As some of the biggest figures in the music business weighed in on the future of music this week, there were very mixed views on its future.

“If Ford’s revenues were down 40 per cent, the shareholders would be revolting,” said Tim Clark, former Island Records MD and co-founder of management company IE Music, whose roster includes Robbie Williams.

The latest CD revenue figures suggest 40 per cent declines in some markets. “Their model is fucked. It is. Physical revenues are going down like nobody’s business and it’s cataclysmic,” Clark told a panel at the London Calling music expo at Earl’s Court.

Clark hears the sound of pigeons are coming home to roost, and outlined a post-major label future that would be a lot more flexible.

“Deals have been struck with ISPs, but I’ve yet to hear of a single penny going back to an artist. Leaving aside the black boxes, is it anybody’s surprise that an artist doesn’t trust the record company?” he asked.

“Record companies deserve to be attacked for many of the things they’ve done,” he added. “There are great A&R people and great marketeers at these companies, but they haven’t been serving artists [or] fans over the years.”
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This long (40-page) history of Britain’s last computer company, Psion, was written over four days. It’s the longest piece The Register has ever run, we made it available as a PDF (for a small fee).

Included are full transcripts of interviews with David Potter, Martin Riddiford, Mark Gretton, David Tupman and Nick Healey. (Charles Davies was interviewed too late for inclusion).

Start here.

Parliament may soon be debating whether to legalise incest, reclassify insomnia as a mental illness, microchip all children at birth … or give pantomime actor Richard Griffiths a Knighthood.

That’s if opposition leader David Cameron has his way. A Conservative Party task force examining democratic participation proposes that online petitions should help set the parliamentary agenda. The four proposals above are just some of the open petitions recently accepted by the No.10 Downing Street website. In other words, these are the sensible ones: over 10,000 have been rejected. (This one, for example, was quite inexplicably deemed to be outside the scope of Government.)

“I would like to see a system whereby, if enough people sign an online petition in favour of a particular motion, then a debate is held in Parliament, followed by a vote – so that the public know what their elected representatives actually think about the issues that matter to them,” said Cameron in a canned statement.

Gentlemen – start your scripting engines.

Cameron’s emphasis on the latest online gimmick overshadows the rest of the proposals in the paper Power To The People: Rebuilding Government, which involve checks and balances on an out of control executive. Rather generously, the paper absolves journalists of blaming for creating a culture in which people are bored with politics.

The suggestions from the task force, chaired by smoking hero Kenneth Clarke, won’t necessarily become official policy.

Cameron is the latest politician to use online to grab the healines. Identical clones George Osborne (Con., Google) and David Milliband (Lab., Google) appear to be locked in a private contest to see who can produce the most web-tastic gimmicks. Milliband is winning.

MusicStation, the service that aims to give unlimited mobile access to music worldwide for a small weekly fee, finally went live today.

The success of the venture, from British start-up Omnifone, will tell us a lot about whether punters are prepared to pay for digital music, rather than scoop it up for free. MusicStation is a Rhapsody-like service customised for mobiles: there are no extra data charges over the £1.99 weekly subscription, which goes on your mobile bill, and “file sharing” is encouraged – at least with other MusicStation users.

Omnifone has signed up the big four labels, made inroads into the indie sector, and has 30 carriers around the world. Today sees Norwegian-based Telenor, with 80 million subscribers, push MusicStation out first.

Founder and CEO Rob Lewis said the aim was simply giving people a service they can’t do legitimately today:

“Customers are forced to do this illegally now. We’re trying to give very easy access that’s intuitive, doesn’t need credit cards or wires, so they can discover and recommend music among themselves,” he said. “And artists get paid.”
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Ofcom has published the public consultation responses to its PSP concept. And they don’t make comfortable reading for the regulator.

The PSP, or Public Service Publisher, is a new quango that would cost taxpayers between £100m than £150m a year – handing out money to new media types for interactive websites, and other “user generated content” gimmicks. Ofcom loves the idea – and gave the task of investigating it two new media production houses who would stand to gain handsomely from the new gravy train.

Unsurprisingly, they thought a Nathan Barley Quango, or NBQ, was a splendid idea.

The public responses should be sobering, however. Most are skeptical of the need for the new quango, while many more are completely indifferent. And some are very scathing. Step forward, W Jackson:

As a self-actualizing media node, I welcome this redistribution of government funds from provincial luddites to new media ‘creative’ Sohoites.

Cool Britannia lives! The creative industries initiative was good but didn’t radically empower young creatives and their 360-degree thinking. Unleash the collective wisdom of new media and see us swarm!

If Tony had done this when he first got in (and I know how hard you tried, Ed) then thousands of people could already be employed – let’s use those redundant factories to turn out polyphonic ringtones.

Critics – like Orlowski at The Register – will complain that this is pork-barrel politics for tech. utopians. That this has no relevance to’ ‘ordinary’ people and their lives.

Well, I’ve had enough of that patronising rubbish. I’ve launched a post-ironic web brand – nar.ciss.us – that was created using the competitively-priced labour of redundant industrial workers. It shows that anyone can ‘get’ asynchronous java – even people from the North.

If anyone wants to brainstorm this – then twitter/IM/SMS/Skype/email me. I’m up for an ‘emergent conference’.

Ed Richards’s initiative ‘gets’ new media on so many levels. Let’s flashmob this bitch up to escape velocity.

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