Subtext And Confusion: The RIAA’s Blog

AAgainst the backdrop of the SOPA and PIPA debacle, the music industry, and no doubt several of our readers, inevitably overlooked a Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) blog post that sheds light on the trade organization’s policies.

Writing on the RIAA’s Music Notes blog, RIAA Vice President of Strategic Data Analysis Joshua P. Friedlander argues emphatically (and correctly) that American music dominates the market – ‘it moves the world’, so to speak. Friedlander is careful to account for the success of the British artist, Adele; but he is equally certain of the dominance of the United States across the globe.

Referring to the IFPI’s 2012 Digital Music Report, Friedlander notes that “[n]ine of the top 10 songs downloaded globally were by American artists; including Bruno Mars, LMFAO, Jennifer Lopez, and Lady Gaga”.

It’s apparent that Friedlanger’s blog post isn’t but a merry reminder that there are successful American artists – it’s much more than that. For every disingenuous word, there is a relevant subtextual conspiracy: clever, surreptitious and principled, the message isn’t as obscure as you might expect.

For as much as Friedlanger iterates the unquestionable global success of American music, his express admiration that “[i]n both radio airplay and digital track sales, no other country came close to the US in overall share across Europe. Even in countries where English is not the primary language (including France, Germany, Spain, and others), US repertoire accounted for 30% to 40% of radio airplay and track downloads”.

Of course it’s impressive. Of course the USA warrants the applause it rightfully receives. With musical cultural hegemony unparallelled, its celebrity ever thriving, the RIAA has much of which to be proud. However, that doesn’t make credible the agenda that America’s success in exporting music should mean that the United States can enforce its legislation worldwide.

“Supporting millions of American jobs, intellectual property has been the most important export of the US economy for years.”

But it’s altogether unsurprising that the blog post can’t serve merely as a celebration of such achievements. The achievements are seemingly a means to an end for the RIAA at times. The agenda that Friedlanger’s blog serves is something along these lines: we make music for the world, so we can jolly well do as we please in enforcing intellectual property law all over the world.

Music piracy is abhorrent; music piracy is, well, piracy. We don’t have a place for it in society. It’s frowned upon, fine. That shouldn’t grant any one country, irrespective of its musical success, the right to globally enforce domestically-produced legislation. The problem is that for all of the cultural success of the United States’ music, another culture of global arrogance is emerging in the RIAA.

If the lawmakers in the United States want to tackle the wider issue, it’s time for a global consensus on the issue. Blog posts about job creation in the branch of law known as Intellectual Property are disingenuous in themselves. If piracy is so bad, then blogging that “intellectual property has been the most important export of the US economy for years (see page 7 of IIPA report here)” is surely at least marginally contradictory.

It seems that policy at the RIAA is not quite as clear as the trade organisation would have you believe.

The opinions of the author are his own and not necessarily shared by Dotted Music.