Music Streaming Inquiry Finds 'Pitiful Returns' For Performers (bbc.com) 108
A committee in the U.K. Parliament says the music industry is weighted against artists, with even successful pop stars seeing "pitiful returns," reports the BBC:
They are calling for a "complete reset" of the market, with musicians given a "fair share" of the £736.5 million that UK record labels earn from streaming. In a report, they said royalties should be split 50/50, instead of the current rate, where artists receive about 16%.
The findings came after a six-month inquiry into music streaming. "While streaming has brought significant profits to the recorded music industry, the talent behind it — performers, songwriters and composers — are losing out," said Julian Knight, MP, who chairs parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee. "Only a complete reset of streaming that enshrines in law their rights to a fair share of the earnings will do...."
A survey by the Ivors Academy and Musicians' Union found that in 2019, 82% of professional musicians made less than £200 from streaming, whilst only 7% made more than £1,000...
The committee's report said streaming had "undoubtedly helped save the music industry" after decades of piracy, "but it is clear that what has been saved does not work for everyone".
A chart accompanying the article shows that meanwhile streaming services keep 30% of the revenue, while labels end up with 55%.
"Artists who release their own music, or who work with independent labels and distribution companies, tend to get a higher share."
The findings came after a six-month inquiry into music streaming. "While streaming has brought significant profits to the recorded music industry, the talent behind it — performers, songwriters and composers — are losing out," said Julian Knight, MP, who chairs parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee. "Only a complete reset of streaming that enshrines in law their rights to a fair share of the earnings will do...."
A survey by the Ivors Academy and Musicians' Union found that in 2019, 82% of professional musicians made less than £200 from streaming, whilst only 7% made more than £1,000...
The committee's report said streaming had "undoubtedly helped save the music industry" after decades of piracy, "but it is clear that what has been saved does not work for everyone".
A chart accompanying the article shows that meanwhile streaming services keep 30% of the revenue, while labels end up with 55%.
"Artists who release their own music, or who work with independent labels and distribution companies, tend to get a higher share."
Talented live performers do OK (Score:1)
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True, and for productions that involve record labels they still take all the financial risk pouring money into production and promotion so they get a bigger slice of the return. In the old days that was the only option, nowadays studio time and production equipment is cheap while online promotion and distribution is next to no cost. Record labels aren't needed anymore unless you, as an artist, don't want to take the risk but then don't expect to take the lion's share of the reward.
Re:Talented live performers do OK (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't read the whole article (so sue me :) but while I agree, I think part of the problem is that "established" artists (whose records have already payed themselves out, and their catalogue is now part of the streaming services, not necessarily "newer" stuff) have getting shafted.
For example, an artist whose 20-year old album is on Spotify has likely had their label profit from it beyond the initial "risk" cost they took on the album at the time - at this stage, the money currently earned from it should at least be equally split.
If labels are going to continually profit from the same material ad infinitum, I think it's only fair that artists/composers/etc. continue to profit equally from it as well.
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I do not agree with you.
Care to actually expand on that?
Re:Talented live performers do OK (Score:4, Funny)
Your point is overwhelmingly convincing. The logic stunningly beautiful.
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Exploding offers (Score:2)
an artist whose 20-year old album is on Spotify
That's a contract clause to negotiate with the record label when signing up.
It was not so easy to negotiate 20 years ago when major labels' A&R departments had a habit of deterring negotiation by making exploding offers (offers retracted in a week or less) and using standard form contracts (take it or leave it). A 20-year-old album would have been released relatively shortly after Napster became popular in the fourth quarter of 1999, so the artist would probably have signed with the label before Napster.
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Institutional investors in record companies were estimating tails on successful songs generating revenue for decades 20 years ago. Not everything in business has a couple years time horizon.
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For example, an artist whose 20-year old album is on Spotify has likely had their label profit from it beyond the initial "risk" cost they took on the album at the time - at this stage, the money currently earned from it should at least be equally split.
That's a stupid idea.
The label isn't going to take a risk without a big reward. First, because it's not in the business of making a practically interest-free loan that might take years to be repaid, and which probably won't ever be. Second, because to finance its investments in a lot of albums, most of which will fail, it needs to make a lot on the ones that succeed.
