WMF |

the future….

Couple of interesting interviews today, one more of a group interview with a production crew in the BBC, the other with the head of post-production for one of the largest (and expanding) independent tv companies in Wales – he is directly in charge of 25 editing suites, + the company also awns a large editing facilities house. What was said by both seemed to turn the arguments about a bit, but also make things clearer.

The future might look like these pictures: these are the KPM drives which are sent over every six months or so, loaded onto the system so that the editors can use – but the AVIDS aren’t online, for obvious reasons, so the music used has to be loaded like this. Can you imagine a similar system which included music of Welsh origin, which opened up as another drive for all editors, easily searchable with clearly labeled ‘libraries’ from Sain and whoever else? KPM is actually quite a few different studios + libraries, so why not have all library music, from whoever, collated under the same brand, with the same delivery mechanism, a clear pricing structure (which would have to be competitive……).

So, some good practical ways of thinking about the future, but not necessarily good for a toolkit for musicians – because production music needs that infrastructure and won’t necessarily make people a lot of money (so to be realistic, you need that mechanism for things to improve…). However, there’s definitely a market out there, and a lot of good will from Welsh editors – but the delivery mechanism has to be quick, easy and with enough information for those who have to clear everything.

BBC interviews pointed once more to the larger strategic picture – v. experienced producers who had also worked in the independent sector for many years. The BBC has a blanket agreement which makes it easier for producers, S4C doesn’t have this; the use of Audio Network (the cheapest) seems to be too widespread for many, so many programmes sound the same.

There’s a lot of scope here for further work: we’re getting people to talk and think about the issues involved + offer advice about the best way forward, even though this won’t necessaily be part of the toolkit. This is a useful network for the WMF to tap into hopefully.

animators

Interesting interview yesterday with Dinamo, who commission a lot of the music they use because of the nature of what they produce. Again, as content producers in the modern sense, they have full rights to exploit this (….previously, for example, productions for S4C would mean all rights signed over to S4C). This means they’re more interested in buy-outs of music, especially if, with say a popular children’s animation, they can sell it to the rest of the world. They very much ‘buy local’ however, hardly ever use production music – but they were interested in the concept of being able to go and open out the commissioning process, even just for 30 second stings – if there was one place where this could happen (music producers and those wishing to commission getting together) then they would be interested.

Various production companies in Wales have taken the changes in ‘content rights’ on board, some having formed their own publishing arms, to exploit all rights.

snowballs

Preparing for the trip to North Wales, and there’s a good snowball effect happening as I speak to people and they suggest others we should speak to. So far, we’ve got Rondo, Cwmni Da and Barcud covered hopefully, and I’ve expanded who we’re talking to a bit – dubbing mixers seem to have quite an effect on music choice also, for example.

Most things are going up in the calendar. Also, just to clarify, we’ll be keeping things nice and anonymous in general, for the internal research report also, and we’ll be asking people whether they want names used, as standard practice.

Notice that there’s both a project calendar and question framework (which people can feel free to comment about /add to) on the right. I’d stress that the framework questions are are only intended as a loose guide to the areas we want to explore and we encourage tangents into relevant areas.

First post for Welsh Music Foundation

Croeso! As always, the start of the research project. This blog will be for those involved, a diary of work in progress and any emerging ideas, so feel free to comment and contribute, in any language. In fact, comment is to be very much encouraged if we want a good piece of work at the end….

We’ll be putting up any relevant links, of course, and try to chart things as they come up: though it’s ‘ten days’ up there, inevitably this will entail work over the next month until the 10th March (and beyond), so at least the blog will enable us all to keep in touch and record some ideas that we bat about. Inception meeting on Monday will be important so that we can sort out:

developing the work programme, including question framework, main concerns of research commissioners
get comfortable with fieldwork approach
do some serious work on timetables etc.

Also, the more serious desktop research can begin once we fully understand the issues from WMF point of view. We could also potentially agree a set of interviews according to contacts etc