Musicians welcome downloading reforms

Musicians have welcomed moves to combat the boom in illegal file-sharing by charging internet users an annual fee to download music. The plan – revealed by The Independent yesterday – is being championed by ministers as a way of tacking the boom in internet piracy.

Internet service providers (ISPs) and the music industry are to write to thousands of prolific downloaders warning them they are breaking the law. Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, wants them to follow the move by drawing up joint plans to make music fans pay for downloads. Sections of the music industry are suggesting the yearly levy would be between £20 and £30, with the cash raised channelled back to artists and composers.

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British Music Rights, which represents musicians, said such a move would throw a lifeline to British songwriters, as 95 per cent of them receive less than £5,000 a year in royalties.

Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, who is now chief executive of British Music Rights, said the music industry needed to find a way of providing "a huge range of services competitively priced to suit all the demands the customer possibly has".

He said: "I could envisage at one end of the scale, for nothing more than a couple of pounds a month, being allowed to download X amount of tracks. And possibly at the other end of the scale, for a slightly larger sum of money, there is the entire catalogue of the music industry and you can have of it as much as you want as frequently as you want, and any number of variations in between."

Mr Burnham said it was not the Government's job to negotiate deals over the prices internet users would pay to access music. But he added: "What we are saying is we do have to have a solution to this problem. And I don't think it's a controversial statement to say people should indeed pay for music. We've had a music industry that has led the world for decades – people feel very proud of that and if we are to carry on having that kind of industry we have to have a sustainable solution for them."

The Music Managers Forum gave a cautious welcome to the concept of an annual charge, calling for extra work on the idea with a view to presenting detailed proposals to the industry.

Tim Clark, who manages Robbie Williams, said: "We believe the idea needs to be evaluated. It needs the buy-in of the industry at large, but it's an idea worth exploring." He said the attraction of an annual charge was its simplicity, but difficult questions of how the cash would be shared out had to be addressed.

Mr Clark added: "The threat the industry faces from file-sharing is huge. Albums made three or four years ago which you might confidently think would sell seven or eight million now only sell three million. That is a massive drop and it's continuing to drop. Digital sales aren't going up nearly enough to be replacement revenue."