They just plain won't do business under your terms; it makes no sense for them. Better to invest their money elsewhere.
While the labels do s
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There's little to no manufacturing costs involved in cutting a single or an album (and many performers don't even bother with albums anymore, unless they're trying to tap the vinyl market). Promotion is cheaper now. Production costs are down.
Re: Talented live performers do OK (Score:2)
If it is the case that costs are now so low, why do professional musicians need labels again? In fact, why not create your music, then pay a label to promote it. In cash.
There are two real issues at play here. The top top artists are now more adept at wringing money out of the labels (see Taylor Swift) and they are not sharing and so the so so ones get shafted.
It is now even harder to break through than before. The top artists take all the oxygen out of the system. Where labels might have previously taken a
Re: Talented live performers do OK (Score:3)
So what? A record label is like a loan shark because no bank is going to lend money to an unproven musician and if the musician could get the money by other means, they would have (except that they're nicer than loan sharks if you can't pay them back; they're not going to go for your kneecaps, only your career) and if you let them get their hooks in -- even by signing a few terms scribbled on a napkin in a bar by an A and R man -- then they'll plant them as deep as possible and you won't ever get rid of the
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I haven't read the whole article (so sue me :) but while I agree, I think part of the problem is that "established" artists (whose records have already payed themselves out, and their catalogue is now part of the streaming services, not necessarily "newer" stuff) have getting shafted.
For example, an artist whose 20-year old album is on Spotify has likely had their label profit from it beyond the initial "risk" cost they took on the album at the time - at this stage, the money currently earned from it should at least be equally split.
If labels are going to continually profit from the same material ad infinitum, I think it's only fair that artists/composers/etc. continue to profit equally from it as well.
So, what should happen when a label loses money on an artist?
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True, and for productions that involve record labels they still take all the financial risk pouring money into production and promotion so they get a bigger slice of the return.
Is that actually true though? I'm pretty sure that the record companies have employed plenty of accounting tricks in the past to in leave the artists as the ones in debt for everything.
No shit (Score:3)
The marriage of wide-eyed young-and-pretty people high on hope and low on experience on one side and shrewd businessmen on the other can only go one way.
Look up the Hollywood "studio system" as but one example.
Re:No shit (Score:5, Funny)
In my opinion, the performers should get 50%. The songwriters should get 50%. The music composers should get 50%. The music producers should get 50%. And finally, the record labels, the financial backers, the sound technician, and the marketers should get the remaining 50%
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Why 50%? How did you come up with that number?
I don't know what fair is in this case. For what it's worth I'm also a musician and I want to see the artists compensated for their work. On the other hand, did they invent Spotify? Did they write the code? Are they paying the employees? How about the web hosting and bandwidth? Is the payment processing fee coming from their cut (it might be, I don't know)?
The artist produced one recording at a given point in time while the streaming service is actively working
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You might want to try adding up all those 50%s in the grandparent post and then reevaluate if the post was serious.
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MOST importantly, is the art in the music or in the advertising. Have you not noticed the age of music being used in all other content, last centuries music because this centuries music is pretty much shite advertised as being the greatest EVAH. Personally screw em all and cut copyright o 25 years from first publication.
Why should one tiny group of people get life time income for their work when by far the majority get MINIMUM wage for their work.
That is what we a talking a built in prejudice in law deval
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If you knew how publishing splits worked, you'd find your joke even funnier. To make it simple, the writer(s) gets 100% and the publisher(s) gets 100%.
Re:No shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, this reads like a bunch of spoiled babies getting paid what people think their music is worth. An not getting paid what the spoiled babies think its worth.
You know, it would have taken you a whole 45 seconds to RTFA.
"A survey by the Ivors Academy and Musicians' Union found that in 2019, 82% of professional musicians made less than £200 from streaming, whilst only 7% made more than £1,000."
I wonder how much you would be whining like a spoiled little baby if you worked your ass in your profession, only to make less than £1,000 while your assigned "assistants" made an actual salary off of your work?
If you had "only" 100,000 fans who each paid you what they think your music is worth (also known as the price they're charged that they have no control over), would it still be fair to collect a pittance while the bandwidth and service provider sucks up the majority of your earnings? Hell, come to think of it, streaming service IT staff should be getting a cut of your profits too. They're the ones actually keeping the revenue streams flowing.
