Tim Burgess has become the latest high-profile musician to call for reforms in the current model of royalty payments by streaming services, following a parliamentary inquiry into the economics of streaming and alleged injustice of streaming services. The solo artist and Charlatans frontman penned an opinion piece for The Guardian in which he expressed both his frustration and lamentation for the current paradigm of payment distribution within the music industry.
“The basic point is that the UK music industry contributed an estimated £5.8billion to the economy in 2019, but artists are maybe not seeing as much of that as they should. Almost 5m vinyl albums were sold in 2020, the most since way back when we released our debut LP in the early 90s. There’s hope and excitement in the gloom, but there’s also an elephant in the gloom. That elephant’s name is streaming.
I wrote a thing for The @guardian https://t.co/ntI5eBrfDD
— Tim Burgess (@Tim_Burgess) February 1, 2021
“There is much made of the sums paid to artists as a result of all this – yes, they get a cut, and millions of people stream every day, right? – right, but these sums usually go to 26 decimal places, and the first four digits are often 0.000.”
As it currently stands, Spotify is purported to pay between £0.002 and £0.0038 per stream, while Apple Music pays about £0.0059. YouTube pays the least – about £0.00052 per stream.
“The thing is, streaming has taught us that people are willing to pay for music. Spotify had total revenues of $7.4bn in 2019. A lot of that money goes to major labels rather than directly to artists, so they’re part of the equation too,” Burgess added.
Last October, MPs of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee launched the inquiry, with Julian Knight MP chairing the investigation; the growth of the streaming market “cannot come at the expense of talented and lesser-known artists”, Knight said. Since the inquiry opened, numerous high-profile musicians and industry professionals have provided evidence before the committee, including Nile Rodgers and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien – the latter warning MPs that streaming payments are “threatening the future of music” at the first hearing in November. Fiona Bevan, who has written songs for One Direction, Steps and Lewis Capaldi, corroborated accusations of injustice by streaming services.
Bevan told MPS that she had earned just £100 for co-writing a track on Kylie Minogue’s number one album, ‘Disco’. “The most successful songwriters in the world can’t pay their rent,” Bevan said. “Right now, hit songwriters are driving Ubers. It’s quite shameful.”
The next evidence session for the inquiry is schedule for February 4th at 2.30pm.
