Mr. Victor Finn:

We do not have a figure on the costs of illegal downloads. I do not want to minimise the problem because it is still an issue but it is not as big a problem as it once was. Some of the newer methods of distributing music online, for example streaming, are now fully licensed. In the online area, we have adopted a three-pronged approach. There is education, especially in the youth area with a schools programme, part of which highlights the importance of copyright and earnings for the creative community and, in particular, musicians. The second stage is to ensure all services are licensed, as much as we can. The third stage is enforcement. If a provider is not licensed, we seek to have them licensed.

There are two tiers in how streaming works. There is premium streaming where one pays a monthly membership fee to stream on a monthly basis. Then there is free streaming which is supported by advertising. Both are legal services. The streaming services would like people to transfer to the premium model. This model is delivering reasonable returns to copyright owners. We are still in this evolving market where streaming services are trying to migrate people from the advertising model to the premium service model. They are being slowly successful in that but it will take more time for it to bear more fruit for the creative community.

Side by side with that, one has services which allow access to music online where they are refusing to be licensed or they are what we would term under-licensed, in that they are claiming the exceptions available to them under the safe harbour provisions. Some very large companies claim exceptions to copyright regarding many of these uses that go through their networks. This continues to be an issue and needs to be addressed, not just at Irish level but at European level.

In relation to radio and the amount of airplay artists receive, we think that is an issue the task force would be ideally suited to address, once it is made up of industry experts and people from the relevant Departments. It is one issue that could be addressed. I would also add that given the development of downloading, streaming in particular, and curating of content on streaming services, radio continues to be very influential in discovering new artists, both online and on social media. I agree that social media are also very important in that role; therefore, we should not just confine ourselves to concerning ourselves with the issue of radio. That environment is also changing by the day, but, nonetheless, it is an important issue and something we would like to see a task force address at the earliest opportunity.