Mouskouri berates McCreevy over cultural rights

One of the worlds's best selling artists, Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, has joined the lines of those calling for culture to be treated differently to other products in the EU.

"Music has soul, mind and emotion. It is not just a product", she told an audience attending a hearing on copyrights for online music services on Monday (18 September) in the European Parliament

Mrs Mouskouri holds more than 300 gold and platinum albums worldwide and is not worried about her own personal income.

But she is concerned that liberalisation plans by the European Commission will badly damage national-based collection societies, which have traditionally managed European songwriters' rights.

"National collecting societies will be elbowed aside – in particular the smaller ones", she warned at the hearing, organised by the centre-right EPP-ED group.

"In the US, things are different. They have only one language and one market, while Europe has cultural and linguistic diversity, which we should protect", she said.

"The creative artists would be the main losers from this policy", she said

Digitalised world

Mrs Mouskouri said she regretted that internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy did not consult MEPs or hear authors before passing a recommendation on the issue last October.

The commission would like to end the regime of national collection societies in a digitised world where music downloads do not respect borders.

But authors claim there is already competition and artists are free to let the most efficient society manage their rights.

"Authors already have the option to choose a collecting society wherever it is located across Europe", said Cees Vervoord, chief executive of the Dutch collecting society Buma-Stemra.

His organisation is managing the rights for the Rolling Stones, Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba fame, John McLaughlin and Billy Preston, among others.

"They are not even Dutch. They have joined us because of the efficiency of the service we provide our members", he said

"It's about the future of music in Europe and whether it will be run by a broad church of Europeans or become a de facto off-shoot of the entertainment empires controlled by Los Angeles, New York and London".

Large versus small

But the collecting societies are not all toeing the same line, with rights associations in two of the EU's largest music markets - the UK and Germany - preferring the commission model from which they stand to gain.

It is accepted industry wisdom that if Brussels' recommendation goes through unchanged, just two or three collecting societies will survive competition in the newly-open rights marketplace, while driving smaller players out of business.

"We are not only for cross-border licenses, we already practise them", said Harald Heker, a member of the executive board of German association, GEMA, which could be one of the lucky few survivors.

Following the commission recommendation GEMA together with UK collecting society MCPS/PRS and EMI Music Publishing - the world's leading music publishing company - developed a concept of one-stop-shops for Europe-wide music licenses of EMI's Anglo-American repertoire for internet and mobile phone use.

It would be put into practise over the coming months, he said.

Up-and-coming internet music-publisher SpiralFrog has also signed an agreement to use EMI's catalog of musical compositions for legal downloading in the United States.

To read more on this topic click here for EUobserver's special FOCUS on Creative Rights