#TheWeeklyRoundUp - 26.02.21

Spotify, Apple and Amazon face MPs in Parliament’s ongoing inquiry into streaming (CMU)

Given much of Parliament’s inquiry into the economics of streaming has focused on the Spotify-style business model, it was good that the recent oral hearing finally put in front of MPs three companies whose streaming operations are centred on that model, not least Spotify itself. However, in the end, there were few new revelations during the session, although it did result in Spotify and its rivals putting certain policy positions on the record.

When the music community debates the streaming business model, the conversation nearly always begins with plenty of Spotify dissing. But then the focus almost entirely shifts onto how the 70% of Spotify revenues handed over to the music industry is shared out. Spotify can then hide behind all the bickering between the different factions of the music industry, no longer the target of the disses.

That’s pretty much what’s happened with Parliament’s big old streaming inquiry. By the time the oral hearings began, the Spotify dissing had subsided, and much more attention had fallen on to how the so called digital pie is sliced between artists, songwriters, labels and publishers.

On Tuesday, that particular digital pie discussion continued, even once the streaming services were in the virtual room, albeit disguised as the increasingly tedious “how do we define a stream?” debate. When music is streamed, is it a sale, is it a licence, is it a rental, is it a reproduction, is it a communication, is it a making available, is it more like retail or more like radio?

From a music industry perspective, these questions are potentially important. The music industry has traditionally split up the different elements of the copyright – the distinct controls – and managed and licensed them differently. The way the money gets shared out – and the royalty rates that are paid to artists – also often vary according to what control is exploited, or what particular product or deal generated the cash.

How we define a stream, therefore, has the potential to change the way the digital pie is sliced between artists, songwriters, labels and publishers. Or, at the very least, empower the various arguments for why and how the pie should and might be sliced up differently.

However, from a streaming service perspective, these questions are pretty much irrelevant. A stream is a stream. Everything else – is it a sale, a license, a rental, a reproduction, a communication, a making available, retail or radio? – is just more music industry nonsense. And while streaming services have to navigate music industry bull, they don’t really have any interest in participating in it.

All a streaming service needs is a solid license that gives it access to music, covers its back, ensures it will never be held liable for copyright infringement, and preferably guarantees there’ll never be a knock at the door from someone citing some long forgotten right or contract and demanding payment. What the services definitely don’t care about is how the music industry chooses to define a stream and slice up its pie.

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I love streaming, I just hate the remuneration system sitting inside it. (MBW)

The following MBW op/ed comes from Tom Gray, a UK-based professional musician and the founder of #BrokenRecord. A social media-driven campaign, #BrokenRecord calls for more of the streaming revenue ‘pie’ to make its way to artists and songwriters – whether that revenue comes from services like Spotify themselves, or from record labels. #BrokenRecord has been a key agitator in the launch of an ongoing UK Parliamentary inquiry into streaming economics.

I hope you’re aware of the #BrokenRecord Campaign. It was instrumental in gaining a UK Parliamentary inquiry into the economics of streaming.

If #BrokenRecord has crossed your path, you’re likely to know we want to reform the music streaming market, but you’re also likely to have heard or read some misrepresentation along the way.

The #BrokenRecord hashtag seeks to be a rallying call for anyone who wants change for artists, performers and songwriters. I cannot hope to speak for everyone – nor would I dare. But, if I may, I’d like to at least clarify my position as the campaign’s founder and, for want of a better term, spokesperson.

Let me pragmatically set out what I think might be achievable and practical through compromise, but also place our industry on more sustainable and ethical ground.

I love streaming, I just hate the remuneration system sitting inside it. It’s a gorgeous house with lovely furniture, but with dangerously bad wiring and the estate agent seems to have set the price a bit low in search of a quick sale.

My campaigning position is not solely about what is fair, although I can’t deny a sense of injustice drives me. It’s about solving a basically un-useful system. It’s about what we want music and the recorded music industry to be.

“STREAMING IS A GORGEOUS HOUSE WITH LOVELY FURNITURE, BUT WITH DANGEROUSLY BAD WIRING.”

It’s about reconnecting artists with the audiences they build and, in turn, rebuilding an industry as interested in artist development as market-share.

It’s about having a model that doesn’t require the discrete touring business to underwrite it.

The pandemic music industry: a bar owner knows he can poorly pay his bartender because she also holds down a job as a barista. Then, suddenly, the coffee shop closes. The bar owner is like, “Hey bartender, you’re only angry ‘cos the coffee shop is closed!” The unemployed barista looks at all the beers she must serve and howls.

The existing system financially disincentivises a broader scope of music and music taste. It is leading us towards a cultural vanishing point and, for individual artists faced with the haywire economics of a revenue pool divided by total streams, towards a financial vanishing point too.

According to The Trichordist, the calculable average per-stream rate paid by Spotify has more or less halved in a decade before inflation (although Spotify is an extreme case because of their free offering). The descent of the global Average Rate Per User (ARPU) has accelerated this effect.

Each new user ought to add real value to the artists they listen to instead of playing a significant part in the dilution of all revenue.

Too often I’ve seen the argument that the problem is ‘we simply have too many artists now’. However, even though listeners might be listening to a wider range of artists, the number of artists each user can listen to will ultimately always be limited by the time they have.

The blame for descending payments cannot singularly lie in the growth in the number of artists out there, but in a revenue pool that isn’t growing at the same rate as the number of users.