As War Rages On In Ukraine, Don’t Forget The Real Victims: Disney’s Profits
Like many of you, I'm sure, I've spent the past week following the news of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and feeling mostly helpless about such tragic events. On the other hand, Disney wants you to remember the real tragedy happening here: how this invasion might negatively impact its profits. As Jamie Love points out on Twitter, Disney Music Group's Peter Jansson sent an email to a public mailing list to highlight what really matters here: the lack of royalties that will be coming from Russia and Ukraine.
- James Love (@jamie_love) February 28, 2022
If you're unable to see that, it's a screenshot of an email to a mailing list that says:
As the disaster between Russia and Ukraine escalates, I wanted to give a heads up to all my fellow Music Publishers on the list (and this probably extends to all labels as well). Now that the U.S. and the U.E. have implemented SWIFT banking sanctions against these two countries... don't expect to see any monies coming from the Russian society (RAO) or the Ukrainian society (UACRR) any time soon in the foreseeable future, including reciprocal payments to U.S. PROs.
This is a big blow for us at Disney, as this is most apparent with ENCANTO, as all the songs from the movie have been translated and released in Russian and Ukranian, and we have been noticing quite a lot of UGC uploads on YouTube in both these languages given the extreme popularity of these songs.
We have seen growing revenues from both Russia and Ukraine over the past two years, but this may well eradicate all of this growth. We hope that UACRR will still exist after the outcome of this, as they have been a good partner for us in the past several years.
There's so much to comment on here, starting with just the general insensitivity of this. Yes, obviously, any company that does business in the region should be looking at the overall impact of the invasion on its own books, but putting it out on a mailing list in such stark terms just looks incredibly insensitive at this moment. Also, we hope that the Ukrainian collection society will still exist" rather than we hope Ukraine still exists" seems worth highlighting.
Second, as Jamie also notes, this comes just weeks after the big labels lobbying group, IFPI told the US government that Ukraine (and Russia) were a haven for piracy and should be kept on the ridiculous USTR's Special 301 list. In that filing, they repeatedly trash Ukraine and insist that it's nearly impossible for the copyright industries" to make any money there. This seems to be a lie, given Peter's comments above.
Third, it shouldn't go without commenting that here we have Disney excited about user generated content uploads after a decade or two of complaining about how they were destroying the music industry. I am reminded, not for the first time, how just a few years after Jack Valenti compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler" that Hollywood was making more money from home movies than the box office. The whole copyright industry spent years complaining about UGC uploads killing" their industry, and yet, here we are.
Fourth, it was just a few months ago that Radiolab had an excellent episode about how piracy helped spread freedom in oppressed countries, and it sure feels like in today's world, Disney and the like would prefer oppression and profits to supporting freedom.
Anyway, as you think of the struggle of the people of Ukraine this week, don't forget to share some sympathy for the Mouse's big blow" to its profits.