Protecting Greek music from technology-related problems
The age of technology has made the music industry go topsy-turvy: The possibilities offered by the Internet, where any user can download songs from anywhere on the planet, are almost scary. And equally scary is the tactic being used by multinational recording companies to elbow out music that doesn’t fit into the mainstream and the common interests shared by radio and television with recording giants. What this boils down to is that Greek music has become predictable and restricted. In response to this reality, many artists have signed on with small labels, while the radio stations play the same old fodder all day long. The public would rather buy bootleg CDs, while the composers and songwriters seem ready to riot. These and other realizations were recently highlighted by AEPI, an independent copyrights committee. Together with many groups who used to fight copyright issues, they are launching an initiative to curb the oncoming local industry crash. Called the Artists’ Committee, the initiative will bring together many Greek artists from different fields and genres and will have an advisory role. One member, songwriter and performer Notis Mavroudis, explained that the role of the committee is to rally Greek artists, to reiterate demands and chronic problems that «are dragging all of us into a vortex that has been created by factors that are sometimes visible and sometimes not so visible.» «It is common knowledge that our relationship with recording companies and publishers has become an antagonistic one, especially when we know that they are making huge profits from us,» Mavroudis added. Dionysis Tsaknis, another popular singer-songwriter, wants the committee to address the distribution of profits from record sales, while songwriter-poet Costas Tripolitis turned his attention to the Copyrights Organization (OPI), which was established in 1993 but, according to Tripolitis, ignores «artists, the conditions for the production of a cultural product and the mechanisms of sharing proceeds.» Legislation and the levies artists are expected to pay to the state were also high on the agenda of the group’s meeting. On the issue of piracy, Christos Nikolopoulos suggested that individuals or companies caught selling bootleg recordings should be subject to hefty fines, while Marianina Kriezi urged the group to address the issue of radio stations making their programs reliant on tired, pre-designed playlists. Classical music artists are not absent from the committee. Haris Vrontos admitted that the financial problems faced by classical music composers were not quite as dire as other genres but highlighted the lack of state mechanisms to support classical music composition.
