per cent of the community has never considered fostering and that it can take someone 12 months to contemplate becoming a foster carer before they make their first enquiry. This is why awareness raising is critical.
Aboriginal children make up a third of children in care. Recruiting Aboriginal carers is crucial to help these children stay connected to their culture and community. The campaign is also seeking to recruit carers from all cultural and language backgrounds. Helping a child in need is rewarding and worthwhile – but it has its challenges. Children in care are overcoming experiences of neglect, trauma and abuse. Carers and their families need to be very well informed before they take the step of bringing a child into their home.
Carers are not superheroes. They are ordinary, good-hearted people from all sorts of different backgrounds who willingly open their homes to children who are not their own. Fostering is not for everyone: carers need patience, a good sense of humour, and compassion to succeed. Carers undergo an assessment and thorough checks including criminal record checks to ensure they are suitable to care for children. Training, support and financial assistance are available to help with the job of fostering.
Family First believe that we all share responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of children. Research shows that a stable and nurturing home environment can provide much better life outcome for kids. For children who cannot live with their parents, this is especially important.
The government has for some time been shifting the problem of children-at-risk to the not-for-profit sector without further funding for those agencies including NSW Family Services Inc. Those agencies were already at breaking point themselves after having received insufficient funding for over 12 years. Their lack of resources was requiring them to turn away children in need as there were already waiting lists of 6 months for the services they offered. They have been lobbying the government tirelessly for increased support, and DoCS supported the recommendations to Treasury for such an increase.
This pressure has finally paid off because it has recently been announced that the NSW State Government is going to invest $36 million in early intervention and prevention programs, and conduct up to 750 home visits by child experts – as part of its Keep Them Safe program. This is excellent news and could not have come at a more crucial time. The funding also includes $10 million to run early intervention programs with specialist psychologists and mental health experts for children from Kindergarten age to Year 2 students showing disruptive behaviours.
Premier Kristina Keneally and Minister for Community Services, Linda Burney, announced on 29 March 2010 $9 million each year for four years from the NSW Government’s Keep Them Safe program which will go to better support families through prevention and early intervention – improving the lives of babies and young children at risk.
As part of the $36 million plan, the NSW Government is planning to provide:
· $18 million for parenting skills, general advice and support programs. This will allow non-Government organisations to help parents to develop the skills to respond to children who are showing signs of difficult behaviours. It will focus on new parents with babies and toddlers, and parents of adolescents.
· $10 million to run a new early intervention program for children from Kindergarten to Year 2 who have disruptive behaviours – Getting on Track in Time or ‘GOT It!’ Children and their parents participate in weekly group sessions with psychologists, mental health experts, and school staff for the duration of a school term.
· $8 million to extend the Sustained Health Home Visiting program, increasing the number of families assisted by the program from 450 to 750. This program will give more parents with children from newborns to 2-year-olds access to home visits by specialist child and family nurses who can identify problems early, and assist in getting the services they need from the start of a child’s life.
Since its introduction in March last year the Keep Them Safe program has produced:
· An online set of ‘Mandatory Reporter’ Guidelines to help people decide when to report suspected cases of abuse and neglect to the Child Protection Helpline;
· Information sessions for 23,000 mandatory reporters on the new system, plus introduction of training package to 200,000 other workers;
· New laws allowing more information sharing between agencies in cases when it will help ensure children’s safety and well being;
· WellNet – a computer system that helps agencies share information about children where there are safety, welfare or well-being issues;
· Four Child Well-being Units established in January 2010 in the departments of Health, Education and Training, Human Services and the Police; and
· An Aboriginal Impact Statement to assess the effects of the reforms on Aboriginal children, young people, families and communities.
This vide has been posted before, but this time it comes with a little twist. This new video comes with the latest in technology… sound. Yes, that’s right, it has sound. The previously posted video portraying the new Office app, and Calendar all working nicely from the HUB.
Anyways, if you are interested in re-watching this video to finally hear what his saying, go for it, and comment below.
