Who'll sell Irish music to the world?

The Music Board of Ireland was meant to develop the industry at home andabroad, helping along the next U2 or The Corrs

The Music Board of Ireland was meant to develop the industry at home andabroad, helping along the next U2 or The Corrs. How successful has it been, asks Jim Carroll.

Just over a year ago the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, launched two snazzy reports. Drawn up by the interim Music Board of Ireland, Shaping The Future: A Strategic Plan For The Development Of The Music Industry In Ireland and The Economic Significance Of The Irish Music Industry were road maps for turning the local music industry into a lucrative and sustainable business.

A year on and little or nothing of what was recommended has been implemented or acted on. We should be used to this, because similar inertia has greeted the reports produced almost every year since 1994 by different sectors of Irish music industry. All of these reports and submissions - from the Stokes Kennedy Crowley Report On The Irish Popular Music Industry and the Jobs In Music Campaign's The Establishment And Role Of The Irish Music Board in 1994 to Striking The Right Note (1995), the FORTE music task force's Access All Areas (1996) and Raising The Volume (1998) - were detailed examinations of the music business.

Having turned the industry inside out and upside down, the reports reached broadly the same conclusions: systematically developing and enhancing the existing infrastructure would, in the long term, hugely benefit musicians, music enterprises and the economy.

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The response to last year's reports should have been different, however. These were, in industry parlance, the greatest hits, a Now That's What I Call A Report that tied up previous recommendations and objectives with a nice pretty bow. More importantly, they were the work of a body established by the Government in 2001 to act as a forum for the industry (see panel).

If anyone should be listened to or seen to represent the interests of the industry, surely it is the Music Board of Ireland. Yet there is considerable suspicion towards it within sectors of the industry. With a budget of €380,000, provided by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and IBEC's Music Industry Group, it may not have the finance to make a lot of noise, but observers are puzzled by what exactly it is doing.

Maura Eaton, a former Arts Council music officer, is the board's chief executive. Since the launch of the reports, she says, it has mostly been "consolidating the position of the board and discussing funding and future funding to implement our recommendations". As the money to implement the strategies outlined in Shaping The Future was unforthcoming, it decided to concentrate on international promotion. Eaton says that the board worked with Enterprise Ireland at the MIDEM music fair in Cannes in January, compiled and distributed a CD of Irish acts to mark the EU presidency, liaised with an international non-profit umbrella organisation called the European Music Office and is hosting a conference on creative financing and music in Dublin in April, also as part of the EU presidency programme.

"We wanted to do something which would apply to each one of the industry sectors," Eaton says, "so that everyone could see what we were doing for them. Hopefully, the publishers and small record companies were happy with what we did for them at MIDEM. For artists we are working with the St Patrick's Festival music village, where one of the support bands will be selected for the support slot at the big EU presidency concert at the end of April. We're talking about bands who are on the scene and who just haven't got in the door yet. We want to give bands who have been doing the work for a long time the opportunity they mightn't get otherwise."

Commendable as all this might be, most of these activities seem to have more to do with the EU presidency than with the music board, but Eaton believes it will have an effect. "We feel that the projects we're doing now are a good beginning. I personally think it takes five years for an organisation to go from strategy through implementation to showing some return, and I would be happy if we got to the end of 2005."

Given that the board's tenure is up in May and government funding runs out at the end of the year, there is every chance that the music board may not even see in next year. O'Donoghue's view of the board is the same as it was last October, when he told the Dáil that he was not in a position "to agree either to the establishment of the board on a statutory basis or to the long-term establishment of the kinds of programmes and services that are proposed, pending further consideration of the key issue of whether the input of taxpayers' money that is proposed will yield benefits commensurate with the costs arising".

The board's timing has not been great. Eaton talks about how "the sudden economic downturn at the beginning of 2002 made things difficult", and there's a sense that any chance of long-term government funding has disappeared. Eaton also believes that the Government still does not view the music business, with its 8,000 employees and turnover of almost €500 million a year- more than dairy processing or newspaper and magazine publishing - as a true industry.

