You have an amazing thing – it just needs to be fairer #TimsTwitterListeningParty I really think we should look at how much you give to artists. Hey I feel like I’m working for you here. This week, musician Tim Burgess (of the Charlatans, who’s also behind the excellent #TimsTwitterListeningParty co-listening movement) addressed Spotify directly on Twitter, suggesting that “we should look at how much you give to artists… It’s just not fair at the moment”. This is why the debate about streaming royalties often gets boiled down to ‘Spotify should pay artists more’ – from petitions calling for the company to triple its payouts “immediately” to articles suggesting that ‘ Spotify’s ‘tip jar’ is a slap in the face for musicians. Spotify is the lightning rod for this unrest, partly because it’s the biggest subscription service and the one most closely identified with the emergence of the music-streaming model partly because memories are still fresh of it going public (current market cap: $27bn) and partly because its numbers (users, revenues, losses etc) are published every quarter. The contrast between these fears and the rosy industry figures is sharpened now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the live music industry having shut down entirely in many countries, with an anticipated hit to public performance royalties to come. Many are worried that streaming royalties aren’t providing a sustainable income. Meanwhile, outside the recorded sector, publishers are also seeing their revenues grow, while collecting societies are regularly breaking their records for payouts.Īll of this is being driven by streaming (and particularly by paid streaming subscriptions), yet this growth is accompanied by a resurgence in unrest from the musicians whose work has made that growth possible. In 2019 the recorded music industry enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of growth, taking it nearly back to its 2004 level. So while revenue is an important metric, it’s not a proxy for the health of the industry. Remember, changes in gross revenues for any one income stream doesn’t tell you anything about distribution or about how individual workers (like musicians or songwriters) are faring. Artist rights group the Future of Music Coalition made an important point when it shared our story on Twitter: Tags: broken record digital royalties Spotify user-centricĮarlier this week, we covered the IFPI’s latest figures for global recorded music revenues, which grew by 8.2% in 2019.
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