Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of umbrella trade group, U.K.
Music, has his sights trained on the American music industry.
U.K. Music's recently-published manifesto "Liberating
Creativity" (Billboard.biz, March 29) is a seven-stage blueprint
outlining plans for the British music industry to become the
world's No. 1 music creator by 2020. Sharkey spoke to
Billboard.biz about the document and how U.K. Music intends to
carry its proposals through.  How realistic is the aim of making
the British music industry the world's No. 1 music creator?
We've put down a marker of 2020. That gives us 10 years. That's
a long time but it's quite a lot of work to be done. But we can
do it within that time.  Now that you've published the
"Liberating Creativity" document, what happens next?  We start
beginning conversations with government. For us it's important
that, regardless of what happens over the next six weeks, with
the [imminent] general election that these people begin to
understand [our goals] and I really think th