The wonderful world of IFPI: music industry rhetoric, the critics and the classical marxist critique

Abstract

Serious students of popular music and song are rightly curious about the workings of the music business; but when we try to find out about how the industry works, even in terms of economics, we find that virtually all the empirical data comes from internal sources, from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), or from affiliates such as the British Phonographic Industries (BPI) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In other words, we get only those statistics and ‘facts’ which this most secretive of industries wishes us to have; so we will look in vain for detailed production figures, or for sales of individual recordings (unless they are outstandingly successful), or for hard numbers relating to what IFPI calls ‘piracy’ (let alone the information on which the published numbers and projections are based). Similarly, from the individual company accounts of Sony, EMI or BMG, we may find numbers relating to pension and investment funds, but we will never find the real profits or losses of any company, let alone the rate of exploitation of any artist (or manufacturing or distributive worker); and in any case it is well-known that the published ‘bottom-line’ on a balance sheet is, at best, an informed opinion.