65daysofstatic won't be your project

Catching up with a couple of stories from earlier in the week. First, the mighty 65daysofstatic were surprised to see themselves being named on a government press release:

So recently 65days received some funding from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). This is no doubt a good thing for us. It’s appreciated and will be put to good use.

The funding was announced yesterday in a press release over at gov.uk, in which we are named along with 18 other bands or artists, as beneficiaries of this public funding to help “export [our] music abroad”.

Sometimes when you list things alphabetically, numbers appear before ‘A’, and so 65daysofstatic is at the top of the list of bands and artists, and not far below a quote from Business Secretary Sajid Javid declaring that this Music Export Growth Scheme is the government “banging the drum” (see what he did there?) for music and the UK’s culture industries.

The idea of 65daysofstatic being held up in any way as evidence that this hyper-Dickensian, fucking nightmare of a Tory government is apparently supporting the arts, when in actual fact they are destroying any kind of infrastructure for future creativity at the grassroots level and plunging the most vulnerable parts of society into further misery, leaves a bad taste in our mouths. So here are some notes from us, just for the record:

• Spending public money on the arts is clearly not a bad thing. It’s better than spending it on Trident, bailing out banks, subsidising sketchy right-to-buy tactics to help private landlords get richer, and so on.

• Arts-based public spending is so often justified, as it is again in today’s BPI press release, as being ‘good for the British economy’ (“an approximate return on investment of £8.50 for every £1 invested”). This entirely misses the point of why we need to support arts and creativity in the first place.

• The press release mentions that this public funding will be matched by the music companies behind the acts. This is the first we have heard of this. Either this is accurate, which seems unlikely at least in our case because if any of the music companies we work with were actually giving us money for nothing, they’d presumably have told us about it. On the other hand, it could be that the idea is music companies ‘match’ the funding figure, but then that money is actually added to the band’s ‘recoup’ with them via a record deal or whatever. This also seems unlikely, as it would mean that, on paper, if it is ultimately the artist that is required to match whatever funding they get, then actually they’re not getting any help at all. (Unlikely, but this is the music industry we’re talking about). The third option would be that this ‘matching’ is entirely fabricated for the purposes of the press release, which would suggest that somebody, somewhere, is so scared of the wrath of the Daily Mail, or whoever, for having wasted money on something as frivolous as the arts, that they literally invented non-existent extra funds from The Music Business to give the illusion of an industry that is growing in rude, capitalist health. To make it clear that this is A Sensible Business Decision and not Commie-Liberal Hippy Indulgence. No idea which of these, if any, is true. But it is odd.

• Similarly, if they think that they’re gonna get 65 to “attend writing camps overseas to help boost the revenues that come from publishing and sync deals” they’ve got another thing coming. Presumably this is more empty press release wrangling; a well-intentioned arts-funding-proposal-writer somewhere knew what business-friendly buzzwords were needed to catch the ear of a business secretary who might understand that ‘publishing and syncs’ as opposed to ‘record sales and touring’ are the remaining deposits of wealth that need pillaging mining in the world of music. But how patronising and wrong-brained this patronage is, whereby acts are given song-writing classes about how to better grow and focus their ‘product’ in order to help grow the British economy. WHO THINKS LIKE THIS? Probably Mumford & Sons. In fact they probably run the writing camps on the grounds of their L.A mansions or something.

• The proposal that 65daysofstatic put in for this funding was based on a hypothetical budget for a hypothetical American tour. It is very expensive to tour in America, but we’ll be eventually be putting out a new album in the shape of our No Man’s Sky soundtrack and we would like to be able to afford to play shows in a country where that game appears to be receiving a huge amount of attention. (To ‘grow our brand’, in music industry parlance). This BPI funding covers maybe a third of the deficit of the budget. Meaning that this hypothetical tour still costs, rather than makes, a lot of money. Furthermore, the majority of these costs are travel-related, so almost all this ‘music’ funding will actually be going to airlines and oil companies. The rest will go to pay our crew (which is obviously right and proper) and to musical equipment hire companies. The only part of it that would come to 65 is what are called ‘PDs’ (per diems), a daily allowance for each of us to be able to buy food, coffee and sometimes, debauched rockstars that we are, extra beer and wine.

They also bring Taylor Swift into it:

But still, until musicians do start getting paid fairly (which will be never), you fear that the conversation will never move on. Thanks to Taylor Swift, 65daysofstatic will now collectively earn approximately £40 for the three months of free Apple Music streaming than we would have earned otherwise. And really, thanks Taylor, that’s cool, it’s honestly better than not-having £40, but did you know Apple only paid £12 million in tax in the UK last year instead of the estimated £400 million that they should have? If you could take that up with them next time you fancy fixing things for struggling artists, it’d be really appreciated. We’ll even do you a remix for cheap in return.

In passing, I think we'd all love 65daysofstatic doing a Taylor Swift remix. I'm not sure we'll get Apple to invest £360million for it to happen, though.

Heavy rock on the taxpayer

Interesting and successful experiment just happened over in Norway, where Rikskonsertene, the state cultural sponsor, paid for a tour by metal band Opeth.

Normally, the body funds the sort of thing you'd expect an arts council type organisation to pony up for - ballet and opera and stuff. But they're happy to spread their wings a little:

Kristin Stoltz Thomassen, the information consultant at Rikskonsertene, told Norwegian music industry magazine Faro Journalen that the OPETH tour was part of an initiative Rikskonsertene is doing with the pop and rock genres.

"This project is supposed to bring established artists to a young and energetic audiences around Norway, especially in smaller places where promotors would not normally be able to bring artists," he said. "Young people and students get the chance to see artists they otherwise would not be able to see.

"OPETH has been on our radar for a long time, and with the success of the 'Watershed' album, ongoing touring and a dedicated fanbase, we regard this as a jackpot, but also the result of focused work."

So it's about helping out a younger audience, and taking music to them. Which is laudable.

Although you could equally argue that - having been around for two decades - Opeth are as much a part of the Norwegian arts establishment as anyone in a tutu or Wagnerian helmet.

Maybe calling yourself Holy Fuck isn't quite so clever after all

Canada's Conservative Government has announced that it's pulling funding from two programmes which helped local bands sell their music internationally. One of the reasons given is that some of the bands using the funding are rude:

"the money was going to fringe arts groups that, in many cases, would be at best, unrepresentative, and at worst, offensive"

Yes, it turns out that funding Holy Fuck was all the excuse the government needed to axe the money for everyone: why should tax money be used to fling Canadian filth at the world's pop kids, ran the justification. Holy Fuck, though, are reluctant to carry the can:

"I guess more than anything it's a little bit annoying that we've been made the scapegoat when you consider how much money we receive relative to the budget for the entire program," [bassist Matt] McQuaid said.

"So all of these other larger groups who need money more than we do to travel abroad - like ballet and symphonies - we become the scapegoat for the cutting in their funding."

Well, yes, it's clearly a trumped-up excuse - if the real worry was that the music being promoted through the scheme was profane, you could just introduce a box on the application form which asked "will you have the f-word, or the c-word, or the k-word on your records?". But on the other hand, you don't call your band Holy Fuck because you think it's a quiet name that will let people focus on your music instead. It's a childish, look-at-us name; in this case, it's clearly worked in attracting attention. It's a bit much to moan that an attempt to be outrageous has wound up with people being outraged.