Today is the first day the HTC Droid Incredible which weve already shown you a bunch of times has officially started to sell in Verizon Wireless stores today. And it looks like the smartphone is already very well received by U.S.-based Android adopters.It looks like Verizon cant ship anymore HTC Droid Incredible handsets until at least May 4 so youd better head to a Verizon or Best Buy store to buy one. If youre really lucky chances are that youre going to grab one soon. Otherwis
We have reported how the “Humane Society” of the United States (HSUS) uses misleading advertising to make donors believe that contributions to the organization will go to local hands-on pet shelters. On the contrary, HSUS seems more interested in cows and pigs than dogs and cats. The group funnels much of its $100 million annual budget to push a radical anti-farmer agenda. In the meantime, the local pet shelters that actually take care of animals are strapped for cash – and HSUS is at least partly to blame.
Case in point is the Halifax Humane Society (HHS) in Daytona Beach, Florida. In a recent op-ed, the HHS community relations director Michelle Pari discussed the difficulty of trying to raise money in competition with groups like HSUS. Although Pari didn’t specifically cite HSUS, it’s clear that’s who she has in mind.
“One of the biggest problems HHS faces, as a local private non-profit organization, is public misperception about where donations made to large national groups actually go,” writes Pari. “It is difficult to compete with multimillion-dollar organizations that have the financial means to solicit money through television, newsprint, radio and Internet advertising worldwide.” She goes on to add that people are “shocked” to learn that not a penny of the donation they send to the “national organization” ever reaches the local animals in need.
In a speech before the Animal Agriculture Alliance this week, the editor of HumaneWatch.org pointed out that that less than one-half of 1 percent of the HSUS budget goes to pet shelters: “They have about a $100 million budget, $24 million goes into fundraising, $37 million goes to salaries, with more than 30 lawyers on staff.” In addition to funding activism, HSUS believes in taking care of its own. The HSUS pension contributions of $2.5 million are five times greater than the meager grants to pet shelters.
We strongly agree with Pari’s recommendation that if you really want to help those dogs and cats in your community, give to the local shelter directly – or else they will likely never see a penny of your good intentions.
We’re usually pretty rough on the Wolverines at tBBC, and as the Owner/President/CEO of this site, I feel it’s time that I admonish Jim for publishing two straight days of “point and laugh” articles at our friends up North.
It’s fun to pick on those guys, but even we should promote happy tidings when they point towards prosperity for UM.
So, to counter Jim’s writings of late, I decided to scour the news and find something that will be good news for Michigan fans. It didn’t take long to find good news for the enemy to the North…..
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bowl game is supposed to be a reward for a good season. Now, with the glut of postseason contests, a team with a losing record might get an invitation.
“I think it stinks,” former Nebraska player Aaron Taylor said Wednesday in a text message. The CBS college football analyst said the sport “is becoming perilously close to losing the purity and amateurism that separates it from it’s pro counterpart.”
Finding enough winning teams to fill bowl slots is a fairly recent concern. The number of bowl games has nearly doubled from the 18 held in 1996.
So, chins up, Michigan fans!!! There’s something to hope for in 2010!
The bar has been raised**! Slide under it while you still can!
———-
** – The BBC apologizes profusely if former Michigan Head Coach Gary Moeller was at all confused by our mentioning a bar.
Just when we thought China’s automotive industry had made some headway in the quality department, we get word that complaints about new car quality in the country have risen significantly over the past few months. During the first quarter of this year, complains on vehicles purchased within the last six months climbed 15 percent over last year’s figures. Those numbers come courtesy of the China Association for Quality.
Even more surprising, the increase marks a nine-percent jump over the number of complaints filed during the fourth quarter of 2009. By and large, the defects concerned engine issues as well as small parts. A total of 94.6 percent of the complaints were lodged against cars costing less than $44,000.
Scientists investigating ovale malaria, a form of the disease thought to be caused by a single species of parasite, have confirmed that the parasite is actually two similar but distinct species which do not reproduce with each other, according to research published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases this week.
