This year has seen a number of high profile initiatives aimed at improving the capacity of T&T's music industry and putting our music on the international scene. With the help of entities like MusicTT, there's been a buzz about how the music community can pull together and grow. The T&T Guardian spoke to people from many levels of the music industry to hear their views on how we can improve and move forward. Today, in the second of a seven-part series, we look at some of the issues raised by music artistes and sector workers during the MusicTT public consultations held in late July and August, a few weeks before national elections.
Government state enterprise MusicTT, over the last couple months, criss-crossed T&T–POS, Arima, San Fernando and Tobago–to participate in stakeholder engagement meetings to listen to artistes/musicians, producers, promoters and other interested parties on what they were looking for in a T&T music industry of the future.
This coincided with the recently revamped request for proposals for the development of a strategic plan for the music industry, as managed by MusicTT, to guide the sector earmarked to help diversify the economy away from oil and gas.
As a subsidiary of CreativeTT, MusicTT encompasses the larger mandate which is "to stimulate and facilitate the business development and export activities of the creative industries in T&T to generate national wealth," but focuses on accomplishing this specifically within the music sub-sector. MusicTT therefore exists "to strengthen the capacity of the local music industry in T&T as well as to explore avenues for business and trade by a commercially-viable music sub-sector."
Former trade minister Vasant Bharath noted that "CreativeTT was born out of Government's firm belief that the creative sector has the capacity to become one of the most important sectors of the economy in terms of investment, revenue, trade and employment generation."
The minister showed possible hubris in insisting this model would catalyse the existing industry to expand towards a global economic standard. Cabinet approved its formation before October 2012, a board was selected by September 2013, only to be fired in less than one year–with no publishable positive results–and a return to the stakeholder consultation phase. Music stakeholders were understandably skeptical about the success of state intervention over the last two years of the existence of CreativeTT.
They were also apprehensive, as seen during the initial consultations at the company's formation back in late 2012. MusicTT was not formalised with a board until November 2014.
Today, stakeholders complain publicly–directly during the engagement exercises, and on social media afterwards–that their needs are not being met by government intervention.
Fissure on State's role
A critical look and listen at comments by stakeholders, however, reveals a fissure between what MusicTT offers and what stakeholders believe it should offer. In addition to the jargon-heavy mandate outlined above, MusicTT and by extension CreativeTT have functions that were outlined in documents presented to stakeholders that plainly outline specific roles and goals for the subsidiary companies.
In addition to providing technical and sector specific advice to the CreativeTT board, MusicTT is supposed to identify creative capital (talent), to develop the creative product to compete internationally (build capacity), and administer an incentive programme (fund projects), among a dozen identified functions.
What stakeholders want is different.
Stakeholders raised a number of issues at the MusicTT consultations, including lack of performing spaces, issues of professionalism and standards of product quality.
At the Port-of-Spain consultation, Brother Resistance noted the diminishing number of performing spaces in communities, while Ozzy Merrique spoke of the desire for "state funding between gigs" to supplement income.
There was also general frustration about the lack of funding to make a difference for individual projects: it was revealed in the Arima consultation that the budget for the current quarter for project funding is $300,000 for all stakeholder submitted projects. MusicTT chairman John Arnold said the organisation was working towards building capacity in quality and quantity.
Enforce those copyright laws
In general, stakeholders would really like Government to provide a better enabling environment for the creation and fair distribution of their creative content. That especially includes:
�2 Active enforcement of the existing Copyright Act to prohibit physical and online music piracy. Piracy has suppressed and transformed consumer engagement in a big way over the years.
�2 Legislative solutions for increased local content quotas to counter the current limited broadcasting exposure, despite nearly three dozen radio stations.
�2 Feasible solutions to access scarce financial resources for the industry.
According to an outline provided to stakeholders by the Ministry of Trade at the beginning of the stakeholder consultations, MusicTT can advise the CreativeTT board on the appropriate incentives for the music industry, but it does not have any implementation functions to directly make a difference.
COTT via its CEO Josh Rudder spoke of growing the music publishing segment of the industry to redirect revenues away from royalties from broadcast media towards licensing and placement of content in new areas like television, video games and branded marketing. Despite this approach, which is becoming the norm in global markets, one hears local complaints about not hearing one's music on the radio. The impact of radio plays on increased demand for a song ignores the suggestion by Rudder that royalty payments for a song for a year are dwarfed by the lucrative song placement deals.
However, for a long time, fair airplay for local music has been a huge problem. Many music artists may still feel they earn more money from radio airplay than from product placement, merchandising, or other income streams–despite evidence to the contrary from other countries.
Local content laws?
Some stakeholders spoke of the need for local content legislation. Rubadiri Victor of the activist NGO Artists' Coalition of T&T (ACTT), members of the dormant Recording Industry of T&T (RITT), and other organisations have, for over a decade, been championing the legislative implementation of a 50 per cent local content quota for broadcast media.
Broadcast policy is set by Telecommunications Authority of T&T (TATT). In 2003, the existing broadcast policy spoke of the then government's unwillingness to legislate quotas, preferring to "enter into dialogue with the broadcasting industry to decide on a voluntarily imposed quota for local content on the television and radio stations of the country."
The statement continues: "The Government proposes to provide very significant exposure and development for local culture through the development of a Public Broadcasting Service."
CNMG was created, but there are no increased quotas for local content on its stations. The current Broadcast Code, which is still in final draft mode since 2014, makes no mention of local creative content nor quotas.
Need for linkages, training and services
Stakeholder engagements are a way for Government to gauge feedback. The problem, as defined by some stakeholders, is that there have been too many "talk shops" holding out the promise that individual offerings would be seriously considered.
Stakeholder cynicism, apathy and disgust evident during some of the recent consultations may reflect an unwillingness to acknowledge the role of wider consultation and the critical analysis of any suggestion before uptake at official level. The sense of entitlement of some music sector workers–which can be read between the lines of the long discursive engagements criticising the consultation process–may actually be a desire to be heard and acknowledged.
An ECLAC study of creative industries in the Caribbean from 2012 noted that "a major shortcoming of the Caribbean music sub-sector is that upstream creation has not generally been matched by a strong downstream network of music training, publishing, digital delivery, marketing and linkages with film, fashion and other sectors. As a result, the potential to increase value added in the sub-sector has been under-exploited."
Lamar "Beebo" Pollard, recent graduate from UTT Academy of Performing Arts, concurs: "Figure out how to integrate Carnival (the festival), steelpan, the other musics, ICT, fashion, and film (including animation), into a coherent ecosystem. None of those industries, except ICT, will thrive (creatively or financially) without proper, fluid interaction with the others."
While local stakeholders are talking about building a viable local industry, MusicTT is talking about an exportable one. To get the State and the stakeholders on the same page is a goal that is still being worked out in the coming weeks, as the population awaits to see if the Government continues on its path or a new government eschews the re-branded state enterprise for a new version.
After TIDCO, EIDECO, TT Ent and CreativeTT, the adage "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" takes on a relevance that should not be ignored if the goal of diversification is to become real with the creative industries.
�2The Business of Music continues on Monday