Goldschmidt calls for UK tax breaks for music

Cooking Vinyl boss Martin Goldschmidt has called on the UK government to provide tax breaks for music, in a keynote speech at The Great Escape. Noting that there are tax scheme that help investors, he said these still did not directly benefit the recorded music sector itself saying "why don't we have something that directly benefits the record business, rather than doing so via those private investors and their funds" adding "The obvious move is to have a tax break on recording itself. There's support for R&D in many other industries - the pharmaceuticals industry, for example - and far closer to home we see tax breaks for film, games, theatre, and there's one coming in for orchestras in April 2016. So you've got big tax breaks in the creative industries. But the one for orchestras specifically excluded rock and pop, because they don't want to give money to Coldplay. But if you have 25% tax break on recordings, and 50% of the money had to be spent in the UK, that would have so many benefits. It would definitely benefit record companies, but that's a naïve way to look at it. Most of the records we release are funded by the artist and licensed to us, and they would benefit too" and "it would help the whole recording industry sector, create jobs and then extend benefits to the wider creative industry".