The largest ever trial of fish oil supplements has found no evidence that they offer benefits for cognitive function in older people. The OPAL study investigated the effects of taking omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplements over a two year period on the cognitive function of participants aged 70-80 years.
Pfizer Inc. and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have entered into an agreement for the development, access and delivery of a fixed-dose combination treatment consisting of azithromycin dihydrate (AZ) and chloroquine phosphate (CQ) for the Intermittent Preventive Treatment of P. falciparum malaria in pregnancy (IPTp).
There are Christian organisations (even one micro political party) which have their future dependent on frightening people in Australia with tales of terrorism and fanatical expansionism of Muslims in Indonesia. They never say anything that presents a balanced picture of Christianity in Indonesia.
Did you know that every Sunday there are more Christians in church in Indonesia than there are people in Australia? That the memberships of the larger churches are double that of the largest churches in Australia? That there are churches that are more opulent and which seat more than any church building in Australia? That Muslim communities are fearful of the rapid growth and conversion rate of Muslims by evangelical churches?
Microsoft is preparing the launch of an all-new Windows Live Messenger as part of its Wave 4 version of Windows Live. The range of new features will appeal to the modern online generation and are a significant step up over previous versions…
Continue Reading Microsoft announces significant update to Windows Live Messenger
While I have some very serious concerns about the way the UK’s collection agency PRS for Music conducts its business when it comes to threatening small businesses — including going after a woman playing music to her horses and woman singing while stocking the shelves at a store — over the past few months I’ve been having a series of interesting conversations with Will Page, the Chief Economist for PRS.
Page, of course, put out that famous report last summer, that pointed out that the music industry in the UK appeared to be getting bigger, not smaller (contrary to what you hear from many people). Page is a fun guy to talk with about music industry economics, and we decided to run a little interview with him here. There’s plenty that I disagree with him about, but plenty that we agree on too. There’s so much in this interview that I’d like to dig deeper on, and I hope to do that in a series of posts in the future — and some more back and forth with Page — but I figured at this point it was worth getting our discussion as it stands out there for people to read.
We wrote about your study last
year showing that the UK music industry was actually increasing — contrary
to most of the headlines were saying. Can you give a quick summary
of why your numbers show a very different story than the popular press
keeps saying?
It’s a
‘different story’ to what people are accustomed to simply because,
for too long, people have characterised the music industry as being
about just the recorded music industry. That’s largely due to the
fact that the only data out there for people to discuss is recorded
music statistics. When we published ‘Adding
Up The Music Industry for 2008’ last year, it was an important step towards showing (i) how much the
whole music industry was worth and more importantly (ii) how it all
hangs together. One of the many audiences we aimed this work at was
Government, who need to understand the broader picture of what the music
industry comprises of, and the value that it brings.
The Insight paper allowed two new pieces of the pie to be illustrated
and properly understood: firstly live music revenues of
£1.4 billion and secondly business-to-business licensing revenues which
were over £900 million. From a total pie worth
£3.6 billion, that implied that recorded music made up a nudge over
a third of the total revenues — that’s a significant sum, but definitely
not the only show in town.
Both of us are
skeptical that the digital music sales market will ever replace the
physical music market. Can you summarize why and what numbers
you've seen about the digital market?
My concerns about the digital market
start with the same word that introduced me to economics:
‘scarcity’ — there is little scarcity in selling digital media
goods and that inevitably affects price. I think the best way to illustrate
this is to look, instead, at the live music industry as those folks
are the masters of pricing scarcity
— they view tickets as ‘lots’ and want to maximise the willingness
to pay for each. Live music mastered their demand curve a long time
ago; digital music is still trying to discover theirs. Another problem
with this topic is that interpreting digital music revenues is not a
straightforward exercise, especially in Europe. We published a paper
on ‘Understanding
and Interpreting the Digital Market’ two years ago to help folks try and get their head around this
complex market, and it’s not got any easier since!