Sadly, musicians getting ripped off, isn't new. The worst example I saw of this, was watching three wildly successful women standing on an after-awards stage holding two Grammy awards each, after 10 million in record sales, talking directly and candidly about how broke they were. That was twenty-five years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"The record company's the pimp, the artist is the ho, the stage is the corner, and the audience is the trick." - Ice Cube
Nothing has changed.
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...a very small amount of Youtubers for example actually get paid any significant amount for what they do too. And obviously nobody is living off
Not their full-time job? You act as if musicians are all brain surgeons, and do gigs just for fun while earning a £300,000 salary.
It's almost as if you've never heard the term starving artist before...
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GPP said that these people obviously aren't making a living from streaming income. That says nothing at all about how much they're making from gigs. Take, for an example, the musicians in full time employment at the London Symphony Orchestra. They're clearly professional musicians; they clearly make a living (albeit below the national average wage in the UK, and well below the London average) from their music; but do you think all 100-or-so of them are making 1000 GBP p.a. from streaming
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"A survey by the Ivors Academy and Musicians' Union found that in 2019, 82% of professional musicians made less than £200 from streaming, whilst only 7% made more than £1,000."
I wonder how much you would be whining like a spoiled little baby if you worked your ass in your profession, only to make less than £1,000 while your assigned "assistants" made an actual salary off of your work?
So of the musicians that made < £200 how much did their "assistants" make? Even if it's just one musician (and not a band) so that's £200 for the whole production and not £200 per band member then at 16% it's still £1650 that goes to other parties which includes the producer, writer, sound technician, studio owner, streaming platform, etc...
Well, I'm glad you clarified quantities, since that is exactly what provides a valid income to "assitants", because they (unlike the musicians) can represent many bands, and therefore derive an income from multiple revenue streams.
Also a professional musician is anybody who gets paid for being a musician, this includes the bands that made £50 and a jug of beer at the local pub, a very small amount of Youtubers for example actually get paid any significant amount for what they do too. And obviously nobody is living off < £1000 in earnings so it's not like the people surveyed are necessarily doing this as their full time job.
Uh, I'd more say a "professional" musician is someone who considers doing that as a profession. We often use "professional" with a measurement of how good they are, but that isn't necessarily the most accurate metric. Those "professionals" being paid in jugs of beer, would be a
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Clearly someone making $200 isnt a full time career...
How much effort went into that revenue? And what was the goal from it?
If they spent 10 hours writing and/or recording a song, and then make 200 revenue from it thats 20/hour, well above minimum wage.
If they get that 200 again the following year despite not doing any additional work thats basically free money.
If the goal of the recording was to promote their live shows, then the fact they make any money from the recordings at all is a bonus.
For many peopl
Their other finding (not as widely publicized) (Score:1)
Water is wet.
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"The music (publishing) industry fucks 'recording artists' like '135-lb gays in state prison'" is the second rule of Tautology Club.
Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar... (Score:5, Insightful)
...And did we tell you the name of the game boy
We call it riding the gravy train.
-Pink Floyd
Guess someone was right a long time ago already. The fat cats like to keep being fat and skim the milk thoroughly before passing the whey on to their slaves.
Re: Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar... (Score:2)
Of course your point turns ridiculous when you use the term "slaves".
Last time I checked, slaves didn't voluntarily take that job, nor continue it.
Don't like the "slavery" of being a musician? Go be a barista.
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the game boy
Are the people who create video games any better off than the people who create recorded music?
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That depends.
The games industry mirrors the movie industry which mirrors the music industry.
Frank Zappa explained it best when he described the decline of the music industry. [youtube.com]
To paraphrase: Originally you have people who were passionate about creating new entertainment and thus experiment. Eventually the suits move in and they don't understand "the product" -- they just know that it sells.. Then new suits take over and the product gets distilled down again into a formulaic product that has no soul and then
PRoblem is so many performers (Score:3)
First the 'streamer' gets the money. The corp/agents/distributors get their cut first. By the time the artist gets paid, it is less than 20% of the pie.
