Black Lives Matter

The music busines is responding to the death of George Floyd and its reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement. On 2 June it held ‘Blackout Tuesday’ in which many companies and organizations ceased business activity for one day in order to ‘disconnect from work and reconnect with our community’ and seek ‘an urgent step of action to provoke accountability and change’. Affirmative action has followed.

            In the first instance, there has been a funding pledge from entertainment companies and artists. The major labels, Universal, Sony and Warner have between them committed $225m, which will be used in support of black charities and to address ‘internal’ and ‘institutional’ change. YouTube has announced a £100m fund dedicated to ‘amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists’. Stormzy had donated £10m to black British causes.

Secondly, there has been a semantic rethink. The One Little Indian label has changed its name because of ‘the violent history of the terminology’, the US Recording Academy has dropped the term ‘urban’ from two of its awards, and more broadly there are a number of labels who are rebranding their urban divisions. ‘Urban’ is being resisted because it is ‘rooted in the historical evolution of terms that sought to define black music’ and has ‘developed into a generalisation of black people in many sectors of the music industry, including employees and music by black artists’. Ultimately, its abandonment might result in structural as well as semantic change. The hope is that its departure will bring an end to the ghettoization of black employees and artists. The move is not universally welcomed, however. There are black music bosses who argue that this ‘we are all the same attitude’ will not work in a society in which some are more equal than others. They fear that the removal of barriers will result in white executives taking charge of black repertoire because they feel they know ‘better than anyone else’.

There is a manoeuvre that has received less attention but which could result in unquestioned good. One of the ways that racism has been ingrained in the music industries is through black artists receiving exploitative contractual terms. As such, it is not surprising that artists such as Kelis and Erykah Badu have retweeted a statement by the American professor, Josh Kun: ‘If the music industry wants to support black lives, labels and platforms can start with amending contracts, distributing royalties, diversifying boardrooms, and retroactively paying back all the black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on’. This has already had some effect. On Tuesday 9 June, BMG’s CEO Hartwig Masuch declared that    

Mindful of the music industry’s record of shameful treatment of black artists, we have begun a review of all historic record contracts. While BMG only began operations in 2008, we have acquired many older catalogues. If there are any inequities or anomalies, we will create a plan to address them. Within 30 days.

It is not only statues that are falling.