I’d like to flag two observations
for your readers. Firstly, don’t view digital in isolation, when it’s
shown that one-in-five albums sold in America were digital, that tells
you more about the collapse in the five, that the outperformance of
the one. Secondly, the UK has really outperformed its European neighbours
in developing a large, and importantly diverse, digital market. UK digital
revenues per capita are twice, maybe three times, that of our main European
neighbours, which is a great testimony to the work that Jez Bell at
PRS for Music and folks like Francis Keeling at Universal have done
on the licensing front as well as the
incredible achievements of the services
like We7, Spotify and 7 Digital which have taken out the licences and
launched here.
Finally, whilst the digital makes
up 20% of recorded music revenues, and 5% of PRS for Music collections,
what I really have learnt to appreciate is that these digital services
are legal ‘venues’ — a concept that Eric Garland drilled home
to me — and somewhere north of four million
folks in the UK are going to sites like
Spotify or We7 and doing their thing
— now it might not be producing the monies people once wished for
but they are arguably not going to Mininova, an illegal venue, and that’s
an important achievement — especially when Mininova celebrated its
10 billionth torrent download
three months before iTunes celebrated theirs. Engagement with legal
venues is worth more than the top line
revenues might initially suggest.
You mention ‘scarcity’ in the context of live vs. digital, but live has a real scarcity (seats — over which they can control access). Digital doesn’t have that kind of scarcity. You say that digital hasn’t ‘discovered their demand curve,’ but might the bigger issue really be that without the scarcity the supply curve is the issue? My view has always been that the digital market is a red herring due to the lack of scarcity, but instead the music world should focus on external scarcities that widespread digital music creates (including things like seats at concerts). Is the real issue not the demand curve but the supply and the failure (of some) to recognize that they need to think broader in terms of what they’re selling?
That’s a very insightful question — and you’re right as one of the many mistakes economists make is to forget about the supply side dynamics of a problem, and instead focus on demand. It’s worth citing Jean Baptiste Say, and his Law of Markets which is that “supply creates demand.” What this means, with regards to your question, is that “overproduction” in a free economy is actually impossible. That’s a controversial proposition though, as I think it comes up against another trade off which we could call the attention economy, where a wealth of information leads to a poverty of attention. Stepping back from the theory, there is clearly more noise in the market place — more artists, more songs, more places to hear them — therefore more investment is needed to stand above the noise, to enable the benefits of your ‘external scarcities’ to kick in. One final piece of twisted economics is this idea of a ‘freemium’ model, which is cool but has a flaw — if everyone did it, the less successful it would be. Point being there would be more noise in the free market, which erodes the value of the premium offering — an increase is supply depresses price, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that basic principle.
You call services like Spotify and We7 “legal venues” and things like Mininova as an “illegal venue,” which I assume many of our readers may have an issue with — especially given that Mininova has long had a program for artists to offer up their own content, and there certainly are a small, but growing, number of artists who have embraced those venues for legitimate marketing reasons. Is there an argument to be made that, given the size of some of the userbases of those venues that you (and many) deem illegal, that there may be ways to embrace and engage with them, rather than write them off as such?
The best way to embrace those users is to ensure the services they use are licensed and respect the value of music. Now, we have over a thousand digital music licencees here in the UK, and we’ve been granting online licenses since 2002, long before iTunes — a fact often overlooked. The best way to approach the unlicensed services is to think of it this way — we’re all chatting about whether Spotify will sink or swim, right? That’s the hot debate at the moment. Well, I would argue that at the margin Spotify would have far more chance of swimming, or up selling the subscription service, had they not had to face this unfair competition of illegal free. That’s a powerful argument when you run it through, as it moves away from the old arguments and towards a more plausible observation: what opportunities are being foregone in the legal digital market due to the unfair competition of illegal free? One last thing on Spotify, which is that they went legal before going popular, bucking a regrettable trend. When you explain that to an emerging artist or songwriter, offering a counterfactual of many other sites which have become incredibly popular (and then flipped for incredible amounts of money) before taking out licences — it really hits the message home.
