Indies body Impala has a new report out today: ‘Powering an Independent and Culturally Diverse European Music Ecosystem’.
If you think that’s simply a new title for the organisation’s ongoing arguments about why UMG shouldn’t be allowed to buy Downtown Music… actually, you’d be wrong.
Yes, there’s mention of the deal, but the cultural and diversity arguments against it were set out at more length in a recent Impala paper. This report casts its policy net wider, with six requests for policymakers in Europe.
Supporting a wider range of financing options for independent companies and artists; guaranteeing fair access to markets and ‘independent European infrastructure’ (that’s the Downtown bit); and protecting voluntary collective negotiation are among the demands.
Putting cultural diversity at the heart of streaming services and AI regulation alike; setting up a proper body to track and measure diversity in the ecosystem; and “supporting industry collaboration and standards to protect independence” are the others.
The latter includes the suggestion that the term ‘independent’ should itself be guarded, with Impala taking aim at major-owned distributors by calling for “industry-wide standards that require transparent ownership disclosure and restrict use of the term to genuinely independent operations”.
