Music piracy is having a dangerous effect on British music, but some rich and successful artists such as Nick Mason, of Pink Floyd, and Ed O’Brien, of Radiohead, don’t think so. Last week, they told The Times that file sharing is fine. It probably is for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world. For new talent, though, file sharing is a disaster — it makes it harder and harder for new acts to emerge.

Mason, O’Brien and the Featured Artists Coalition say that file sharing is “like a sampler, like taping your mate’s music”, but mix tapes and recording from the radio are different from file sharing. Mix tapes were rubbish quality — you bought the real music because you liked the track and wanted to hear it without the DJ cutting off the end of each song. In digital land pirated tracks are the same quality as bought tracks. The coalition also says that file sharing is good because it “means a new generation of fans for us”. This is great if you are a big artist at the back end of your career with albums to flog to a new audience, but emerging artists don’t have this luxury. The FAC is basically saying: “We’re all right, we’ve made it, so file sharing’s fine.”

You don’t start out in music with Ferraris. You start with a huge debt from your record company, which you spend years working to repay. When you get a contract, all those videos and posters have to be paid for — and you, the artist, pay for them.

I’m lucky that I have been able to pay back the money I owe the record company, but not everyone is so fortunate. The more difficult it is for new artists to make it, the fewer new artists we will see and the more music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell.

And it’s not as if there aren’t alternatives to illegal downloads. Sites such as Spotify give us access to music without ripping anyone off. MySpace streams music and helps acts to win enough fans to convince record companies to sign them up.

If this sounds like I’m siding with the record bosses, I’m not. They have been complacent about new technology and spent all the money on their own fat salaries, not industry development. As they start really to lose out from piracy, they’re not slashing their salaries, they’re cutting what they invest in A&R. A&R people won’t have the funds to take risks, which again makes British music Cowell puppets.

File sharing is not good for British music. We must find new ways to help consumers to hear and buy music legally, Obviously I will benefit from combating piracy, but without fighting it British music will suffer.

www.myspace.com/lilymusic

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