IRMA Blame Pirates for Scuttling its Sinking Ship

For the most part, Key Notes isn’t a fan of traditional print media.  Occasionally, modest individual that he is, he has been known to glance at reviews to see how they compare with his own.  On Monday, however, something caught Key Notes eye that raised a smile and yet caused him to sigh most un-contentedly.  Under the headline "Industry in Crisis as Album Sales Drop by 10%"  IRMA (the Irish Recorded Music Association) CEO Dick Doyle bemoans the fourth consecutive year of a double digit drop in sales.

Mr. Doyle was complaining that the Irish music industry was worth only €110m in 2007.  That's approximately 1.7% of the value of the US Music Industry in 2006.  Now, given that the Irish Population is about 1.4% of the US Population, this shows that the Irish music industry is actually performing better than its US equivalent as the industry here is worth around €26 per person, while in the US, home to the largest music industry in the world, it is worth only €21.75 per person.  Going even further – by taking into account the fact that only about 65% of the total population of Ireland and the US are of music purchasing age – those figures increase to €40 and €33.50 respectively.

Given that we are in the age of the digital download it is only fair to look at what this €40 could be worth to the Irish music industry.  Firstly, with iTunes the average price of purchasing an album is €9.99.  That means that Irish people (or those of music purchasing age) could have purchased 4 albums for their €40 last year.  With 140 Irish albums being released in 2007 that were valid for consideration for the Choice Music Prize, theoretically each of these bands could have sold almost 80,000 copies of their releases.  An impressive figure I’m sure you’ll agree, and one that should have IRMA encouraging the use of technology in purchasing music. 

However, IRMA appear to be more focused on illegal downloading and spending money on catching those evil boys and girls who 10 years ago were taping songs off the radio than they are on encouraging their members to embrace legal downloading, either through their own website or through facilities like iTunes.  How else can you explain why IRMA continues to utter nonsense such as "There are tens of thousands of jobs gone in the US and it is all to do with one thing only and that is illegal downloads."

Thinking about it for all of ten seconds Key Notes can list three other factors that might be equally responsible:

1. The general downturn in the world economy
2. Cheap imports of CD’s from the likes of Play and CD Wow
3. New music retailers like Starbucks and Tesco entering the market

At an industry discussion Key Notes attended yesterday evening (thanks KT!), key players within the Irish industry – from musicians to journalists and managers to label bosses – agreed that whatever the cause of the current problems, the solution was that everyone, from the musician right up to the label boss, had to up their game.  Could it be that the radical solution needed to ‘save the industry’ is – shock horror – creating better music as a musician and making smarter decisions as a label?  It couldn't be that simple could it?

So, do you agree with IRMA when they say that the industries only problems are with illegal downloads or, if you live in the real world, do you think that the problem is multifaceted and that perhaps not giving musicians obnoxious sums of money at the expense of other artists might actually be a good thing?  Either way, Key Notes would love to hear your comments below.

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