Both of us are still
quite optimistic that there's still a huge opportunity for the overall
music market to grow. Where do you think that opportunity exists
— and why is it mostly ignored?
If we pick up on
‘Business-to-Business’ revenues, or licensing income, this makes
music free at the point of consumption with compensation taking place
elsewhere. This part of the music industry is likely to make up an increasing
part of an increasing pie, and that by default presents opportunities
However, what’s frustrating is that music licensing is an area of
the industry that’s often least understood by emerging bands
and songwriters — the MySpace generation —
who are trying to get one foot on the ladder to success. To realise
those opportunities, the first thing artists and songwriters
need to do is protect their rights by joining PPL and PRS for Music
in the UK, or their equivalents in their respective territories. Secondly,
it’s very important that the licensing bodies
around the world get involved with the artists and songwriters. Here
at PRS for Music, we’ve got Myles Keller leading our membership development
and we’re getting increasingly involved with our songwriters through
programming events like The
Great Escape on the 13th May, whereas in America you have
‘walking encyclopaedias’ like Todd and Jeff Brabec who are very
accessible on the panel circuit and their bible ‘Music Money and Success’ is required reading. I guess my point is
that the best way to realise the licensing opportunities that exist
is to get involved. Passivity doesn’t pay.
You stress the importance of getting people to sign up for collection societies/licensing organizations — which isn’t surprising, given your employer — but myself and many of our readers are concerned about the incentive structures when musicians rely on such organizations (even when– as in many cases — they’re non-profits). With such organizations, you can take away some aspect of market-pricing, especially when there are issues of compulsory licensing and/or only one provider in the market. It also creates situations where those organizations constantly push for greater rights, or the ability to collect from more places for more reasons– often upsetting other aspects of the market (for example: bars and restaurants no longer letting bands play live or hosting open mic nights to avoid having to pay licensing fees). While I agree that, given today’s setup, it makes sense for musicians not to pass up revenue that’s there for them via these organizations, isn’t there a risk that these types of organizations distort the market from a purely economic viewpoint?
Each collecting society is different, so firstly — let’s be wary of generalisations. In America, for example, you are absolutely unique in that you have competition within collecting societies with ASCAP, SESAC and BMI — the latter which is owned by the broadcasters! Similarly, the story behind SoundExchange is unique too — and in many cases the US is playing ‘catch up’ with the rest of the world when it comes to neighbouring rights. So, I just want to be clear for a predominantly US Techdirt audience, the US experience with collective rights organisations will be unlike anywhere else in the world. I really mean that too — it’s such an exception to the rule.
Now to your question — let’s start by asking what is the rational for collecting societies. I would argue that the answer is three-fold: (i) reducing transaction costs for both rights holder and user, (ii) preventing fragmentation and (iii) solving co-ordination in many-to-many markets. The bottom line is this: PRS for Music enables start ups to start up, and songwriters to get paid. If you wiped the board clean and tried to devise a new model, which can hold together a blanket licence and balance the needs of unprecedented digital services, you would probably end up with what PRS for Music is doing just now. It’s not an easy task, and armchair critics would do well to consider the complexity in this two-sided market and the trade-offs that we face every day, but to read that We7 now feel that add funded music can add up is heartening as it suggests we’re getting this delicate balancing act right.
You've noted that the UK music
market appears to have again gone up in
2009 over 2008 and appears to be growing faster than other countries.
Why do you think the UK market has been different than elsewhere?