Then they have the pay:
1) The singer
2) The musicians
3) The guy that wrote the lyrics
4) The guy that wrote the music.
Which works out to less than 5%
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The more things change... (Score:3)
The more they stay the same.... https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ [salon.com]
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Compare it to selling software .... (Score:2)
How much of a cut do developers get when they sell an app on Apple's App Store? (Last I checked, Apple got 30% and is now only asking 15% for the "small guys" who've done under a million in net sales on the platform.) Why is music any different?
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Because marketing/production is generally more important than any particular artist when it comes to music.
People who can sing while looking pretty are a dime a dozen. People who can write derivative songs are even cheaper. The ability to get people to listen to your songs is hard.
Fortunately that is changing, as there are more outlets for music distribution than ever before. You don't need to ever sign with a record company (or Spotify) at all.
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Fortunately that is changing, as there are more outlets for music distribution than ever before. You don't need to ever sign with a record company (or Spotify) at all.
True, there are more outlets for distribution, and you *don't* have to sign with a record company. However, that also means there's a lot more music a given artist will be competing against, and it's that much more difficult to stand out from the crowd. The point in your second paragraph ("The ability to get people to listen to your songs i
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However, that also means there's a lot more music a given artist will be competing against, and it's that much more difficult to stand out from the crowd.
I think that's a good thing, because it means better music will be created. Certainly the diversity of music we're getting now is much higher than what we had in the 90s.
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How much of a cut do developers get when they sell an app on Apple's App Store? (Last I checked, Apple got 30% and is now only asking 15% for the "small guys" who've done under a million in net sales on the platform.) Why is music any different?
Why are you even trying to compare the two?
A semi-successful music artist, has a fucking army of staff holding their hands out, demanding a cut. Not to mention your entire worth could be gone with little more than a gentle breeze blowing you away from musical fashion trends.
What's a developer got in the way of expenses by comparison? $3K for a decent computer, while sucking on the FOSS teat? A never-ending well of programming languages to choose from, with a decent variety of them constantly in demand/fa
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Wow.... I completely disagree, at least when you're talking about artists just trying to get started and possibly working with an independent label.
I used to play guitar in a local band that wrote our own original music, so I'm a bit familiar with the struggle from that point of view.
The people commenting that "People who can sing and look pretty are a dime a dozen!" are missing the point, IMO. Sure, you can dredge up a bunch of pretty people, put them on a TV talent show with a competent backing band, and
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TFS says the streaming service keeps 30%. How is that more than the app store keeps from distributing a software app?
"Twitter clapback" format is most appropriate here (Score:5, Insightful)
Just (clap) download (clap) the (clap) music (clap clap clap).
If an artist direct-sells a CD for, say, $5 plus shipping, buying that gives them far, far more money than all the "licensed" streaming plays you'll make in an entire lifetime. I'm not exaggerating. You can literally pirate everything else the artist has ever made, and they'll still come out on top even if the alternative "licensed sources only" scenario has you listening twice as much.
(And, broadening a little, the same goes for streamers and websites in general - no, don't turn off AdBlock to show your support. Throw the streamer or blogger or whoever $5, leave AdBlock on, you both come out on top, unless they're running pay-per-click ads and you feel like clicking fifty ads)
Doing things the "licensed" way just lines the pockets of all the rentseeking executives who don't do jack-shit to foster good music, and haven't for over a decade. Thirty years ago, sure, things were different, but in 2021 the only thing major label A&R's good for is helping bands who are filling top-tier concert halls and stadiums handle logistics. If you really need boy bands, shitty glitz-hop, and creaky boomer band reunion gigs, then yeah, the major label ecosystem is still vital to your enjoyment as an audience member, but otherwise... if the band is small enough to still reply to their own emails, then they're gaining basically fuckall from the majors.
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Download it? Then I have to store it somewhere and curate playlists myself. Seems like too much work
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You joke, but there's already a program which analyzes and organizes sample collections [sononym.net] - and does a reasonably good job of it from what I've heard.
Just a few small steps from there to a program which takes your \mp3z\ folder, runs overnight (or overweek for some of us), and eventually spits out curated playlists and a cloud diagram of your music sorted by similarity.
