THE key players in the global music scene have descended on Liverpool to debate whether the music industry is still a land of milk and honey for artists and digital pioneers.

Liverpool Sound City’s conference kicked off yesterday with hundreds of delegates at the city’s Hilton Hotel debating the industry’s past, present and future. Follow Peter Guy's blog for round-ups of all the Sound City news.

The day’s keynote event saw Peter Hook, bassist with Joy Division and New Order, argue with photographer Kevin Cummins over who should make money from images.

Meanwhile, Michael Breidenbruecker, co-founder of Last.fm and founder of technology firm RjDj, talked about “getting past the Lubberland problem” of having too much music to choose from.

After a short film about Cummins’s photos of Joy Division, including an iconic image of the band on a bridge in Hulme, Manchester, Hook and Cummins launched into a sometimes vigorous debate about who should make money from images.

“My big beef is always about copyright,” said Hook, looking at Cummins. “You took those pictures of me. If I want to use those pictures, I have to pay you. I disagree.

“As artists, if we hadn’t done what we’d done over the course of our careers, you wouldn’t be able to sell anything now. For me it should be give and take.” But Cummins insisted photographers should retain the copyright and should be able to exploit their work.

He said: “Photographs help to define how people see the band.”

Mr Breidenbruecker talked about the legend of Lubberland, a folk tale told in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, He illustrated his tale with a 1567 painting of the land by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Lubberland, he said, was a kind of sensory paradise, where the rivers were filled with milk and honey and “roast geese passed slowly down the street just asking to be eaten”.