It’s ranting Sunday again! “The music industry has devolved into a third world country, with a wide gulf between the rich and struggling/starving poor. And, those ambitious middle-class artists that try to make ends meet by spending 350 days on the road are probably not raising very good families” So its royalty payment time. Horary! And me?? Well Im just sitting here trawling through literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of my digital statement overwhelmed by 0:01p payments for Spotify plays. Once again I’m left staggered how my self-sustaining and respectable profession of musician / composer is now so devalued by legitimized digital pirates we are all effectively running an expensive hobby. For example: its really lovely and heart warming to find buried in my royalty statement well over 27000 hits for the Imagined Village’s Hard Times of England within the last 6 month (under the heading ‘TV’ which is guess is You Tube, but I need to check). Not bad for a track that came out over 7 Years ago. Trust me this is a really respectable figure. And for all those plays I get £225. Which works out as 0.0083p a play. The various bands Ive been involved in over the years have had well over 4 million You Tube hits. On the back of this You Tube will advertise product without my consent or payment. You Tube generates huge streams of advertising revenue from mine and other peoples music they use for free, no license is issued, no payment passes hands. Im still waiting for their spurious partnership programmed to kick in. Luckily I work for an ethical company that wants to pay a living wage to the musicians who make the music they use to help build their brand and sell their product. But hey believe it or not this used to be the standard industry practice in the pre digital 80s and 90s. Even with the crap rip off major label royalty rates of the 80’s and 90’s and the 20% management and agency commissions at least the structures were in place for people to pay for their music. This created the income streams for musicians to build their careers around. Im one of the lucky ones. I lived through those decades, built a career, raised a family, and brought a house. Apart from a brief and very lucrative spell in advertising I can honestly say Ive always played the music I believe in and love and never compromised my ethics or politics. I’ve have always been committed to developing the stuff that comes from the fringes, the back waters and the independent currents were all the challenging creativity flows before it’s inevitable drawn into the main stream. The music industry has traditionally relied on these alternative currents to stop creative stagnation. This is not radical economics, it’s the textbook model for creative, market based capitalisms. All these ‘alternative’ musical genres used to start in the long tail, on the fringes and then cross over, often becoming mega-selling genres bringing in millions of records sales that supported countless musicians and music industry people. To summarize my musical history so far: the indie punk movement (Scritti Politti), the early 80s soul and jazz club scene (Working Week, Sade, Everything But The Girl), the late 80’s acid jazz scene, ‘world music’ through the 90’s, the folk revival of the naughtiest. Would ANY of this happen today give the current state of the music industry? If you take away the financial basis for this innovative long tail you are left with the X Factor and a stagnant despondent music industry based around manufactured pop idols run by media moguls like Simon Cowell. Musicians committed to making radical new music today? Well I guess its an expensive hobby that your parents or partners pay for. Lucky for me I now have a boss who is motivated by supporting the arts, nature conservation, pioneering bird conservation (all the things I Love) and is NOT interested in using the digital realm to undermine our increasingly fragile profession. My heart goes out to any musician starting out these days.This is in no way a dig at any one reading this post. Don’t come back on the defensive as I KNOW you all value the music you listen to. You are all the good people who care. But trust me we are ALL being mugged off by a bunch of digital millionaires in suits who have zero respect for the art form they are profiting from and in turn helping destroy. They don’t have to spend a lifetime learning to play the instruments, they don’t compose the music, they don’t go on tour, gig or do festival dates to promote the music. They don’t even have to cover manufacturing or production costs. All they do is get rich off their various digital streaming platforms. “The Lie: Internet-powered disintermediation will create a burgeoning ‘middle class’ of artists. Not the limousine, Bono-style outrageous superstars, but good musicians that can support families and pay their bills. The Truth: There is no musician middle class. Instead, the music industry has devolved into a third world country, with a wide gulf between the rich and struggling/starving poor.” digitalmusicnews/permalink/2013/09/25/lies
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 11:01:59 +0000
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