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How the music industry can keep advancing the SDGs

Shain Shapiro is a global music expert based in London who began his career as a music journalist. He is well known today for his deep knowledge of the music industry and cultural policy thinking as a member of the SDG Media Compact, a United Nations initiative launched in 2018 to raise awareness around the SDGs.

Sound Diplomacy, his economic consultancy, has explored the role of music in urban development in more than 130 cities around the world. Close to his base in London, Sound Diplomacy helped Belfast to become a UNESCO City of Music in 2021.

Shain Shapiro is also the founder and director of the global nonprofit Center for Music Ecosystems and author of “This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better” (Repeater Books/Penguin Random House, 2023), a book translated into six languages.

The Center for Music Ecosystems is the Secretariat of yet another initiative, the Organization for Recorded Culture and Arts (ORCA). This think tank includes international independent music labels that are committed to increasing the social, cultural, and economic value of music and working towards its sustainability. In this exclusive interview with UNRIC, Shain Shapiro shares his insights on the many links between music and the SDGs.

Would it be feasible to have a new song like “We Are The World”, but for climate action?

People have tried it but I think it is not the best sole path forward, to be honest. By focusing only on the shiny things, you ignore fixing and advancing the nuts and bolts behind the scenes, which can have a far more significant climate impact.

There will constantly be benefit concerts and new songs, but it’s more impactful to see what Coldplay, Billie Eilish, Massive Attack, or hundreds of other artists, for example, are doing to address the climate impacts of their tours. A benefit concert alone will not create systemic change but can always drive awareness as part of something bigger. One good example of that we should look at as a model is Global Citizen and their Move Afrika series they are developing – as it is both about changing the world through music and how music can be a tool to change more than minds.

What are the links between the SDGs and the music industry?

Music is very influential. It can be powerful in raising awareness and promoting the SDGs. Equally important is how the music industry functions and how changing and improving it can help meet some of the targets and indicators within the SDGs.

Everything is related to the SDGs in the music economy, from how power is generated to how festivals are built and dismantled, how people are paid and even whether people have the opportunity to be paid… As a global marketplace, music could be a model sector in terms of its impact on sustainability.

What kind of initiatives are making the music industry more sustainable? 

An association of European independent music companies called Impala, based in Brussels, has created a sustainability audit system to measure their carbon output. It has become a gold standard and a pioneering force in the music industry. It’s been used by hundreds of companies, including big players such as K7 in Germany, a famous jazz and dance label.

Murmur is another tool set up by Beggars Group, the world’s biggest independent label, and other partners. This platform helps labels reduce their carbon impacts in all areas, from packaging to freight, logistics, studio, engineering, and manufacturing.

Another great example is using festivals as models to improve temporary settlement infrastructure. A festival is a town the organizers build and take down in a week, with water, electricity, sewage and waste management. A Greener Festival is an organisation that works to reduce carbon across the ecosystem and can be seen as a model to take forward.

What is ORCA’s main goal?

This is a project for which the Center for Music Ecosystems is the secretariat, and it came about over a year ago with 14 of the world’s biggest independent record labels. One of our members, Sub Pop Records, is a pretty legendary label that signed Nirvana, for example, and was a pioneer of the grunge scene in the 1990s Seattle, or the Beggars mentioned above Group who discovered and signed Adele.

The goal is to produce research supporting independent music’s economic and social impact. Our first report is a guide to helping non-music professionals, and policymakers understand the music industry and why it could bring value to their jobs and goals.

We wanted to provide a one-stop shop to explain how music works in plain English—and now French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese—so that any policymaker, professional advocate, or City Council member who engages in music in one way or another understands how music works.

The second report will have primary data on the economic impact of independent record labels in communities.

Do you engage with cities, as key catalysts of sustainability? 

Cities are small enough to create solutions that can be tested on the ground and big enough so that people notice. They are the frontline of the crisis, and there’s lots to celebrate related to cities and the work they are doing with music to advance the SDGs.

The city of Milan is partnered with a festival called Linecheck. Together, they are organizing an SDG social change summit in 2024 on how music companies can utilize the SDGs. This festival also has an SDG music hub, a music tech accelerator working to help young Italian music entrepreneurs set up companies that are aligned with sustainability targets.

What challenges have you encountered when trying to convince your counterparts of the importance of sustainability measures?

I don’t think people need to be convinced, but we need better cross-sector communication, inside and out. The music industry is a collection of little industries, separated by sector, genre, or discipline. The classical sector doesn’t talk to the electronic sector, and the live sector doesn’t talk to the recorded sector, making things even more complicated.

However, the big challenge in making the most out of music in this context is infrastructure – physical and digital. In many countries, there is very little infrastructure to support these businesses, because a lot of people do not see music as a business. That’s a big challenge that we are trying to address.

If there was a SDG 18, what would it be? 

Culture is a human right, and we must treat the creative sector as an economy. We’re obsessed with the word “intellectual,” and we forget the word “property.” That’s what music is: property, taken away from people all the time. If an SDG advocated for culture to be taken seriously as an economy in places that wish or welcome that, it would be helpful. I know UNESCO has led in this welcoming and inspiring direction.

What is your message to labels or musicians? 

We need to be part of the conversation and have a seat at the table. We also have something that everybody wants, so we should use it to help address the problems that we’re all facing.

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