Music Streaming Platforms Must Pay Artists More, Says EU (theverge.com) 58
The EU has proposed sweeping changes within the music streaming industry to promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated. From a report: A resolution to address concerns regarding inadequate streaming royalties for artists and biased recommendation algorithms was adopted by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday, highlighting that no existing EU rules currently apply to music streaming services, despite being the most popular way to consume audio.
The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the "overwhelming amount" of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated "pre-digital" royalty rates to be revised, noting that some schemes force performers to accept little to no revenue in exchange for greater exposure. Imposing quotas for European musical works is being considered to help promote artists in the EU.
The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the "overwhelming amount" of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated "pre-digital" royalty rates to be revised, noting that some schemes force performers to accept little to no revenue in exchange for greater exposure. Imposing quotas for European musical works is being considered to help promote artists in the EU.
underpaid performers are being fairly compensated (Score:4, Interesting)
> promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated
Easy. Starting from today, we only accept artists that have big audience.
It is simply impossible to promote everyone and to pay fairly everyone when there is too much competition.
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Because not all artists are worth the same.
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Who decides the worth? Seems like the number of streams would reflect that.
With 100% confidence I can say not EU regulators.
There are a zillion factors which go into the price of a stream. Artist popularity, length of song, marketing tie-ins, artist's desire for exposure versus cash, and so forth. I doubt either of us understand how that decision gets made.
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Which would reflect in the number of times streamed. Taylor Swift would still make more than me, even if we were getting, say, 1 Euro a stream, because I'd be lucky to get one person to listen to me.
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Because not all artists are worth the same.
Except they are on a per stream basis. The relative difference in value of an artist overall is based on their popularity, i.e. number of streams, there's no reason not to price all streams equally.
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Burn the whole system down. The gatekeepers add insufficient value compared to the harm they do.
I like the standard $/play royalty option... But you will still need a system for collection and distribution, as well as something to handle classification, ratings, and rankings (which will need some kind of artist discovery system to feed).
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Why not pay everyone on the planet the same, regardless of their importance or contribution to society?
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Nice strawman! "same per stream" != "same per person", so the suggestion you're mocking is not the one you're responding to.
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Same per stream isn't any different from what I said.
No mean, why not charge the same per pound for prime beef as you do for choice beef? SAME PER POUND.
The reason that doesn't happen is because then prime beef is better.
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Oh, so "pay everyone the same" should have had "per stream", and you're commenting on the difference between, e.g. a six year old on a recorder and Beyonce? In that case, Beyonce is going to get streamed more, which means she gets more compensation, as one would expect.
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Sure. Buy why should the 6 year old get the same per stream as Beyonce? What possible sense does that make?
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why not? Is there any real chance of the kid getting enough streams for a price difference to matter? If they do, do they really deserve to be dinged?
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Same reason why hot girls charge more for their pussy than ugly girls.
Sure, either way you get fucked. Some fucks are worth more than others. It's the same way with music. I don't understand how this is not completely obvious.
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All wine in Europe should also be priced the same. French wine, Italian wine, Spanish wine, German wine, and Scottish wine. All should be the same price per bottle. If music streaming is (wrongly) considered a commodity, then anything and everything can be a commodity.
That said, do I think the music industry would be better off if there was some tarring and feathering of most recording executives? Of course. There are two types of people in most industries, including music: 1. Those who make things; 2. Thos
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Big differences are 1) Cultural goods are not treated the same way as other goods. Its called the "Cultural exception" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ; songs get more protections than e.g. wine. 2) Music artists earn pennies, while wine producers (not even the good ones) earn a good living when the weather was good; so minimum price regulation might be needed for music, but not to protect wine producers (for now).
Your argument works for Milk not wine. Milk production pays negative pennies (market price i
Re: underpaid performers are being fairly compensa (Score:2)
Yes, but the cows make pennies or nothing at all.
Taking the wrong page from Canada (Score:3)
So imagine a situation where Youtube, Spotify and other services like Netflix and Disney+ are now required to only promote content from the country the customer is in.
Now people will complain that they can't find anything. Which is a situation we currently see on Twitter and Twitch. Discovery is absolutely a butt-hole to go down. You have to rely on friends and friends-of-friends to find content that is actually good. The algorithm is only ever going to push content that doesn't need that extra promotion.
Do
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Just pay everyone the same price per stream ... oops?
Actually: pay them instead of doing bullshit like: you had less than 1000 streams last month: no pay out.
Or other bullshit: hey, we paid for your 1 million streams already 10k dollars to your label! Suck it and ask them how much they pay you!
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"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder. There's no objective standard for what a fair price per stream is. I don't know it, you don't, and certainly the EU Parliament doesn't.
That said, the best estimate we have is a market price. At least that's something the two parties with the most direct knowledge agreed to and you wouldn't expect them to agree to an unfair price.
