In times when all issues of cultural importance are pointedly addressed as challenges of a global nature, I am happy to be offered the chance to talk to you about music and culture from a national perspective. But then again, focusing on the national today to a large extent means focusing on how we at national level try to meet the challenges brought on by increased globalization of trade and of course the forces of media markets. So it’s always back to global. And music is truly global in its exportability and promotability through mass media. All corners of the world are flooded with products from fewer, more powerful, commercial actors.

I’m going to focus on one small corner, namely Norway, to look at how we at Government level try to stimulate the development of Norwegian repertoire to the Norwegian audience. What makes the Norwegian listener want Norwegian music? And how do we ensure a diverse repertoire and stimulate the necessary creativity?

Norway is a small country with less than 5 million inhabitants. Norwegian is a small language, only spoken in Norway. Therefore it is vitally important to have an active cultural policy at many levels. We stimulate diversified cultural expressions and promote projects and artists for the benefit of national culture through a wide variety of economic incentives and support schemes. There are support schemes for production and dissemination of music outside the genres of mass culture. And there are market incentives directed toward pop, rock and jazz within the markets of modern mass culture. Support is provided for composers, performers, concert organisers, festivals, publishing and recording. Our support mechanism for phonograms promotes the knowledge and dissemination of Norwegian quality phonograms. It is also aimed at stimulating a broad production of phonograms with music created and performed by Norwegian artists. Every year, the Norwegian Arts Council buys a selection of the year’s national phonogram production in 550 copies. The phonograms are distributed to libraries, schools and Norwegian missions and music communities abroad. Therefore, the scheme makes the CDs accessible to the Norwegian public, and presents Norwegian music abroad.

Music Information Centre Norway also plays an important role in this work through a varied effort in making the qualities of Norwegian musical life visible and accessible both nationally and internationally.

Another example is the levy paid by the Norwegian Performing Rights Society, TONO, to the Norwegian Composers Fund, pursuant to specific legislation. In 2003, the Norwegian Composers Fund received NOK 4,5 million, (more than 500 000 Euros) which is distributed according to applications. A large part of the fund goes to commissioning fees for new compositions.

These various support schemes have a common goal, which is to make sure that our national culture and language is alive, thriving, evolving, maintaining and ever creating. But there are additional means to assist us on the way – which brings me to the second point of my national perspective – how can we ensure that there’s Norwegian music being played in Norwegian broadcasting? We all know that the role of media in disseminating music is vital. On many occasions, the minister of culture has underlined that public service broadcasters have obligations beyond that of reaching a large audience. This applies in particular to NRK, our state-owned public service broadcaster. NRK must provide space also for unconventional or less mainstream expressions, and this must be reflected in the programming. NRK is funded through licence fees, and has an obligation to serve the community, to actively participate in Norwegian cultural life and contribute to ensuring cultural diversity. Specifying NRK`s purpose as public broadcaster means ensuring a quota for Norwegian music in all their channels. The Ministry has recently amended the statutes of NRK to include an obligation to play at least 35% Norwegian music – for both radio and television channels. We also have similar requirements for the two nation-wide commercial radio broadcasters licensed by our ministry.

We have also in function a levy on the broadcasting of phonograms which has a twofold purpose. The Fund for performing artists collects a levy on all broadcasting of phonograms which are not protected by the Norwegian Copyright Act. Protected phonograms follow the remuneration scheme of the copyright act, as in the EU countries. But in Norway the user has to pay for all phonograms, whether they are protected or not. Therefore, there is no commercial incentive to play non-protected repertoire. This removes the temptation to use more free – i.e. foreign-music. And the levy paid to the Fund for Performing Artists on using non-protected phonograms, is used to support a wide variety of projects and artists in the Norwegian cultural field, not least music.

Thirdly, I must mention the importance of a balanced copyright system as a vital tool for creativity and diversity, something I’m sure all in this room can agree upon. Norway has a high level of protection for authors and for neighbouring rights holders. We are currently in the process of finalizing a proposal for amending our Copyright Act, to bring it in line with the EU Copyright directive and enable us to accede to the WIPO treaties. Among the amendments, we will be introducing a compensation system for private copying, which especially affects music and audiovisual works. This will be another important scheme to stimulate further production and creativity in our very active domestic environment of composers, artists and others involved in expressing our music culture, diverse as it is.

Due to the EEA-agreement this scheme will cover music from all the countries within the area. In contrast to the system in most other countries, this scheme will be financed over the Norwegian state budget. The government’s proposal for next year’s budget was delivered to Parliament yesterday. It includes a proposal for a compensation of 6,2 million Euro for 2005. This is equivalent to the average levy collected per capita in the Nordic countries which are members of the EU. Two thirds of the compensation will be distributed individually. One third of the compensation will be collectively distributed through funds.

Hopefully, the means at our hands to stimulate and promote creativity and a craving audience, makes a difference. The influence of mass media can sometimes be regarded as a homogenization of the audience’s taste buds. In this situation, where market forces have such a tremendous impact, we are concerned about diversity and about maintaining a vital national cultural identity. But in the end, we lean not only on our active policy measures, but also on the amazing force of the unpredictability both of the audience and the artists’ creativity. In Norway, as I’m sure is the case in many other countries, there are several promising phenomena to put a positive tilt to the discussions:

One is what I would call taking the mainstream and “norwegianizing” it. Historically, this is well-known, e.g. romanticism in the 19 ^th> century and jazz in the 20 ^th>. A good recent example is hip-hop, originally the music of black American, urban street life. Norwegian Hip-Hop can be genuinely different, and yet has found quite an audience. It’s sung in all dialects – previously almost unheard of in Norway, and often has something distinctly Norwegian about it.

We have also seen recent big successes with artists who mix genres, such as folk-music and mainstream. The audience has embraced a mixture which to some might seem rather diluted, but to very many listeners means an introduction to folk-music that they would never encounter through more rigid genre distinctions.

There are several relevant issues I have not touched upon in offering a national perspective to you here today.

We must not forget the importance of the work underway to secure an international convention on the protection of cultural diversity in UNESCO. The Norwegian Government is participating actively in UNESCO’s work and I must emphasize the importance of strengthening international cooperation on cultural policies in order to promote cultural diversity. The issue of cultural diversity must not be limited to the mere confrontation of interests among large countries that are the traditional producers of cultural works. It is also important to recognize the particular situation of developing countries, which requires special attention if we wish to build their capacity in the area of cultural development.

It is important to keep this issue high on the agenda at national as well as international level.

Establishing attractive legal alternatives for digital distribution of music is very important to reach new generations of listeners with varied domestic repertoire. Phonofile is a Norwegian digital music archive and central distribution office for legal audio files featuring only domestic repertoire. The database (musiconline.no) includes more than 50.000 titles of all music styles and genres. It caters for both professional users and consumers. During TONO’s 75 ^th> Anniversary celebration last fall, music-files were offered for free downloading for a one-week period, and the response was overwhelming – 2,5 million downloads.

There is of course no doubt that Norwegian and European Music cultures are faced with serious challenges by the very nature of music’s pervasiveness and the massive drive of the global marketplace. Yet our approach should remain constructive, and I will therefore end on the positive note that – the public performance of Norwegian music in Norway increased 7,8 % from 2002 to 2003. 42,7 % of all music performed in Norway by the end of 2002 was Norwegian music. Preliminary figures for 2003/2004 give reason to believe that this positive trend will continue.

Thank you for your attention.