--- Who are you, and what do you do in Barcelona?
---Starting with the second question, Barcelona is the best place to do what we want to do. And what do we want to do? We want to be able to identify all the agents in the music industry in our country, which generates around 900 million euros and goes far beyond musicians: we are talking about stages, technical infrastructures, sustainability, technology, security, audience control, rights management… We want to discover this entire industry, but also make them talk to each other, have people invest and make money, promote those projects that are made in Barcelona, as well as project them internationally.
--- But is the investment sought foreign?
--- No: foreign or national. When Eurecat (Catalonia Technology Center) develops a multichannel audio system, it doesn't sell it to a Catalan company like Kelonik, but to Dolby, which is American: it's not a criticism, it's stating that there isn't a Catalan company that buys this patent. Well, we want to reverse that.
--- Does research play an important role then?
--- There are eight music research centers in Catalonia. Eight! We want them to be able to apply this research in the country, so that the industry here can work. And this is achieved by identifying the agents and putting them in contact.
--- But are you a hub? A cluster?
--- We are a foundation. We develop some functions typical of a cluster, of course, but clusters and hubs work in a more sectoral or vertical way: we go from artists to those who research with Artificial Intelligence, passing through scenography, innovation, sustainability…
--- Apart from being a foundation of "special public interest", of course.
--- Exactly, which has tax advantages of up to a 90% deduction on the donations we may receive.
--- More anglicisms: a lobby, do you admit that you are one?
--- In the positive sense, yes.
--- I ask in the positive sense.
--- More than acting as a pressure group, we build bridges and join forces. In this sense, we can evidently change many things at a legislative level. Think that if we are anything, we are the first legal entity that tries to bring together the entire sector. There are already many associations, companies, guilds, agents, but we aspire to a holistic concept that goes from technology companies to intellectual property rights management.
--- That's because you've detected shortcomings in the sector. What are they?
--- Firstly, fragmentation: it's a quite atomized sector, with many projects and mostly "not large" in size, to be clear. Secondly, there is a concentration of large groups in the live music field, and this does not facilitate the development of an alternative or independent industry. And then, we are not a state capital.
--- Why is this important?
--- This means that the decision centers of large companies prefer to set up in Amsterdam, London, or Madrid. Now Barcelona often appears to these large companies as a Madrid delegation for the "Mediterranean zone." What happened with Warner, or with Universal Studios, who preferred to be close to the ministries, cannot happen to us.
--- But there are cities that do well without being state capitals.
--- We would do better if we at least had a well-articulated sector. Look at the pharmaceutical sector, or biomedicine: they know how to be a unitary pole of attraction, and Barcelona stands out a lot in these sectors. Well, we have to do the same. We have a very rich, very diverse, very large ecosystem in quantity and more articulated than Madrid's: what we must do is be even more so.
--- But are we a benchmark in anything?
--- Barcelona is today the de facto European capital of live music: we are talking about 250 annual music festivals in Barcelona, and 430 throughout Catalonia. This hardly happens anywhere else. Adding to the big ones like Primavera, Sònar, or Cruïlla, which are enormously competitive.
--- Therefore, the foundation arrives to share.
--- "If you go alone you will arrive faster, if you go accompanied you will arrive further." We are talking about sharing knowledge and technology, about knowing before the competition about new innovations, about waste management, about new ways of developing projects... From the foundation we organize specific challenges, like the current one on sustainability, and we call on startups that work in this field. Or we run incubation and acceleration programs for companies, on topics related to energy, for example. All this can be applied to music, and very specifically to festivals. Right now in Barcelona we have the only two chairs in the entire Spanish State on music and AI!
--- It is often said that live performance has killed the recording star.
--- Before the streaming phenomenon, recorded music meant a profit of about 2.5 euros out of every 10 for the artist. Now, through live performance, they receive 7. And that affects everything from classical music to pop and hip hop. Worldwide, live music now has an annual increase of 15%-20%.
--- You have a relationship with Cruïlla: your president is Jordi Herreruela.
--- I work with him, and with Genís Roca from the PuntCat Foundation, and with Josep Maria Martorell from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and with Enric Jové, from McCann. I mean that we aspire to work with everyone, from any field, and Sònar in fact also started working with us very early on.
--- Another thing that is said: saturation of festivals in Catalonia.
--- I prefer them to be there than not to be, frankly. Live music brings economic wealth, jobs, mental health, social and territorial cohesion... Who wants less of all this? Let them present it to me.
--- Too mainstream?
--- Not at all. Most of the festivals here have started from an alternative, underground concept. I don't buy it, I deny the major premise. There is a concentration of funds, as I said before, but this risk is global: and precisely for this reason our foundation tries to watch over the Catalan music ecosystem.
--- And what startups are appearing, within your field?
--- We try to help from several angles, for example, the legal one when we talk about AI or intellectual property rights, but also in the creative field: our startup acceleration programs result in projects that, even if they are made here, I am sure that if they had been made in Silicon Valley we would all have them on our mobile phones.
--- How does Barcelona stand out in this sector, then?
--- Barcelona is quite unique, but it has the flaw that sometimes it seems to bother us when things happen. And, certainly, it is quite saturated with things but we have good infrastructures, good connections, nearby facilities… It's just true that in June and July perhaps everything is too concentrated.
--- To finish: after your time at ICEC, how do you experience the move to the other side of the table?
--- I have known the other side of the table long before my time at ICEC, but I am very happy with what we did: we went from a budget of 56 million to 110 million, with the pandemic in between. We were able to change things, and we did it hand in hand with the sector. The mistake is to try to do things from paternalism, or from a false individual heroism. We adapted the current regulations to a situation as critical as the pandemic. And I must highlight the dedication of the staff, which was absolute, apart from the clear commitment to audiovisual and to promoting the Catalan language in large-scale production. Some called me the "apreteu de la cultura" (tighten the culture), because indeed without the complicity of the sector you do nothing.
--- "Help yourself," as Beethoven would say.
--- I would rather say "help me help you."