Firstly, The UK is not alone in bucking
the downward trend as Sweden, Denmark and Australia can also claim to
be outliers in some form. However, these are the exceptions as
opposed to the rule, and it’s a stark contrast to the downbeat sentiments
I’m hearing from the US, and chalk-and-cheese to the situation in
Spain which really is frightening on many levels. I’d offer three
exceptions which have bucked global trends rule. Firstly, the live music
industry has continued to exhibit robust growth in the UK even in the
middle of a credit crunch, whereas other territories suggest the market
might have matured. Secondly, UK labels have arguably done a better
job of diversifying their revenue streams , due in part to the success
story that is PPL, and I doubt that level of diversification is being
reflected by labels in many other regions. Third, the UK really values
music. It’s a simple point, but it really matters. Think: the role
of the BBC in championing emerging bands, the explosion in music festivals
in every corner of the country, the insane amount of work of Feargal
Sharkey at UK Music has put in to get all the stakeholders (including
ISPs) to banging heads together to face up to the challenges — all
these ingredients help illustrate that this thing called “music”
actually matters to the UK. Conversely, I’m spending an increasing
amount of time in Spain now, and what you see there is that music doesn’t
matter as much…if at all. It’s one of the few western countries
that can claim a thriving digital AND physical piracy problem and investment
in domestic talent is drying up as there simply no return. It’s actually
kind of eerie when you compare the quality of debate and level of activity
being had in the UK to that of other countries, it’s not that we’ve
solved all the problems, far from it, but it’s more about not dodging
them and actually doing something about them.
On Spain, I know the IFPI’s recent report said the industry is in trouble there, and you do the same here, but we keep hearing from people who claim otherwise — that there’s a renaissance of music in Spain due to more widespread ability to promote and distribute musicians. Anecdotally, in the last year, I’ve actually picked up (yes, legally bought, on CD) albums from a few Spanish bands. Do you have some numbers for Spain — since between the two of us, we seem to have very different anecdotal experiences? Could it just be that the business models haven’t adapted yet?
Neither of us is from Spain, nor do we currently live there — so we have to work this one out based on our own anecdotal experiences. What I’ve noticed is that trade revenues of record labels have halved in less than a decade, in nominal terms. I’ve also noticed incredible resentment to ‘paying for music’ in Spain, there’s a real ‘stick it to the man’ attitude which is puzzling. I come back to the point on domestic investment — given the situation there, would you (and that could be a label, publisher, manager or third party) invest in developing domestic talent in Spain, or would you invest somewhere else with a lower risk profile and then import into Spain. I’m sure there are lots of opportunities down there on the ground, but how many of those opportunities lead to a sustainable living for professional artists and songwriters. For me, Spain’s situation is like a tipping point which other countries should take note of.
One point that you’ve noted is
that the live music market has grown and actually
surpassed revenue from recorded in the UK. Critics dismiss this,
claiming that the live numbers are dominated by "heritage"
or "legacy" acts. Is this true? You claim that
the revenue for live covers "more bands, more tickets, more seats,
more events." Who's right?
You’re right to pick up on the changing
of the guard observation from last year, and it’s incredible to think
that five years prior, live was less than half the size of recorded
— which makes you ask three questions: (i) how has live captured so
much value, (ii) how has recorded lost so much value and (iii) is there
a link. However, read beneath the top line and you can consider the
distribution of those revenues: who got what share of the spoils.
As with recorded music, in live we’re witnessing a hit heavy skinny
tail distribution, and that intuitively makes sense. The bigger you
are, the more forms of revenues you’re able to exploit and the distribution
skews to the head naturally. When Take That played to over a million
people, that’s an example of more tickets, more seats and more events
but it’s just one band. Down in the tail, the picture is less clear
— with worrying stories of support bands having to pay to play needing
to be balanced with the fact that the explosion in festivals gives more
opportunities for acts to get wider exposure. There’s some interesting
signals coming out of the market place though, for example I was told
that there was noticeably less record label A&R presence at SXSW
this year, with agents and promoters filling up the bars on Sixth Street
— perhaps that’s a sign of the times.
You've noted in the past that
60% of the UK population don't buy music anyway and that "you can't
cannibalize zero" when it comes to things like file sharing "taking
away" revenue. Do you believe there's evidence that the 60%
of people who don't buy music are helping to contribute revenue elsewhere
— and if so how and where?
