Music serves as common ground for young people everywhere, regardless of ethnic background, nationality or religious beliefs. It is a truly global language. As such, it can offer an attractive medium for bringing the attention of a younger audience to the difficult economic and social challenges facing LDCs, such as debt, AIDS and poverty.
But music is also a dynamic business, and although not traditionally part of the policy agenda of LDCs, along with other cultural resources it can provide new production and trading opportunities for these countries. Indeed, music and other copyright industries are on the cutting edge of new technologies and new trading opportunities in today’s rapidly globalizing world economy. Those opportunities are big. Recorded music products worldwide are part of a $50 billion market. This far exceeds the markets for traditional primary products – such as coffee ($17 billion), cotton ($20 billion), tobacco ($21 billion) or bananas ($27 billion) – in which many LDCs continue to seek production and export opportunities.
Madonna rather than the Marlborough Man is the image of economic opportunity for LDCs in the global economy of the new millennium!
Many developed countries have a head start in exploiting the export potential of their musical talent: in the UK, the music industry is among the largest export earners, and in the US, the export of audio-visual and related services in 1999 surpassed tobacco products. But many LDCs also have recognized brand name in this activity: Wyclieff Jean, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita, Cesaria Evora and Angelique Kidjo are just some of the world-class musicians from LDCs with a strong presence in Western markets. The big question is whether the world’s poorest countries with proven excellence in this activity can convert home-grown talent into export-oriented business opportunities.
There are positive signs. Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour records and exports directly from Dakar and has set up his own music company that records young musicians from all over Africa. Salif Keita has also founded his own music business in Bamako, Mali. Both represent relatively successful attempts at starting up domestic music businesses based in LDCs.
Still, much of the global music industry is controlled by a small number of large international corporations. The strength and success of these media giants resides in their access to vast financial resources, which enables them to manage the big risks and reap big rents from spotting musical trends and shaping musical tastes. Music is also an industry where international regulations, particularly those linked to copyrights, are playing an ever bigger role and where new technologies, especially the Internet, are creating and shaping new business opportunities.
Ongoing research by UNCTAD on the music industry has shown that, despite their strong cultural assets, many developing countries and LDCs in particular, lack the domestic enterprises and business skills to bring musical products to global markets. The absence of entrepreneurial and exporting skills poses a serious barrier to entry and access to high-income markets. But this may be changing. Preliminary results of a joint UNCTAD/WIPO project suggest that electronic commerce provides new opportunities to reach global markets. Here the digital divide is not only real but may also be bridgeable.
These are the issues to be addressed at a series of workshops being held on 19 May as part of the Youth Forum at the Third UN Conference on the LDCs, which is taking place in Brussels this week to combat economic isolation and povertz in the world’s poorest countries. Musicians, policy makers, academics and representatives of the private sector from a range of countries will be participating.
To help LDCs benefit from the rapidly changing and highly competitive market of the global music industry, UNCTAD is proposing a new capacity-building initiative, the Music Industry Development Initiative (MIDI). Taking its lead from successful practices in a number of countries, it will seek to build skills and capacities in commercializing LDC music products through education and training specifically in business skills, marketing, and exporting of their music products.
