Miranda stated on her official Twitter account "the government's recently announced reforms of the board will cause our work to be valued in a much fairer way with a faster & more efficient board."
Miranda has worked with a huge range of musicians including Jim Cuddy, Steve Page and Alan Doyle And The Beautiful, Beautiful Band, on television shows (Republic of Doyle), Canadian movies (Maudie) and in theatre (Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre). She has her own boutique label Roaring Girl Records (Taylor, 2017).
Miranda is just one of many Canadian artists and musicians working with the government and industry towards changing the Canadian copyright laws. In September Canadian musician Bryan Adams gave evidence to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage investigating changes to the Canadian Copyright Act. He was advocating that more control be given to those content creators where the copyright has been transferred to others (Bliss, 2018).
As consumers and fans we want those creators we love (whether they be authors, artists, musicians or movie and documentary makers) to keep doing what they do and to be fairly paid for it. So what can we do as consumers to help content creators in Canada and other parts of the world make a living from their work in the digital age?
In 2017 Miranda Mulholland gave a speech “Redefining Success in a Digital Age” at the Economic Club of Canada about the impact of the digital age on artists and musicians including their rights and their ability to make a living from their creative work.
Miranda’s speech is available in full from her official webpage. I have provided a link to the site here for those fans interested mirandamulholland.ca/advocacy
I have copied a few paragraphs from Miranda's full speech from her webpage that relate to fans for example, how music services we use like YouTube and touring impacts on artists and musicians and how our actions can improve their creative work in the future. As a consumer we can assist artists and musicians by...
“...There are a number of best practices that every streaming service gives to artists and labels. These are ways that they want artists to reach out to their fanbase that they have built and to plug into the system. Fair enough. Make it easier for your favourite artists.
Here are some FREE ways to help.
- Be a tastemaker. Create playlists for events, road trips, friend’s birthday’s. Add your favourite artists.
- Write reviews and rate. Getting reviews and ratings helps shift algorithms in favour of artists, helps their work come up as “things you might like” and can give your favourite artists an edge in the very competitive granting and funding races.
Here are some PRETTY CHEAP ways to help.
- If you think you’re going to buy a record or you’ve been tempted by a great track in advance of its release, buy the record on release day. This can accelerate an album onto the front page of whatever service you use to buy music, which is an excellent advertisement.
- Buy merchandise. Show off your band love with a sweet t-shirt, poster, tickets. Go to live shows!
- If you love an album or a book, buy it and buy one to give to a friend.
- Subscribe to a music service. For the price of 1 album a month, you not only get millions of songs at your fingertips with no ads, but you also are making a difference. The revenue gap between ad based services and their subscriber versions is significant.(4)…"
We as fans can also be aware of the music services we use such as YouTube and Google and how touring impacts on artists and musicians…
"Let’s look at the biggest music service in the world – YouTube. Did you know that 82% of YouTube users use it for music? (3) It is supported by advertising and it is based on user uploaded content. But wait. Running a commercial site based on unauthorized uploading of copyrighted music is illegal, right?
YouTube says, it isn’t our fault – we are just the shop window. We didn’t put the items in the window, so we are not accountable for them. We are a passive intermediary. We are not liable for this massive copyright infringement.
But – once again – wait. A top brass at Google just bragged that “80% of all watch time is recommended by YouTube.” He explained that “Everybody thinks that all the music that’s being listened to and watched is by search.” But it isn’t, and in his words, “that’s a really important and powerful thing.”.
This means that YouTube actively directs consumers. This doesn’t seem all that passive to me. Zero accountability.
And when asked about the problem of low payments to artists, a Google executive said:
“It's important to note that on the concerns that have been flagged, there's no consensus even amongst the artistic community about the impacts of streaming and what they actually think about it or what they don't think about it. Every single time I hear a newspaper article about the reduction in royalty rates they're getting from streaming, I'll see another artist who basically says, “well, actually my royalty rates are pretty good”.
Well here’s a consensus. Your rates are the lowest in the world! Your revenue is built on the backs of other people’s talent and work and you refuse to acknowledge it.
Accountability means acknowledging value and compensating for it.
Here’s another solution musicians are presented with - Touring. So is Touring the Answer?
There are a lot of positives about touring, and you learn to find the bits you enjoy and make the most of them, but still – it’s work. Since the devaluation of music that has occurred in this new era of free, fans are more unwilling to pay for live music and the market is saturated with bands trying to eke out a living on the road.
Touring is also difficult for many artists. The framework doesn’t exist to support some genres - like hip-hop; it is unkind to people with families, to women. Loreena McKennitt - an artist/entrepreneur hero of mine, said that for artists like herself, touring was always a loss leader in order to promote her recordings. That has become entirely unsustainable.
She also points out that we should not be misled by equating fame with business viability as there are many famous people through the new technologies who are still unable to make a living….”
The speech was recapped in an article by an art's critic from the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail titled 'What happens when we starve our artists' by Kate Taylor published on 26 May, 2017 at the globeandmail.com. I have provided a link to the article here for those music fans interested.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/what-happens-when-we-starve-our-artists/article35126623/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/what-happens-when-we-starve-our-artists/article35126623/
This post is from the official account of The Agenda with Miranda Mulholland discussing Canada's digital copyright rules posted on the 12 November, 2018. No copyright infringement intended.
References
Bliss, K. (2019). 'Byran Adams Calls for Copyright Reforms in Canada' published on 19 September, 2019 at Billboard.com.
Taylor, K. (2017). 'What happens when we starve our artists' published on 27 May, 2017 at globeandmail.com.
