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"There are more avenues today than I have ever seen in my time doing this job." - Jason Iley, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music UK and Ireland Like a

"There are more avenues today than I have ever seen in my time doing this job." - Jason Iley, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music UK and Ireland Like a number of comments made by record industry people about this, that may be factually correct, but it's missing the point. There definitely are more avenues than before. But almost none of them pay any money. Streaming has removed most small bands' way of making money, by selling CDs directly to their fans. Most of them will just stream it, and won't realise the tiny amount of revenue this generates for the artists. Paying the artists you actually listen to - rather than slicing the cake up into infinitely small slices - needs to be looked at. Most people assume their money goes to who they listen to, not the artists who everyone listens to the most.

yokaze 6y ago
I wonder if a law enforcing more transparency couldn't help here. It is in the interest of the music labels and the streaming companies to maximise their profit, which means minimise the pay-out to the artists. Customers have to be very motivated to be able to make an informed decision. And most often they probably aren't really motivated and happily chose the cheaper option. But I have hope, if the impact of the customers choice on their favourite artists is directly visible, it will create more pressure to increase the payout. E.g. each time you listen the song on A, the artists gets X, if you buy the song the artists Y.
dinglejungle 6y ago
> Paying the artists you actually listen to This is what Bandcamp is.
- djaychela 6y ago
  I agree, but nearly everyone I know has either Spotify or Amazon music. And also most of them don't really care about this. I've been a musician since I was 13 and have made most of my income over my life from either recording, teaching or playing music, so I guess I have more of a dog in this fight. I think it needs to be that the majority-used systems are made more fair - as with most things, people won't sacrifice ease of use for equity!
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    The solution is to pull your music off the platforms and charge your own price for it. You will likely find that no one purchases it and you get forgotten because very few people want to pay more for music when there is unlimited music available at a cheaper price. You can’t force people consume your content and that they pay more for it. There is such a massive supply of music that naturally the cost will be quite low.
- csunbird 6y ago
  Doesn't spotify already distribute your subscription money to artists, based on your listens?
  - dinglejungle 6y ago
    Yes, but it's much more likely your money is going to record labels rather than artists with something like Spotify. With Bandcamp, you are typically directly paying the artists, and you can always pay above the minimum price set by the artist if you wish.
hobofan 6y ago
CDs aren't the only merch to sell and all the other stuff (shirts, etc.) is easier to produce than ever and very profitable, and I feel like most people are well aware of that being one of the most direct ways to support their favourite artists.
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  This is true, but a tiny proportion of people buy merchandise compared to music. You will always find the t-shirt stand easily accessible at a gig for the artist despite the thousands of people at a venue, so believing that t-shirt sales will someone keep the artists profitable is likely wrong.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    I don't have the personal experience from gigs with "thousands of people", as the only ones I've been to were not that huge, and at those the merch stands were always swarmed. If you are playing for an audience that big you are probably already good on ticket sales alone (which also tend to become more expensive once a certain audience threshold is crossed). I also wasn't just guessing/assuming that, but relaying what I've been told by friends who are musicians (see also my sibling comment).
- Uehreka 6y ago
  I hear this argument a lot, but never from musicians. I think it might be a factoid that music listeners spread around because it makes us feel better about what seems like an irreversible movement in the industry (which benefits us, since we get to pay less money for music). But in the end, if we want to incentivize artists to focus on making good music (as opposed to merch) we should probably be paying them for the music. That’s not to say we can will the current streaming trend out of existence (we can’t), but we shouldn’t necessarily let ourselves feel good about where this is going.