Tom Dunne: Changes to payments from streaming services are very welcome
Pic: iStock
For those who hate the main streaming services – and artists driving the byroads of Ireland with a car boot full of your own CDS to sell at gigs, I am looking at you – there is hope dawning. A chink of light has appeared in the sky. Things might, at last, be getting better.
I still remember the moment when, knee-deep in CDs that had been sent in by aspiring artists, I started to get an inkling of the kind of post-CD world we might be moving into. It was 2001 and I’d been asked to write a few words on Napster and Metallica’s threats to sue it.
The idea of music “being free” – like some hippie ideal – was starting to take hold, albeit nothing like it would when streaming arrived ten years later. The proliferation of MP3s, and free file sharing, seemed unstoppable.
This coincided with the advent of cheap home, often Apple-based, recording facilities. A young band, any band, could record itself, declare this to be an album, and deliver it to your inbox with a note saying, “Why will you not support young bands?”
The traditional gatekeepers, the impediments that stopped two lads walking home from the pub recording their musings, were being removed. There was minimal cost, no studio access required, no producer, no feedback. Just ten tracks, and a note attacking anyone who didn’t share their vision.
I looked up from my reverie and thought: “There is going to be an avalanche of shit.” Twenty years on, with streaming ubiquitous, and many traditional industries destroyed, I see I was wrong. It wasn’t an avalanche; it was a tsunami.
Spotify now uploads 60,000 tracks a day. That is 22 million a year. The Beatles released about 213 songs in their entire career. How many of the 60,000 would hold a candle to their worst B-side? On a daily basis, would it be five?
Some are just charlatans. If you type in say ‘60s Hits’ into the search bar of most streaming services, it will bring you to 60s Hits like ‘Twist and Shout’, ‘Wichita Lineman’ and ‘The Happening’. But it won’t be The Beatles, Glen Campbell or Diana Ross. It’s a covers band called 60’s Hits.
It’s like finding a K-Tel version of Rumours inside the sleeve of the Fleetwood Mac album.
Some are worse. JP Morgan, in a recent report on the music industry, discovered that if you uploaded a 30-second track and then programmed your phone to listen to it 24 hours a day, you could make $1,200 a month on Spotify. They estimate 10% of all music streams are fake.
There was talk of “streaming farms” with banks of devices running on a loop.
And this is before the AI monster has been let loose on it. Take a quick listen to Frank Sinatra’s new recording of ‘Gangtsa’s Paradise’ and imagine that tech set to “imitate the greatest hits of the day.” It is predicted that under such a scenario – AI running riot – Spotify could find itself home to one billion songs. Tsunami indeed.
The good news is this is in no one’s interest. It would destroy a model that has saved the record companies. From the dark days of the collapse in CD sales, streaming services now pay them an estimated at $25 billion a year, a sum that would not survive an AI deluge.
So, Universal, one of the biggest players in the market, with 40% share, are demanding a first change to the royalty system with the streaming services in 15 years. After a deal with the Deezer service in France, more money is to be diverted towards professional artists, those who get a minimum of 1,000 monthly streams. Other streaming services are expected to follow. Hopefully, it'll mean no more bots or white noise.
Universal is effectively flexing its muscle here, as it should do. If Universal withdrew its catalogue – Drake, Taylor, etc – streaming services would become niche players overnight.
But, if UMG and the other companies were to sit down and agree a model that just in some minuscule way skewered the royalty payments to slightly favour new and emerging artists and established but less popular acts, it would be a total game-changer.
The first plays are the hardest to get. They are the ones that pay for the hard yards people put into finding their voice. Streams over 10 million, though, are pure profit. A tiny correction would divert a little money to the new talents of tomorrow. To quote Róisín Murphy: The Time is Now.
