Goldschmidt Echoes Tax Break Call

Doherty, the recently appointed British Phonographic Industries chairman, made his appeal at the Westminster Media Forum’s Next Steps for the Music Industry event in London at the end of April.

“The tax breaks that currently exist to help the music industry actually give the tax break to private investors,” Goldschmidt told the packed Brighton conference, which had sold all its 3,500 delegate passes with a week to spare. He suggested government support would be best targeted as a tax break for recorded music production and said many of the tax breaks offered to film, video games, theatre and now orchestras were designed in part to mitigate the damage done by piracy and market failure.

“This is about putting value back into the whole recording ecosystem of studios, session players and, importantly, self-funding artists,” he explained. “More importantly, it makes cultural sense – as an industry, we’ve grown very risk-averse in terms of what gets signed, what gets played on the radio.”

For any change to be made, Goldschmidt believes it is vital that the music industry deliver a clear message: “The reason the tax break currently goes to the financial services industry and not the music industry is that we fight among ourselves and are very bad at talking to government.” Other speakers at the session included Martin Elbourne (co-founder of The Great Escape), Meredith Cork (artist manager at Yellowbrick Music) and artist Dan Le Sac.