Cooking Vinyl MD calls for music industry tax breaks

The UK music industry should demand a tax break for recorded music production – just like the one offered to film, video games and theatre.

This was a rallying call by Martin Goldschmidt, Managing Director of the Cooking Vinyl Group. He was making a keynote speech at the Vote For Music session at the Great Escape festival in Brighton, England.

"The tax breaks that currently exist to help the music industry actually give the tax break to private investors,” he pointed out. “As exists for other creative industries, why not also have a scheme that gives the break directly to music?”

Goldschmidt pointed out that breaks given to other creative sectors were designed to offset damage from piracy and market failure.

“But what creative industry has been hit harder by online piracy than recorded music? Record companies have been hit hard, but recording studios and their workers have been hit hardest.

"This is about putting value back into the whole recording ecosystem of studios, session players and importantly, self-funding artists. Given music’s leading export value, the move would make clear economic sense.

“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. Let's get help to fund more of culturally diverse, crazy, exciting stuff that so often gains wild popularity."

Goldschmidt’s comments certainly carry weight. Cooking Vinyl is one of Europe’s artist-focused indies. It inspires enviable loyalty from its acts including The Prodigy, Billy Bragg, Amanda Palmer, Embrace, Röyksopp and Marilyn Manson. Cooking Vinyl (which also has an operation in Australia) is at the forefront of music companies that offer service-only deals without wanting a share of the artist’s copyright.

At the end of the keynote, Goldschmidt emphasised how important it was for the music industry to make the call for tax breaks as a united front.

"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,” he said. “We have to have the discussions behind closed doors, agree the common ground and send a unified message to government."

Goldschmidt’s rallying call at the Vote For Music session were apt. It was run by independent music development organization thehub which is active in lobbying the UK government issues as protective funding for live music venues, introducing the “agent of change” to protect venues from noise complaints by newly arrived residents, re-introduce music as a mandatory part of the school curriculum, and introduce new tax reliefs to the wider music industry.

It wants to cut VAT (the UK sales tax equivalent of Australia’s GST) cut on ticket sales or use the sales tax money raised to re-invest in the music industry.