It’s a vital observation that needs
to be rammed home as the rights holders are understandably obsessed
with cannibalisation, but sometimes blinkered to the wider problem.
The legendary Rory
Sutherland remarked on
that "Can't Cannibalize Zero" phrase as a masterpiece and
told me that it reminded him:
“Of working with
ATOC, and First Great Western. They were obsessed with the risk of Revenue
Abstraction — the rail phrase for cannibalisation. In other words, any
special off-peak offer was viewed with terror, lest it attract people
prepared to pay full fare. But, just like music, 60% of people don't
use trains – ever!”
Rory makes you think about the problems
differently — and here, the problem is how can we re-engage the lost
majority? I collaborated with Spotify on a piece of research called “How
to dance to ARPU” which
allows rights holders and users to approach that infamous acronym with
more clarity. At the back of my mind, though, is this: most of the folk
of my parents generation love Spotify and none of them ever bought music
…ever. Engagement is the horse, and monetisation is the cart — if
services like Spotify are helping re-engaging those who gave us nothing,
there’s a better chance of getting something going forward.
Following up on the B2B side
of the market, some also point out that this part of the market may
also be dominated by large legacy acts who can score big sponsorship
deals. Do you think that's true and if not why not? What
opportunities are there for less well known bands in this area?
To quote from the paper, ‘brands
investing in music trough sponsorship are drawn to it through the potential
audience affinity and reach; this means that much of the major expenditure
is biased towards the larger priorities and artists, which provide larger
fan bases.’ That means that it’s tough in the tail for bands wanting
to strike sponsorship deals. That said, there is a lot of scope to use
initiative to innovate in this sector. Here in the UK, we have organisations
like Music Ally and FRUKT who are doing some great work in this sector,
especially in terms of offering training and workshops for artists and
managers — their material is well worth tracking as opportunities
in this sector don’t find you, you have to find them.
Lots of people have suggested
that even if live is now outpacing album sales, it was still the record
labels that really financed tours and the growth of live. Are
there mechanisms to support and nurture live if the record labels continue
to decline? Where might it come from?
The kicker is this — the money is
live is centred around the head, and much of that head is heritage in
status — so the question I always ask is who’s going to offer the
tour support for new bands to build the sort of fan bases that provide
the live industry with the heritage acts of the future. That’s a legitimate
question to ask, and not an easy one to answer, but you’ve got to
look forwards not backwards, and I’m really hype on the company Songkick it’s basically Facebook for folk who
love going to gigs with full functionality for ticketing, recommendations
et al. I think that what Ian Hogarth has done there is a real game changer
when you fully think it through — and it also helps level a heavily
tilted playing field as emerging acts can benefit as much as the established
bands from Songkick’s functionality. You have to manage expectations
as it won’t make touring across a country in a bus sitting next to
a drummer with an odour problem any less unpleasant, but it does have
the potential to lead to more bands performing to more fans, and importantly
more data to build upon that success.
Notably absent from your discussions
on these numbers is anything (outside of live) having to do with direct-to-fan
opportunities that we've discussed on Techdirt. These numbers
may get mixed in elsewhere as they sometimes include
album sales and sometimes include live, but do you have any thoughts
on that market? Do you have any numbers on how those efforts are
doing?
Firstly, I’ve recommended your excellent Trent
Reznor case study to literally
everyone and their dog. What’s really good about that is that you
echo what I’ve stressed every time I’ve explained ‘In Rainbows, On Torrents’ case study which was that this was a solution
for Radiohead, and was NOT a solution for the music industry. That said,
what Radiohead and NIN did were ‘experiments’ and we’ve got to
learn from these experiments. You got to ask the right questions —
so ‘of what worked, what’s transferable?’ Second, whilst Topspin
was behind your Trent Reznor case study, there’s another Toronto based
company worth checking out called Official
Community. They’re providing
direct artist to fan infrastructure which allows for disintermediation
of the value chain, more empowerment of the artist and faster cash flow.
