Colm Imbert, as Minister of Finance, will lay in Parliament next week Monday, the Appropriations (Financial Year 2021) Bill, 2020. We call it the Budget Statement, but in essence he will ask the Parliament to authorize the issue of tens of billions of dollars from the Consolidated Fund to service the country for the next year.
Since March, the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions arising therefrom have interrupted industries. At the Mid Year Review in June 2020, Imbert said, “we recognized that economic activity would be curtailed and that particular economic sectors would be seriously affected including tourism, hospitality, manufacturing, trade, distribution, construction, personal and professional services and arts, entertainment and recreation.”
Two that stand out for me are the entertainment industry and tourism. We dodged a bullet here in T&T with Carnival 2020 taking place, but there is much speculation as to the fate of the 2021 festival. [As I was editing this essay for publication, PM Rowley on Sep. 28 announced that, “unless there is some dramatic wind that will blow across us…Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago in 2021 is not on.”]
We have also seen the cancellation of major music festivals and Carnivals in all the islands and in the major Caribbean diaspora cities of London, New York, Miami and Toronto.
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The Evolving Music Ecosystem Conference: Day Three Recap
The Evolving Music Ecosystem: Session 5: The Power of Data Ownership & Analytics
Access to consumer data and the ability to process and respond to it is perhaps the most valuable component of our digital global ecosystems—no matter the industry. In the music business, collecting and analyzing data about listeners and their habits is occurring on a massive scale, and it’s informing the development of new business models and platforms. But questions of ownership and data sharing loom large, as musicians increasingly realize the value of knowing more about their fans. This panel discussed the current state of data collection and analytics in the music industry and explored ways that big data can foster creative ecosystems for all stakeholders. The panel was moderated by Prof. Sean Pager of Michigan State University College of Law.
https://cpip.gmu.edu/2020/09/30/the-evolving-music-ecosystem-confer...
“There are two major challenges that must be overcome locally: firstly, there needs to be a cultural shift towards valuing the written word over the spoken word, and secondly, people need to intimately get to know what they don’t know about their intellectual property rights. Why? Because the majority of music revenue can only be accessed through the leveraging of those IP rights, and half the battle is having those rights put down in black-and-white.”
Jeanelle Frontin, former GM, MusicTT. 2016
What is REALLY lacking is PATRIOTISM -- but that is a hard co-relation for the movers and shakers of the culture to make!!!
You hit the nail on the head Claude.
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