The UN Report on Streaming....(not so good if you are a musician)

[firedog]

https://www.unionofmusicians.org/un-report

 

https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_41/sccr_41_3.pdf

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Bevok said:

Most streaming services pay between 50 - 70% of gross revenue to rights holders and make a loss,

"rights holders" is mostly not the musicians and songwriters. It's the record labels, etc. It's not about squeezing more from the streaming services, it's about the actual creative artists getting a fair share - a living wage.

 

Most of the steaming services are largely owned by the record labels and other large corporations. Their "losses" aren't real - they are just playing with the books and juggling income to show losses and profits where it's deemed beneficial. If Sony owns a large part of a streaming company and extracts payments as a "rights holder", then Sony is just deciding to show it's in house music business as profitable, and the outside company as a money loser. The shareholders are making money even though the "streaming service" isn't. So is the management of the streaming company.

 

In addition, the value to to companies like Amazon and Google is also user info and keeping the user inside the ecosystem, not necessarily the "profit" of the stream itself.

[firedog]

On 9/18/2021 at 2:48 PM, Bevok said:

and I don't think streaming changed things much from before.

And you are wrong. 

In the days of physical media, songwriters were paid enough that a hit song gave them a significant income. A million sales of a song meant from $20000-$90000 (rising over time during the decades of the previous century).

Today a million streams gives them very little, about $1000. How many songs do you think have 90,000,000 streams, which would give that same $90000?

A CD sale paid the artist a dollar per CD. 

So even a hit single paid signicant money. Something like $100K for a million seller. 

 

The money these days is in performance and merchandise sales, not streaming and songwriting. Songwriters get close to zip from performance. 

 

A million streams results in a few thousand in royaties for the performing artist.  $100K means tens of millions of streams. Again, almost never happens. 

 

And yes, I realize most records/CD didn't sell a million. Doesn't matter. It gives you an idea of the different royalty rates.

 

And sure, back in the old days the record companies took a big share. But the advent of non phsical media enabled them to cut the share going to the artists. It's really not complicated. They used the change to enhance their position in terms of royalty payouts. And that's without taking into account that they also own a good portion of the steaming companies themselves.