"It's seen as something nice to do in your spare time or something which makes loads of money, because they think of the big artists. Our point is that there are an awful lot of people in between the amateur musician and U2 - and they're the people who are the Irish industry. The whole point of our existence is to point out that music is an industry that is deserving of government support - and that's a lot of work."

Yet many in the industry believe much more can be done. Dave O'Grady, whose Independent Records label is home to the singer- songwriters Mark Geary and Josh Ritter, believes the board should be "proactively helping indigenous labels, be they artist-owned or otherwise, who wish to become legitimate businesses. Why don't they liaise with the Department of Social and Family Affairs and ensure that those willing to exist on a paltry amount of dole whilst building up businesses are given the freedom to do so?"

Gerry Harford admits he has heard nothing about the board. Having managed Paul Brady and Tindersticks, he now looks after Therapy?, Nina Hynes and the Norwegian rock band Madrugada. Harford believes a music board will have relevance only if it has power. "Talking shops do nothing," he says. "If the reports they have produced just sit there they have no relevance: they're just a pile of paper. The Government is happy to take taxes from the music industry but will put nothing back in to help young bands. You'll see all the Ministers going abroad for St Patrick's Day, saying how great U2 and The Corrs and all these successful Irish acts are, but they've done nothing to get them there in the first place."

Harford points to Norway, where a plethora of official help is available. "You have bodies like Music Export Norway, who give touring and production support to bands working in Europe. All the bands know that this is available and how to get these funds; it's not a big secret. The Norwegians realise that their musicians can make money outside of Norway and that this can benefit their economy."

But the Music Board of Ireland doesn't see itself as a grant-giving organisation. "This is going to sound quite mean," says Eaton, "but if you are talking about any artist, in any discipline, the only engagement with a public body that interests them is when there's money involved. I think a lot of those bands don't realise we exist, but that doesn't mean we can't be of use to them."

Eaton is naturally positive about what her organisation is doing, but the board seems to be a lost cause without a statutory imprimatur or decisive action from the Government. The board was an initiative of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, yet if music is an industry surely the board should also be working with other departments, such as Finance, Social and FamilyAffairs, and Enterprise, Trade and Employment. As Damien Rice, The Frames, The Thrills and other Irish acts are on the cusp of major success overseas, shouldn't the board be doing something to help them? The board and its members, who are drawn largely from the senior ranks of the industry, seem too cautious and focused on administration to be an effective force. The domestic music industry might be far better served by a more outspoken, dynamic and maverick body.

As the Irish Film Board showed with its lobbying, there is nothing to stop an organisation funded by the Government from speaking out. But would Eaton and her organisation do likewise? "I would like to think we would in the future. We're still within our interim basis, and I'm not saying we're afraid or cautious but we have set ourselves very specific objectives and we want to focus on doing them well. These other things will come in time, and they're something a mature organisation could do very successfully."

It remains to be seen if the board will ever reach that maturity.

How the board was set up?

Established by Síle de Valera in May 2001, when she was minister for arts, heritage, Gaeltacht and the islands, the interim Music Board of Ireland was intended to be a forum for the industry and help the Government develop the industry at home and abroad.

Operated by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism in partnership with IBEC's Music Industry Group, the board initially prepared Shaping The Future, a development plan for the industry, which it presented to the department in January last year.

The report identified areas that would benefit from education, training and other initiatives, bringing the industry to an international marketplace, attracting risk capital and showcasing new talent.

Although he praised the board's work, de Valera's successor, John O'Donoghue, warned that "implementation of the recommendations in the strategic plan would give rise to a not insignificant level of financial assistance from the Exchequer".

The initial three-year term of the board, whose chief executive is Maura Eaton, above, ends in May. The current members of the board are Ann O'Connell (chairwoman), Maurice Cassidy, Adrian Gaffney, Kieran Hanrahan, Dr Charlie Lennon, Nuala O'Connor, Michael O'Riordan, John Sheehan and Dennis Woods.