BPI calls for Jamie Cullums, not hospitals

In what might be one of the most surprising examples of special pleading we've seen outside of the nuclear industry, the BPI has called upon the government to give tax credits to underwrite the music industry's A&R functions.

In other words, redirect money from hospitals and education into the private companies of the record business.

They think it's a justified cause because:

A comparison with government figures from the DTI shows that record companies are as high as the pharmaceutical industry in their commitment to R&D.

Hmmm. So, the BPI believes that the work of uncovering the next Lily Allen (a process which would involve shouting "does anyone here have a daughter" through the door of the Groucho Club) is somehow on a par with developing a cure for cancer or a vaccine against river blindness? It seems to have missed the slightly more pressing point that drug research and development is a slightly more exacting process than sending a bloke off to the Barfly and hoping he'll remain sober enough to avoid getting punched by the girls he's hitting on before he gets a chance to find out the name of the support band's manager.

More importantly, are the record companies as deserving of our support as the drugs industry? If pharmaceutical companies were run as poorly as record businesses, and followed the same, safe path, we'd be in a country where the only drugs available for everything would be sixty-three slightly different variants of aspirin, a load of drugs being offloaded by American parent companies which don't actually work, and several dozen actual cures for everything locked away in the vaults because "the marketing guys don't think the GPs will prescribe them."

Still, let's just praise whoever it was at the BPI who spotted that there was a useful similarity between A&R departments and pharmacy businesses. One of them is known for burning through large sums of money pushing vast quantities of drugs around the place, while the others produces medicines.

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