The DCMS’s inquiry into the impact of streaming on the music economy is out
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the UK has released findings from its months-long inquiry into the impact that streaming has had on musicians, and it is scathing. It agrees with most of the points that artists have been raising (particularly in the last year or so). Here is a short recap of it by the BBC,
Labour MP Kevin Brennan also posted his recap of the report on his Twitter. He has been pushing a private member’s bill to amend the UK digital copyright laws to treat streams the same way music used in TV and radio is, where the royalties are split 50-50 with labels and artists (equitable remuneration), and also was involved with the committee that heard evidence from musicians earlier and that cross-examined streaming and record label UK bosses, in the lead up to this conclusion.
Some of the committee’s other recommendations were:
- Musicians and songwriters should be allowed to reclaim the rights to their work from labels after a set period of time.
- Artists should be given the right to adjust their contract if their work is successful beyond the remuneration they received.
- The government should explore ways to ensure songwriters, who receive minimal streaming royalties, can have sustainable careers.
- Curators who make playlists on services like Spotify and Apple Music should adhere to a “code of conduct” to avoid bribes and favouritism.
- The government should require publishers and royalty societies to inform artists about how much money is flowing through the system.
- Warner and Universal Music should follow Sony’s example, and cancel their artists’ historical debts
(Sony recently announced it was dropping unrecouped remuneration from its legacy artists. It kind of goes without saying, but it just goes to show again that the record labels really… don’t need 70 years worth of 80% of your income. They don’t. It’s not a “risky investment into undecided talent”, it’s exploitation. Don’t listen to the BPI, they’re talking through their arses (again). I bring up the BPI because the BBC have quoted their “cautious” response to the inquiry and they’re too polite to point out this isn’t the first time the BPI has spouted this clownery under the guise of defending “risky investment” into talent; you don’t say the same of traditional investments BPI, pipe down)
Some of the standout stats which were shocking to me were that:
- 80% of music consumption in the UK came from streaming. There is no alternative. For a streaming company to shirk responsibility and say people can just “opt out” is barefaced lies, and streaming is not a level playing field.
- I know YouTube pays out the lowest rates for music (less than 0.05p—not pounds, pence), but YouTube makes up 51% of music streaming, while it paid only 7% out to musicians.
MusicAlly, whose ill-fated interview with Spotify’s CEO last June also gave a lot of push to the strive for equitable remuneration, covered the inquiry as well.
Tom Gray, the musician behind the Broken Record campaign that played a big part in an investigation like this ever being conducted, also found that the inquiry confirmed what musicians had been saying all along about the paltry payouts from streaming.
In general, Tom Gray is someone you should follow if you want to keep up with the ongoing issue of fair payments and royalties in music, and his Broken Record campaign.
It remains to be seen what the larger impact of the committee’s recommendations will be, Spotify has always felt to me like a company enjoying the 7-day free-trial version of exploitation benefits. It’s well known to anyone familiar with the history of music technology, or even tech in general, that laws are always about 10 years behind existing technology. We saw this happen with sampling as well, for example, where record labels were suing left, right and centre but the courts didn’t have a unanimous definition for what legally constituted a sample.
Spotify always felt to me like a company whose 5-year plan was to make a profit off the fact that we don’t have a legal definition for a stream, and it’s starting to feel like the law is somewhat catching up. Of course, any changes will only be applied to payment in the UK, but such decisions are known to ripple around the world (see for example, Australia’s legal suits against Google and Facebook over payment of royalties to news publishers whose articles both companies used for little compensation as google news results and the facebook news feed, has been followed by the EU suing Google €500 billion for failing to negotiate a fair deal with news publishers there in the 2 months it was allotted)
If you’re interested, you really should read the entire report, which is available as a PDF on the parliament website here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/6739/documents/71977/default/
I’m hopeful about this!
MattWilliamsonLive 