Tom Gray has believed for a long time that the music industry is broken.
But when the pandemic hit, halting live music, Gray, a member of the British band Gomez, saw the time was right to start doing something to fix it.
"I just went to Twitter and ranted for about 10 or 12 tweets about the music industry and about how, ultimately, without live music, the problem at the centre of recorded music is going to be laid bare," he told Double J.
LoadingThat tweetstorm took off.
Gray called his campaign Broken Record and began hounding politicians, who ultimately formed a parliamentary inquiry into the music streaming economy.
The hearings over the past few months have painted a dire portrait of the music business, where value of recorded music has plummeted, and some well-known musicians are struggling to pay their rent.
How the costs get broken down
Streaming services have helped prop up the music business.
Before they came along, the industry had been decimated by piracy. Streaming returned some value to recorded music, which many fans had been downloading for free. Spotify alone said in 2019 it had made more than 10 billion euros in royalty payments since launching in 2008.
But streaming services, of which Spotify is the largest in Australia, have routinely been criticised for the fractions of a dollar they pay per stream.
Widely quoted estimates put the range, depending on the service, at between $US0.00069 and $US0.019.
At the higher end, you'd need about 120,000 streams a month to make minimum wage in Australia, and that's not including cuts to labels or distributors.
Spotify doesn't disclose how much it pays, and it varies depending on a range of metrics, including user location and what portion of plays are from subscribers. It declined to comment for this article.
Estimates from music publications Digital Music News and The Trichordist show a range of about $US0.003 and $US0.005 per stream — a third to a half of a cent.
For Apple Music, another major platform, the estimate is between $US0.007 and $US0.008. Apple Music did not respond to a request for comment.
At the inquiry, the heads of the three major labels in the UK separately estimated a per-stream rate of 0.005 pounds, or about $AUD0.0089. But again, only a portion of that goes to the artist, depending on their record deal.
What's more, Gray added:
Spotify notes that it does not pay artists directly but instead pays rights holders — labels and publishers — and, as it told Australian MPs in 2019, is "not privy to the details of the agreements between those parties".
For Tom Gray, those agreements are another part of what's broken in the music industry.
Micropayments are tiny and getting smaller, says Gray
In many major label deals, Gray said, artists would be advanced money to pay for the recording, the marketing, and maybe even the artist's living expenses.
"And then you pay them back from your small, small percentage," Gray said — commonly about 20 per cent of the royalties from streaming.
"Every time they do a new campaign, they put more money against you. Every time they make a video, they've got 50 per cent of that against you. Every time they literally drive a car with you in it, or somebody else in it that's related to you, that money goes on your ledger.
"Most bands never recoup. There [are] bands with millions and millions of sales who've never earned the money penny on the back end from their music. It's very, very common."
This reality was made clear last year when Daouda Leonard, who manages Grimes, created an online calculator that let unsigned artists do the math.
LoadingAt the inquiry, the UK heads of major labels Sony, Universal and Warner pushed back on the idea of there being one kind of deal.
"One artist might want a huge advance and be prepared to do life-of-copyright; another one will choose to take more royalties and would prefer to do a licence," Sony Music UK chief executive Jason Iley told MPs.
"The idea that it's literally, 'sign here, take it or leave it' simply isn't the case."
But Universal Music UK chief executive David Joseph said. "an average advance deal, which is 90 per cent of deals … average between 20 per cent and 25 per cent artist royalty".
It's not clear how widespread these deals are in Australia.
Representatives for Universal in Australia declined to comment, while Sony Music and Warner did not respond to inquiries.
A boost for some, 'tragically flawed' for others
Many artists, particularly in Australia, are not signed to major labels. The independent sector is about 30 per cent of recorded music, though what counts as independent can be disputed.
Larger independent acts might use distributors instead of labels, choosing to front their own recording and promotion costs in order to score a larger share of the streaming royalties as a result.
That can work well for some.
The Australian artist KLP, who releases her own work but also writes for other artists, described an 80-20 split record deal she had early in her career as "like the worst bank loan ever".
"Whereas now, as an independent artist, it's flipped. I can use a digital platform for streaming, and they take 20 per cent," she told a similar inquiry in Australia in 2019.
"My partner and I are both musicians. We're fully independent. We have also both been signed to labels before.
There has long been debate about the way artists' royalties are distributed.
Services operate on a pool model — all the money from all subscribers goes into a big bucket and is then carved up according to streaming rates.
Gray said that creates next to no value for all but the biggest artists in the world.
"If you're an artist, and you have an audience of a couple of hundred thousand people — which would take an awful lot of time and some real effort in your life to get that audience together — that at the moment won't produce any income for you because that all of those people would have to listen like 30 times a week or something crazy to make you any money."
The Mercury Prize-nominated singer Nadine Shah told UK MPs: "As an artist with a substantial profile, a substantial fan base, critically acclaimed, I don't make enough money from streaming.
Gray and others advocate a user-centric model, where the money from your subscription goes to the artists you listen to. Both Deezer and Soundcloud appear supportive of that model.
Melbourne Americana songwriter Kimberley Wheeler said she was considering taking her music off streaming services on principle, calling the system "tragically flawed".
"We need to rethink the relationship between our copyright and allowing people to access it," she told the ABC.
Radiohead guitarist says system must be fairer
Tom Gray hopes the inquiry in the UK will make people do just that.
He also wants changes to UK copyright law that would share royalties more evenly, similar to the way broadcasters do.
In Australia, a parliamentary committee report published in March 2019 said that while streaming services had revived the industry, it was concerned that so few artists seemed to understand how the system worked.
It called on streaming services to publish "clear, consistent, and transparent" information on how pay rates are calculated.
"At the end of the noughties and the beginning of this decade it was down in the doldrums," Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, appearing at the UK inquiry, said of the music business.
"There is definitely more money coming into it [now], greater budgets to do greater creative endeavours.
"It just needs some parity and fairness in the system and many artists, as you are gathering, are not really profiting from the spoils of this."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMib2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTAyLTEyL3VrLXN0cmVhbWluZy1pbnF1aXJ5LXBlYWtzLXVuZGVyLXRoZS1ob29kLW9mLXRoZS1tdXNpYy1idXNpbmVzcy8xMzE0MzcxONIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMzE0MzcxOA?oc=5
2021-02-11 18:36:00Z
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