MIDEM Numbers Down

MIDEM’s attendance levels were down 13 percent, totaling a little more than 7,000 delegates and close to what conference director Dominique Leguern expected.

Last year, when official figures showed the attendance dropped from 9,100 in 2008 to about 8,000, Leguern said the figures are mirroring the falling staffing levels in the recorded music business.

“It’s not a music industry crisis, it’s a CD crisis,” she explained.

The gathering clearly had its upsides, as the delegates seemed determined to shed the pressures of the gloomy economic climate and get down to business.

The announcements came thick and fast. PRS for Music got its Independent Music Publishers’ European Licensing (IMPEL) initiative off the ground, indies organisation IMPALA launched a new networking scheme, and the original founders of Sire Records held a press conference announcing the resurrection of the Blue Horizon label.

The IMPEL deal, confirmed a year after PRS for Music first put its name to it, will directly license the Anglo-American online and mobile mechanical rights for any independent publishers that sign up for it. So far that includes Conexion Music, Fairwood Music (UK), Hornall Brothers Music, Kassner Associate Publishers, Music Sales, Proof Songs, Red Ink Music and Reverb Music.

IMPEL is the first time a number of independent publishers have worked together to take advantage of the EC cross border recommendation on collective licensing. And it provides a convenient, one-stop shop for licensees of this repertoire.

“I’m delighted we can deliver more music to European consumers through the IMPEL initiative,” said Andrew Shaw, PRS for Music’s managing director for broadcast, online and recorded media. “IMPEL offers a valuable and practical solution to independent publishers looking to exploit their rights across Europe.”

Stuart Hornall of Hornall Brothers Music said Pan-European online licensing can be complex and a potentially time-consuming issue for independent publishers.

“By acting collectively through IMPEL we can reduce the administrative burden on music users and licensees and ensure we get paid more accurately and sooner than if we’d gone through the sub-publisher network,” he explained. “IMPEL also ensures independent publishers comply with the EU directive to make pan-European online licensing easier.”

The scheme launched as of Jan. 1.

Becoming one of the “Friends of IMPALA” may cost as much as euro 2,500 a year, but in return a company gets to link up to the whole music sector from radio to retail, digital to finance, and legal to PR.

Better still is that Yann Padron, the former IMPALA Board member running the scheme, tells Pollstar the fee may be discounted for sole traders and small companies.

Padron said the basic benefits include “exposure at IMPALA communication platforms, direct access to labels through e-mail communications, and ad space on the Web page.”

It also includes invitations to IMPALA-organised events and reaping the benefit of the networking opportunities they present.

Padron believes “Friends Of IMPALA” will bring together the most creative brains in the music business to develop new business opportunities.

On the final day of MIDEM, the indies’ organisation unveiled its “financial blueprint for music.” It’s a 10-point plan that includes football-style compensation and revenue-sharing mechanisms, new accounting standards to value copyright properly and a range of national and EC investment measures for smaller companies.

IMPALA believes the music sector should organise itself along the same lines as soccer, where part of the big teams’ revenues are used to benefit the smaller ones.

“Football and other sports compensate small clubs for two reasons,” said IMPALA executive chairman Helen Smith. “First, to help them compete because of the huge gap with the big clubs. Second, to reward them for their investment in discovering and developing talent. It’s a perfect model for music.”

Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer – who co-founded Sire in 1966 – are re-launching the Blue Horizon label, which was created in the same year to release blues material from artists including Fleetwood Mac, Otis Spann, Chicken Shack and Champion Jack Dupree.

Five years later, the label ceased production, although many of its titles are valuable collectors’ items. Sire has helped keep the name alive by re-releasing some of the earlier product on vinyl.

Stein will continue at Sire and Gottehrer at The Orchard, the management and musical services company he founded in ’97, while sharing a joint responsibility for Blue Horizon.

Signed artists will be digitally developed and distributed through The Orchard. Warner Music Group – Sire’s parent company – will have the option to sign successful acts.

This year’s MIDEM was in Cannes, France, Jan. 24-27.