It’s an irony we’ve noted before that back in 2010, opponents of the UK’s Digital Economy Act criticised the lobbying power of the music industry, yet by 2012 that industry was itself criticising the lobbying power of Google. A neat post on Digital Music News reveals both camps’ overt lobbying spending in the US for 2012: $22.8m for Google and $15.9m for the three remaining major labels plus the RIAA. There are some caveats though. First, Google’s critics are already noting that these official figures don’t include lobbying by third-party groups who it funds. But second, Google has a lot of things to lobby US politicians about beyond music and copyright, and it’s impossible to say what proportion of its $15.9m is directly relevant to music.
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