The most important part (Score:3)
While MEPs have overwhelmingly accepted that these issues need to be addressed, the resolution itself is nonlegislative. Instead, this is a plea for the European Commission to acknowledge the concerns and initiate legislation to improve things — which could take several years to take effect, even if the appeal is successful.
If you think climate change conferences are meaningless, then this is next level. No actions, no set goals, and of course, nothing binding.
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If you think climate change conferences are meaningless, then this is next level. No actions, no set goals, and of course, nothing binding.
Not really, this is the standard functioning of government. This is no different than complaining that the senate isn't writing a law and not forcing the house to write one. It's not their job to do so, and they don't have that legal capability. Just like how in the USA laws get written by the house, in the EU they get proposed by the EC. Governments around the world have countless mechanisms to pass advisory information on, and that is a necessary function.
But you used the word "conferences"... are you und
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If you think climate change conferences are meaningless, then this is next level. No actions, no set goals, and of course, nothing binding.
Not really, this is the standard functioning of government. This is no different than complaining that the senate isn't writing a law and not forcing the house to write one. It's not their job to do so, and they don't have that legal capability. Just like how in the USA laws get written by the house, in the EU they get proposed by the EC. Governments around the world have countless mechanisms to pass advisory information on, and that is a necessary function.
But you used the word "conferences"... are you under the belief that all the people gathered there that day just to talk about how much Spotify pays an artist? You know they talk about more than one thing in a sitting of ... well every government on the planet right?
I'm largely a supporter of the EU, Breturn is only a matter of time and I hope our friends in Europe will welcome us (and we don't do too much damage to ourselves in the mean time). however the GP is quite right. This is non-legislative, which means it has no real teeth. The EU is pretty good at picking its battles, focusing on the things that the EU stands for (human rights, freedom of trade and movement, democracy and liberty, amongst others) and pretty much allowing member nations to who ignore lesser la
Separate Issues (Score:2)
The issue of domestic content is quite different from the issue of artist royalties. I'm guessing the real issue they're concerned about is only domestic content. They want the algorithms to give a boost to content from within their borders (i.e., from within the EU). The same issues would arise in other places with similar domestic content rules, like Canada.
For streamers, this means having their content database include information about where the track qualifies as domestic. Some content may qualify
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The question is what percentage of domestic content can they require before it becomes annoying for consumers.
I don't know if or when it gets annoying, but I can give raw numbers of the regulated local contents for France, since laws from 1986:
* 40% in general for private-owned radios
* 35%+25% local content + "new talent" for music radios who declared specializing in young creators
* 50% for the public-funded radio network
* 60% for music radios who declared specializing in "legacy" contents (older music titles)
Definitions:
* local contents = song where at leats the spoken duration is in the French language or any of
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edit: "song where at least HALF the spoken duration is ..."
SysAdmins (Score:2)
Do SysAdmins next.
YES! (Score:2)
Pay the musicians and stiff the labels. Labels are dinosaurs that deserve to die
Streaming is good for artists (Score:2)
Streaming is a good thing for artists. Artists, overall, never made more money than today.
Now, some artists may be winners and others losers in this new system compared to boxed CD sales. But overall they win. People spend more on streaming services than they were paying for CDs, and a larger share of the money spent ends up in music IP rights owners.
The main problem for musicians is that making music is cheap, and a lot of people like doing it, even for free. Even recording music and getting it to streamin
Good! Streaming services are pirates (Score:2, Interesting)
I an essentially unknown standup comic and I have a handful of comedy tracks. Here are my royalties:
Streaming services: 143 plays that earned me $0.48.
SiriusXM: I don't know how many plays (but I bet not much more than 143) that earned me over $270.00, and that's after the record label took its share.
So yeah. Streaming services rip artists off.
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That's not a fair comparison because the SiriusXM content was broadcast to many thousands of listeners each of the 143 times, whereas teh Spotify streams are to a single listener each time. SO BOTH of them might be paying you the same rate: roughly 1/3 cent per listener.
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So, if it's the case, he got much more listeners on SiriusXM.
And if they all pay 1/3 cent per listener, why does he complains streaming services are ripping off artists such as him?
I get that he his not getting money from streaming services. But that's only because almost no one listen to his comedy show.
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Yes. I'm not claiming that the streaming rate paid by Spotify is "fair", nor that the broadcast fee paid by SiriusXM is "fair", and I am not actually even claiming they pay exactly the same per listener, but you can't compare them without accounting for the fact that SiriusXM is broadcasting to many people at once, whereas Spotify streams are to single users. I'd also be inclined to factor in some value for "we made people listen to it who didn;t ask for your song specifically" versus "they asked specifical
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Yes. I'm not claiming that the streaming rate paid by Spotify is "fair", nor that the broadcast fee paid by SiriusXM is "fair", and I am not actually even claiming they pay exactly the same per listener, but you can't compare them without accounting for the fact that SiriusXM is broadcasting to many people at once, whereas Spotify streams are to single users.
