A fairer streaming model on the way?

[Doctor J]

It's not much, but it's a start

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57838473

[BigRedX]

It's a difficult one.

Streaming pays pretty well if you haven't signed contracts giving the lion's share of your royalties to record labels and publishers. You read reports of major artists who have several million Spotify streams a year and earn just a couple of hundred pounds. A couple of million Spotify streams would probably be enough pay for my band to record our next album in a good studio with a name producer. That's because we haven't signed most of our rights away to record label or publisher. However the price we pay for getting 100% of our streaming royalties is the fact that almost no-one has heard of us, so we only get a few thousand streams a year.

As always, what an artist is paying for (from their earnings) when they sign a record or publishing deal is the ability of the label and publisher to get their music heard by a far larger audience then they will ever be able to achieve by themselves. And therefore why shouldn't the labels and publishers take their cut? Anyone who has signed a deal in the last 5 years giving them a pittance in streaming royalties only has themselves and their legal advice to blame. And anyone signing a deal right now needs to take a long hard look at any clauses about unknown future distribution methods. It's not the 60s and 70s any more. Artists these days should be clued up about what they are signing and if their not get legal advice that is, and can explain it clearly to them.

However all the things that make it so easy to get your music out to your potential audience compared with the pre-internet age also make it even harder to stand out from the background "noise". In the past your label could insert a couple of well-placed ads in the "inkys" along with an interview, and a plugger to get your single on Radio One. Then it was down the chart return shops to buy back enough copies to get you onto next week's Top Of The Pops. These days it is so much harder as there is no single route to potential success. And the days when the people who "help" you along will do so for a one-off payment are long gone. Now everyone wants a percentage and they want to keep on earning - just look at the sheer number of people of have a "writing credit" on any successful song...

Added to this the fact that unless the situation has changed in the last 12 months none of the streaming services make any money by themselves. All are propped up by the more profitable parts of their parent companies or artificial income from their IPO. To date the only profitable streaming service has been Soundcloud, and they achieved this by not paying any performance royalties. Since they have had to do this they have veered from one financial crisis to the next. Spotify might be able to turn a profit if all the users signed up for the subscription service, or they had enough paying advertisers (most of the ads I get as a non-premium member are ones trying to persuade me to upgrade to the premium service, or poorly targeted low-budget ones from bands who have nothing musically in common with what I am actually listening to), but until that happens they will have to continue relying on external investment.

Once we move beyond the streaming royalties headlines, there are some interesting recommendations in the report especially one regarding allowing works/recordings to revert back to the writers and musicians after a set period of time. But there are also some that show that the committee involved only appear to have a minimal understanding of how the music business works. In particular one regrading finding "ways to ensure songwriters, who receive minimal streaming royalties, can have sustainable careers". What does that actually mean? Who decides if a songwriter should be able to make a "career" out of it. For instance over the last 40 years I have built up a catalogue of several hundred songs all registered with the PRS and most at one time or another have earned some performance royalties if not from radio play, then from being performed live. Does that mean I can put myself forward as a songwriter and demand that my royalties are adjusted so that I can make a living out of it? After all, if I don't have to worry about my day job to keep me solvent then I'll have more time write more songs?

Who knows?

[YouMa]

The beast has already been unleashed years ago. They will never be able to reset this and it shows how out of touch they really are. On average no one will pay for something they can get for free.