David Byrne , well - known recording creative person and performing artist , haswritten a bring up op - edabout cyclosis medicine and the plight of musician in today ’s recording industriousness . He ’s right about the problems , but his root seems a little … far - fetched .
batch of masses like to blame Spotify , Apple Music and the like for this problem , but as Mr. Byrne points out , they ’re at least partially powerless to do anything about it . These services bear a Brobdingnagian amount of their revenue to record labels , which in turn pocket most of the revenue . Artists , especially those affiliate with the big three major labels , take home a very small-scale part of the streaming wampum . We went through this last yearwhen Taylor Swift launched her assault on Spotify . The label are screwing artists over as they have for time immemorial .
Part of the problem , according to Byrne , is that labels are maddeningly opaque about how much they pay artists and who they pay what and why . He notice :
One diligence informant told me that the major labels ascribe the income they generate from streaming services on a seemingly arbitrary basis to the artists in their catalog . Here ’s a divinatory example : Let ’s say in January Sam Smith ’s “ Stay With Me ” accounted for 5 pct of the total taxation that Spotify pay off to Universal Music for its catalogue . Universal is not obligated to take the staring receipts it receive and assign that same 5 percent to Sam Smith ’s account . They might give him 3 percent — or 10 percent . What ’s to arrest them ?
The recording label also get money from three other reservoir , all of which are hidden from artists : They get advances from the pour religious service , catalog service payments for old songs and equity in the streaming services themselves .
Byrne ’s solution to the whole problem is transparence . If the label opened their “ black boxes ” and revealed the details of their financial exploitation of musicians , the entire music industry would thrive . ( Byrne actually uses the word flourish . ) He ’s not unmortgaged on how transparency would needfully profit artist who wo n’t make much on the micropayment economy of streaming one way or another .
I ’m willing to put in that David Byrne ( I LOVE U ! ) is ripe in his analysis , and his reporting only makes the bigwig in the recording industry bet like bigger assholes than they ever have before . I ’m just curious why he guess that now , after decades and decades of being terrible , the heavy labels would stop treating musicians like drivel .
Photo by Alterna2.com
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