John Kennedy
John Kennedy is Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, the organisation that represents the recording industry worldwide. He has spent over 30 years working in the music industry, latterly as the head of Universal Music International. He was awarded the O.B.E. in 1995 for his work as a Trustee of the Band Aid Trust and Live Aid. Later, with Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith, he was producer of ten Live 8 concerts around the world and was described in the official Live 8 book as “The man without whom none of it could have happened”. Kennedy joined Geldof and Goldsmith as Midem “Music Personalities of the Year” in 2006 and was made Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government. He provided the investment (on behalf of Universal UK) to launch Mamma Mia, one of the most successful theatrical productions ever. Kennedy has headed IFPI, which represents some 1400 member record companies across the world, since January 2005.
The recorded music industry has been at the forefront of the debate about protecting creative content online. The music business is reinventing itself for the digital era, developing new business models and growing its digital sales to a current level of 20 per cent of industry revenues. The great challenge is monetising a business in an environment where the vast bulk of tracks and albums are available without payment to the creators. IFPI figures show that artists and producers are paid for only one in 20 of all music downloads.
The digital music business is advancing steadily. Record companies have licensed more than eight million tracks to over 500 legal online music services worldwide. Consumers can now choose between listening to streamed music on services like YouTube, buying a-la-carte downloads in stores such as iTunes or getting access to vast libraries of music through subscription services bundled with other products such as mobile phone handsets or ISP subscriptions.
However, innovative new business models alone cannot solve the enormous problem posed by the mass-scale availability of free, unauthorised music on ISP networks. The top priority for the recording industry is for ISPs to play a responsible role in helping protect content online. Enormous progress has been made in this area in the last two years, with governments in France, the UK and elsewhere addressing the need for ISP cooperation that will have a measurable impact on the problem.
For further background go to http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2008.pdf
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