I first thought he meant that probably not much more than 143 persons listened to his tracks on Sirius. But it looks like he meant his tracks were aired 143 times on a SirusXM satellite radio channel. I agree it's different.
I'd also be inclined to factor in some value for "we made people listen to it who didn;t ask for your song specifically" versus "they asked specifically for your song", but how I'd value that would depend on if my songs needed the exposure. A SiriusXM deal is probably a lot more valuable to a new artist than an established artist, if you account for advertising/marketing, whereas I assume Spotify is cutting Taylor Swift a bigger cheque each quarter compared to SiriusXM.
Thousands of new artists are probably willing to give their content to SiriusXM for free or close to free just to get exposure. The problem is that most of this content sucks. SiriusXM has to find valuable content over the pile of shit. When they find something they consider valuable eno
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>You got your units wrong (an error of 100x). Spotify pay that amount in dollars, not cents. So 1/3 is within the range of what spotify pays.
Ah, cool. He's being treated "fairly" between the two services, although 1/3 cent per listen is still not a kingly sum.
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although 1/3 cent per listen is still not a kingly sum.
There are 43200 minutes in a 30 day month. Given an average of 3 minutes per track, that means one can listen up to 14400 tracks in a month. All that with a $11 or so per monthly subscription (less for couples/family/student plans). If everybody were to listen 24/7, that would mean a MAXIMUM of 0.076 per listen. And this is if the streaming service gives 100% back to artists. Fortunately, people have to sleep and the business model is not based on continuous listening.
$11 per month means $132 per year, whic
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If you estimate the number of people who listened to your track around ~270, that means around $1 per listening.
The cheapest Sirus XM plan including comedy is $19/month. That means during one month, Sirius XM can only pay 19 standup comics like yourself at that rate.
How long is your track? 10 minutes maybe? So that means the average user must not listen to more than 190 minutes of content per month for them to be able to pay you that rate. That's only 6 minutes per day. I thought those subscribing to satell
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As someone else noted, each time a track is played in SiriusXM, more than one person (maybe a LOT more than one person) listens to it, so it's not $1/listening per person.
I'm on the streaming services because the record producers put our album there. I've self-produced a second album (currently being edited / finalized) and I will not be putting that on streaming services. I'll pitch it to SiriusXM and also sell copies off my web site and at comedy shows. If I sell one EP for $5.00 at a comedy show, th
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As someone else noted, each time a track is played in SiriusXM, more than one person (maybe a LOT more than one person) listens to it, so it's not $1/listening per person.
It doesn't matter. You could say the same about internet streaming. What matters is that one ACCOUNT cost about $19/month. You can't expect artists to get more than $19/month per subscriber.
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So yeah. Streaming services rip artists off.
On the one hand yes, and on the other hand they seem to not make any money either. It's the cookie jar principle. If you wanted Spotify to pay you $270 for the 143 plays, then I suspect I'd be paying $1000 per month for the service. Except I won't be because that would be too expensive, and as a result you wouldn't get 143 plays.
Also if you think SiriusXM is paying you $2 per listen you're absolutely delusional.
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According to this web site [shinexmonitoring.com], for songs, SiriusXM pays between $47 and $49 per spin.
My comedy tracks are pretty short and so I suspect they pay less, and it gets split 50/50 with the label.
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According to this web site [shinexmonitoring.com], for songs, SiriusXM pays between $47 and $49 per spin.
My comedy tracks are pretty short and so I suspect they pay less, and it gets split 50/50 with the label.
This is different. They pay you that amount, because they consider it worthwhile enough to put it on air. And many people ends up listening to it because of that.
Despite the many channels they have, Sirius XM still has a limited amount of air time. They have to choose. Good for you, they chose you. But the millions of artists who weren't chosen got $0.
On streaming services, much more artists get a chance to earn money. But as a result, each artist gets much less on average. It doesn't mean they are ripping
DIvide the large pool into smaller pools (Score:5, Interesting)
Schizophrenic (Score:3)
EU: You need to recommend our niche performers more often!
Also EU: You need to pay our niche performers more, giving you a good incentive to not recommend them!
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EU: You need to recommend our niche performers more often!
Also EU: You need to pay our niche performers more, giving you a good incentive to not recommend them!
Also, also the EU: We're not going to put any of that into law so pretty, pretty please.
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That's not true. My comedy album label does not take much of the streaming revenues. (They take 50% of SiriusXM revenues and 10% of streaming revenues because I guess they know streaming revenues are tiny.)
Non-binding resolution (Score:2)
protectionism of course (Score:2)
EU regulators not engage in protectionism challenge, difficulty:Impossible