I'm sure there's already stuff like this behind the scenes at Spotify and Amazon Music and whatnot (though I'd wager those are more trained on
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So I have to download all the music in existence and keep downloading it so I can run this program for a week?
I think I'll just keep streaming
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Now I can't tell if you were actually kidding. If you were and are, forgive me for not laughing along. If you're not, and you really think downloading the music you like and saving playlists is "too much work", then holy shit someone get this man on a methamphetamine and steroid drip, stat!
No streaming service has anything remotely close to "all the music in existence", or even "complete enough to meet a reasonable-human-being definition thereof". If you really think your streaming service of choice has any
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I guess it just doesn't fit my model of listening to music. I usually listen to electronic music while coding, and a mix working out so it's easiest just to start some music service and let it pick songs. Often there will be something new in there too. I have something like 100GB of music files from back in the day, but I haven't touched that in a while.
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Look into mp3tag, I used it to add consistency to a music library thousands of titles strong and to fix a slew of corrupt metadata. It also lets you export to a WMP playlist.
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Artists don't sell CDs anymore, except as merch. Selling an album is now like selling a licensed t-shirt.
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Some artists have said that the best thing for them is to pirate all the music and then buy merchandise or come to their shows. Being able to discover all their music through piracy is a good thing for them if it leads to t-shirt sales.
The Recording Industry Business Model is Obsolete (Score:1)
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The recording industry, including the artists, flourished when music was distributed by a physical medium. Now that technology has made the physical medium obsolete a new business model is needed.
How ironic that vinyl sales haven't been this strong in decades, as you ramble about the demise of physical medium (oddly enough, I feel that most people buying albums these days, don't even own a record player.)
At this rate, the cassette will make a fashion comeback by Christmas, sold with pencils so kids can use them as some kind of boomer fidget spinner.
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"vinyl sales haven't been this strong in decades"
But what percentage of listened to music on vinyl? Maybe 1% ?
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How ironic that vinyl sales haven't been this strong in decades
I assume you're basing this statement after the next story posted on /.,
"Vinyl Album Sales Jump 108% In First 6 Months of 2021".
From Statista [statista.com]:
In 2020, 27.5 million LPs were sold in the United States
For comparison, the Eagles' "Hotel California" sold 31.5 million copies, and that's not even their highest-selling album.
So while "Entire Vinyl Industry on Pace to Moderately Outsell the Eagles' Second-Most-Popular Album in 2021" is a very, very impressive headline, I'm not exactly sure if it can be whipped out as proof that physical medium is on its way back.
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How ironic that vinyl sales haven't been this strong in decades
I assume you're basing this statement after the next story posted on /.,
"Vinyl Album Sales Jump 108% In First 6 Months of 2021".
From Statista [statista.com]:
In 2020, 27.5 million LPs were sold in the United States
For comparison, the Eagles' "Hotel California" sold 31.5 million copies, and that's not even their highest-selling album.
For comparison? You're attempting to compare decades worth of album sales for a particular album, to one year of sales of a specific physical medium. That's not really a comparison. At all.
So while "Entire Vinyl Industry on Pace to Moderately Outsell the Eagles' Second-Most-Popular Album in 2021" is a very, very impressive headline, I'm not exactly sure if it can be whipped out as proof that physical medium is on its way back.
Sales of millions of anything that was deemed dead long ago by damn near everyone (including those making players), can be considered a comeback. And I stand corrected with regards to 2020 sales. This is a fairly new phenomenon over the last few years. Sales were basically dead 10 years prior to that.
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For comparison? You're attempting to compare decades worth of album sales for a particular album, to one year of sales of a specific physical medium. That's not really a comparison. At all.
For high-selling albums, a sales curve is virtually never a linear line (I think the only 20+ platinum albums which are even ambiguous in this regard are Thriller, Dark Side of the Moon, and possibly Elvis's Christmas album - aside from those, it's exponential decay all the way, with the occasional re-release blip here and there).
Hotel California sold 7 million copies in the US alone in its first year. By 2001, it had increased to 16 million, taking an additional 20ish years to roughly double. In 2013, 12 y
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What people do when they hear a song, is go find it for free. Want to talk about things for sale that have nothing to do with the music or the artist? Targeted ad revenue and telemetry sniffing via the app enabling free streaming services, are exactly that.
