[NB: this post contains strong language quoted from a Thom Yorke interview]
IN BRIEF:There have been a spate of major names in the music biz recently speaking out about what they perceive as the inequities of the record industry, specifically the new streaming services (particularly Spotify), arguing that their revenue isn't reaching artists. Here's an excerpt from a lengthy diatribe/considered attack (which do you think?) from Talking Heads' David Byrne, an artist well known for experimenting with digital technologies:
A series of high profile artists have expressed strong views on the business model of streaming sites such as Spotify: some (Thom Yorke, David Byrne) argue its grossly unfair to artists, who receive very, very little even for huge international hits; others (Dave Stewart, Dave Allen) argue they offer promotion and that we should accept this is what the market and today's consumers, who prefer 'renting' to purchasing, want, and that the music business as it currently is is no more 'worthy' than others like the travel industry which have been 'disrupted' and transformed by new media.
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| Many article comments disagreed with Byrne |
The amounts these services pay per stream is miniscule – their idea being that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will pile up. Domination and ubiquity are therefore to be encouraged. We should readjust our values because in the web-based world we are told that monopoly is good for us. The major record labels usually siphon off most of this income, and then they dribble about 15-20% of what's left down to their artists. Indie labels are often a lot fairer – sometimes sharing the income 50/50. Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) has published abysmal data on payouts from Pandora and Spotify for his song "Tugboat" and Lowery even wrote a piece entitled "My Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make from a Single T-shirt Sale!" For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk's song of the summer, "Get Lucky", reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That won't pay their bills if it's their principal source of income. And what happens to the bands who don't have massive international summer hits?