When you look into these models though, it’s important to keep a balanced
perspective and manage expectations — it’s not going to change the
world, and it might not even change the actors involved in a ‘conventional
deal,’ but this existence of more options should, if anything, allow
artists and songwriters to negotiate better terms. Third and
finally, I agree with the premise of the question — what’s happening
outside the conventional radar is probably bucking the southward trend,
but because it’s not being picked up — the trend continues southward.
I learnt recently that the annual Cambridge Folk Festival is a massive
player in selling CDs of those folk artists to fans — literally tens
of thousands of CDs being shifted on location. Now, you may be tempted
to dismiss this as just a niche festival and just niche CDs, but they’re
shifting lots of them and there’s are lots more similar festivals
up and down the country who are increasingly doing the same thing and
its questionable how much of this is getting picked up on the conventional
radar. That offers optimism for the future as regards the “known unknowns”
which are out there, but also presents numerous headaches for myself
and Chris Carey as we try to calculate this year’s ‘Adding up the
Music Industry’ report together which is due for publication in July
2010.
You mention the “skinny tail” and that some of the success today is from heritage acts, but then we see numbers from folks like TuneCore that show a massively successful long tail. It makes me wonder if — as TuneCore notes — the long tail success stories simply aren’t being seen in the data because it’s the wrong data. We hear so many stories of musicians successfully embracing new business models down the tail that it makes me wonder if what’s happening down there is simply not being counted. Thoughts? Any ideas on better ways to measure?
Both Chris Anderson’s work on Long Tail, and our analysis since, has suffered a lot of misinterpretation because you can’t dive into this topic and expect a simple tabloid headline to explain it all. Statistical distributions of large data sets are not the sexiest topic for the music industry to discuss — on that we can both agree! But let’s roll back to what I’ve stated repeatedly in our work here — I loved the concept of the Long Tail, still recommend the book to colleagues and wish it would work the way we all hoped. However, it is a book about the supply curve — here’s what happens when lots of goods can get to market. What I was able to do, thanks largely to the mathematical guidance of Andrew Bud, is derive the demand curve for digital music — which is like saying “okay, once you’re on the digital shelf, who actually wants you.” You need two curves to tango in economics, and we’ve been able to develop an unprecedented understanding of this digital music market place as a result. What’s great though, is to know where economics needs to hand over to other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology or anthropology — basically how do we understand culture.
I can illustrate what I mean by offering your readers a genuine exclusive — by exhibiting the Lorenz curves for We7 and Spotify side by side, and comparing those with the sort of distribution Chris Anderson’s theory predicted:
The red line is to show what a “great example of the Long Tail at work” should look like, where 95% of the niche inventory (reading from bottom left to bottom right) makes up 75% of the streams — a fat tail. Clearly, neither We7 nor Spotify look like that, with both curves tugging into the bottom left hand axis point and this is what’s meant by a hit heavy, skinny tail distribution. However, the curves are different, and that is to be expected — as We7 has a strong editorial with excellent artist promotional campaigns, whereas Spotify is editorial free and allows the consumer to graze the field at their leisure. Consequently, you can see that We7 (blue line) is more hit centric with a 90/5 rule and Spotify (green line) is more democratic with an 80/5 rule which, when you step back, is common sense made complicated but it’s nice to see the math adds up!
The key thing for Techdirt readers is that’s what economics can tell us when rights holders and users collaborate to understand unprecedented markets, and it’s great that PRS for Music and Digital Music Services are willing to work together like this — I think it’s a important part of the success story in the UK. However, economic analysis can only tell us so much and it’s at this point when the baton must be passed on to folks from other disciplines or backgrounds who can bring new insights to the table to work out what that actually means in terms of this intriguing thing called ‘culture’ — which also means this is a good point to conclude this interview.
Thanks to Will for this fun discussion… which I fully expect to continue. If you want to see one of Will’s recent presentations on the state of the music market, it’s embedded below:
