Sleeve artwork from the recently released Beatles compilation Love.
In 2013, 50 years after its original release, copyright of The Beatles' first album expires. The industry's complaints that the current law should be revised for the good of music are entirely wrong.
In recent years, we have frequently been presented with the picture of total collapse for the music industry. Alarmist announcements of this kind are in fact as old as advent of home recording. Yet however overblown the case for downloaded music killing profits in one fell swoop often becomes, it still seems more credible and less insidious than the current furore over copyright . In their bid to extend the copyright on recordings from 50 to 95 years, industry executives have raised several unhappy scenarios, but these have now rightly been rejected by Andrew Gowers in his Treasury-commissioned report published today.
One argument the industry used is that the revenue generated from back catalogues is what underpins record companies' ability to invest in new artists, so to close of this endless stream of cash would impoverish the quality of new music.
This doesn't seem such an unreasonable point until you reflect that they have had fifty years to rake in billions from The Beatles. Also, the notion of the back catalogue acting as crutch to fund new talent seems to imply that more contemporary acts have brought home peanuts. This would be very sad indeed if it were anywhere near the truth.
To me, the 50 years, during which both company and artists have had full opportunity to reap the lucrative benefits of their work, seem more than ample. It strikes me as natural that after such a time (in which several lifetimes of wealth have been generated) this music should move into the public domain.
But this is where the industry summons the most "fearful" scenario: the music of The Beatles could be packaged and used by anybody! We could be flooded with cash-in, novelty records that tamper with the original songs!
Overlooking the fact that the latter can clearly happen regardless of who owns the rights, I have two main objections to this concept. First, the music entering the public domain would open a world of creative possibilities and could be just as likely to lead to The Beatles' music and others enduring and growing in significance from things like the sample culture, where DJ hip hop street mixes turned out by Dangermouse reinvented the Beatles on the Grey Album, or Cherrystones morphing forgotten 60s records into contemporary breaks'n'beats classics.
In the case of early blues and country, the lapse of copyright has had numerous positive consequences. The songs being highly accessible and the constant repackaging and proliferation of different compilations has helped to keep interest alive and, if anything, spread the influence of some of the most important music of all time throughout the generations. With the freedom to produce their own interpretations of songs such as Death Letter (Son House) and In the Pines (Leadbelly), artists like the White Stripes and Nirvana have brought great music to the attention of many people among whom its significance could have been lost. Of course the possibility of shoddy compilations and mediocre renditions of the songs would increase but then the matter would be left to the discernment of the public.
More importantly, though: Why should the legacy of The Beatles be treated as some sacred cash cow and held at arm's length from those that gave and continue to give The Beatles their success - the fans? Without people's initial support and continuing identification with the music, The Beatles would be a long forgotten name.