Those paying almost $40 for a album (yes, the prices are that stupid, don't ask me) regardless if they actually own a player or not, are in fact often doing so to "support a band", especially when they buy it directly from them. Like charging $50 for
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EXACTLY
Albums are merch now. Many artists in the mainstream don't even cut albums anymore, cuz they don't need to. They pop out singles and put them on streaming services, and then book shows at huge venues (Covid notwithstanding) and cash in that way. They might arrange collections as albums but the way they release music is just not the same as it was 50-60 years ago. If you're selling CDs or vinyl, it's merch for the fans. You're either a smaller act/indie band or a legacy act that has an album cata
Re: The Recording Industry Business Model is Obsol (Score:2)
That particular album sold 6 million copies in just the US in its first week. So you're banking on 2021 being on pace to sell *6 TIMES* more vinyl than the Eagles sold in a week. That's not really an objection to the comparison. At all.
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Would a car analogy help clarify the irrelevance here?
Comparing the sales of one album to all the sales of albums in an entire year, is like comparing sales of a Toyota Camry, to all vehicles sold in the US. I don't even know why you're trying to compare the two. The main thing that is different today than in 1976 was an album was almost the only way you were going to actually be able to listen to the artists music. Although albums still offer that ability (as do CDs), they are obviously not the dominant
Think of the millionaires! (Score:2)
We should start a gofundme so Jay Z can buy his 3rd Lambo.
In all seriousness I usually have no problem with rich people, but greedy people tick me off.
Re: Think of the millionaires! (Score:2)
Only a tiny percentage of musicians are producing anything of value. Why aren't we complaining about all the underpaid amateur athletes? Most athletes don't get paid anything. But it's their dream to be a professional athlete. Why don't we force the NFL to pay these poor struggling ballers?
Was someone expecting anything different than (Score:2)
20 years ago or 50 years ago? https://www.gerryhemingway.com... [gerryhemingway.com]
Hobby rather than a profession? (Score:4, Interesting)
If " 82% of professional musicians made less than £200 from streaming, whilst only 7% made more than £1,000..." and "artists receive about 16%", then even if they got 50% share, 82% would still be making less than £625 and only 7% would make more than £3125. Streaming sounds like a hobby rather than a profession to me, since the vast majority could not live on such income even if the "complete reset" was to happen.
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Its a profession when a big studio records your work and moves copies of it globally, where you get a shit deal because they did all the important work.
Its also a profession when you record it all yourself in your bodged up home recording studio, where you get shit because only 200 people have donated money to you so far.
Lets be realistic here. Radio plays and streaming plays are a dime a dozen. We are talking about billions of plays, nearly all of which were of little actual value to
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Because it's taken over for album sales. Used to be if you had a fanbase and released an album, you could sell 12-18 songs for about $14 on a CD. Sometimes more if you were a big act or you included premiums with the CD. Or if you did a collection/rerelease.
That revenue stream has dried up for everyone. The studio, the artist, all the middlemen . . . it's just gone. Poof. One month of Spotify for $10 + a good Internet connection and you can leech thousands of albums. For just $10. Yeah there's the a
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Wait until you hear how the profits are actually distributed, such as with Tidal artificially inflating the stats of some artists so they make more money than they should (they are being prosecuted for fraud in Norway for this), or how Spotify will take your dollars and put it in a pie and then divide that pie by total listening volume meaning your dollars are directly going to (insert band you hate) despite you only ever streaming (insert band you like).
Re: Hobby rather than a profession? (Score:2)
So, don't release on Tidal or Spotify.
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They are what's known as "examples", and not an exclusive list of shit going on in the industry. The reality is:
a) it costs little to release to an additional service.
b) that is almost never up to the musician themselves (part of the reason the industry is a shitfest).
c) I never said the alternatives are any better.
d) Spotify has the largest user base. Tidal has the best pay. The rest of the services are split between good payouts without any users (Napster), and shithouse pay with variable user figures (pr
Youtube vs. Kim Dotcom ? (Score:1)
Kim Dotcom was raided, and had everything taken from him because he facilitated copyright violations.
So when do the google execs get treated similarly ?
Youtube is filed with unauthorized music, movies, TV shows, and the like. Why is that okay with the authorities?
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Google pays something like $4-5 billion per year to the recording industry to avoid lawsuits. They also issue takedowns relentlessly. They're doing exactly what the RIAA wants of them.
Why is anyone paying for 30 year old music (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly. People expect to write 1 popular song and then live millionaire life styles for the rest of their lives and set up their kids with a few dozen houses to live in. No. 200$ a month from 1 song is decent income in perpetuity. Write more songs, earn more. Supplement your income with concerts, live performances. Work for a living. As in 9-5. Earning a living takes effort, tough luck, it does for the rest of us too, so no sympathy there.
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If you think $200 dollars per month is reasonable for the artist, how do you motivate that the streaming service gets $375 and the label $625 per month from those same works of art?
Is is not that the artist should live their entire life off one song, it is how the revenue is distributed. And right now it is as it was in the old record pressing days, the artist is getting the smallest piece of the pie.
Re: Why is anyone paying for 30 year old music (Score:2)
If the artist can't get 200/month on their own, then the streamers and labels can take anything they want out of the excess. They're the ones who earned it through distribution and marketing and lawyers etc.
The amount the artist can make without hiring streamers and labels is their fair market value.
Can I get a fair share too? (Score:3)
Seems a bit random to pick a single industry to have government decide what a fair share is between contractual partners. I could use a raise by government holding a gun to my boss's head too, it would be only fair.
The solution is not this arbitrary micromanaging of revenue distribution for a single fucking industry ... the solution is to make contracts for near life for artists unconscionable. Let them leech off fresh acts for a couple years and then let them renegotiate, if they have the audience to gain bargaining power they'll get more, if not they can sign over their soul for a couple more years and let the studio try to push them.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, gov't should leave music alone, and abolish the copyright laws.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not an answerable question because there is no such thing as a fair share.
Copyright distortion (Score:2)
Re: Copyright distortion (Score:2)
Yeah, because no one's making music anymore. We're all just listening to the existing catalog from the 50s.
How much of the price of food goes to farmers? (Score:3)
These days are over (Score:2)
The days when you could live from album sales are over and the days of streaming as well.
If you want money, go on stage.
Going on stage during a pandemic (Score:2)
Between March 2020 and the present, governments have made a policy of imprisoning performers for going on stage on grounds of endangering public health during a respiratory pandemic. What substitute for going on stage should performers use between now and (guessing) December 2023? And wouldn't most of the money from ticket sales go to the hired dancers, stage crew, venue, etc., as opposed to the musician?
Re: Going on stage during a pandemic (Score:2)
The same substitute used by out-of-work travel agents.
Re: (Score:2)
Which would be?
From the beginning (Score:2)
When the internet first came to be i was with a friend , recording musician and composer, and we were talking about the royalties / contract clauses about who gets what and at the time " hey .. wouldn't it be just great to take the music we produce and have a server , the " client " swipes a credit card in a slot on his keyboard , downloads the album for a dollar .. " we would make far more selling the record for a dollar than what the company would pay " .. that's in 1996 .. Still today musicians get t
The 1% of performers (Score:2)
Sounds to me like the same broken record. 1% of the industry are successful and thus wealthy while the other 99% are mediocre at best and yet think they are God's gift.
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (Score:2)
Nothing new. Record labels have always ripped off their "artists."
They still get more than doctors as a percentage o (Score:1)
Why am I not surprised? (Score:2)
Until we either break up the media companies, and have enough forensic accountants to go through their books, they'll keep stealing from the musicians.
Their model has never changed, from Arlo Guthrie not seeing one penny of royalties for Alices Restaurant for 30 years, to Janis Ian in '11 ranting that the scumbag record company was charging *her* $11/CD, which she sold at concerts.
The media companies are all crooks.
What a shock! (Score:2)
Record companies are screwing artists. This is unprecedented!
(I hope your sarcasm detector is working.)
Re: (Score:2)
(Ignore the snobs and their vinyl-dubbed Monster-cabled tube amp hardware synth nonsense. They don't have a single clue, and proudly so.)
Says the guy that probably can't even tell the difference between a Peavey solid-state and an Ampeg SVT just by listening.