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    This isn't just a random factoid that I picked up, but what was relayed to me be multiple friends from bands that make part of their living off of music, and that mostly from merch. They are not in big well-known bands, but merch makes them enough money to pay their costs and also take time out of their freelance jobs to work on their music. They do sell some CDs, but never made a lot of money off of that (they haven't been around in a time where CDs mattered), and when I asked some of them once they said that they estimated that the loss of CD sales probably cancels out with the cheaper production costs of shirts. For most bands that are not huge, they never made a lot of money with CD sales (in stores, not at the concert venues) anyway, as most of that money went to the labels anyway. The bulk of money was always in concerts and merch. There are some reasons for criticizing streaming services and how they shape the music industry, but I don't think that replacing CD sales with less well paid streaming fees are a big one. That really only hits musicians that are already well beyond making a living off of music. I personally don't like the focus on merch for funding creatives either (this also includes Youtube creators and similar), as I don't really need that many t-shirts personally that I would buy one from all of them. I rather buy their music via Bandcamp or donate to them via their Patreon.
f311a 6y ago
The founder of Patreon had the same problem, he lost most of his income from a band. That's why he created Patreon.
konjin 6y ago
There's a difference between a $20 CD and a $10 all you can listen to music account with no commercials. The artists are getting less money because music is worth less today. Technological change is making that job obsolete in the same way that illuminated manuscripts have become obsolete.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  I am tempted to agree with what you say. I do believe that modern technology has lowered (financial) barriers to access art, no doubt. However, if it's only artists that appear to be mostly suffering from this new reality, while big (record/copyrights/tech) corporations still appear to be doing very well, I'm inclined to argue that this is probably more about unfair distribution (even more than it traditionally already was) than about the argument you put forward. No matter how you slice that cake, if in the end artists have to struggle to get by while others make a killing from exploiting their creations, then there is something fundamentally wrong. Personally, I think that today it might even be more wrong than it has been for a long time.
- rob74 6y ago
  What job? The job of the artist? I sure hope not! I mean, ok, we don't have illuminated manuscripts anymore, but we still have typographers, illustrators (for books), painters etc., so the job has evolved, not disappeared completely. What technological change will eventually make obsolete are probably the record companies...
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    A lot of scholarly publishers today, even very respected names, no longer provide typesetting and expect authors to do all the work and provide a camera-ready PDF. The whole scene of publishing genre fiction directly on Amazon also eschews quality typesetting and often even basic editing and proofreading. Just saying. There are a lot of jobs today that the market apparently no longer wants to pay for, even in the book world.
- marvin 6y ago
  It’s not just that. The distribution models also discriminates against small bands. If the four bands I’ve listened to in December received 70% of my Spotify subscription payment, this would be much less of a problem.
Closi 6y ago
Your post seems to blame the streaming companies rather than the record companies. 1 million streams in Spotify generally nets you c£2,740 - so in Gary Newman's case the issue is presumably the record label taking a huge £2,703 cut. Independent artists can sign up directly with Spotify and get paid per stream, and Spotify's payment model is pretty transparent (they take a 30% cut of subscriptions and share the rest by time listened).

yokaze 6y ago

I wonder if a law enforcing more transparency couldn't help here. It is in the interest of the music labels and the streaming companies to maximise their profit, which means minimise the pay-out to the artists. Customers have to be very motivated to be able to make an informed decision. And most often they probably aren't really motivated and happily chose the cheaper option. But I have hope, if the impact of the customers choice on their favourite artists is directly visible, it will create more pressure to increase the payout. E.g. each time you listen the song on A, the artists gets X, if you buy the song the artists Y.

dinglejungle 6y ago

> Paying the artists you actually listen to This is what Bandcamp is.

djaychela 6y ago
I agree, but nearly everyone I know has either Spotify or Amazon music. And also most of them don't really care about this. I've been a musician since I was 13 and have made most of my income over my life from either recording, teaching or playing music, so I guess I have more of a dog in this fight. I think it needs to be that the majority-used systems are made more fair - as with most things, people won't sacrifice ease of use for equity!
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  The solution is to pull your music off the platforms and charge your own price for it. You will likely find that no one purchases it and you get forgotten because very few people want to pay more for music when there is unlimited music available at a cheaper price. You can’t force people consume your content and that they pay more for it. There is such a massive supply of music that naturally the cost will be quite low.
csunbird 6y ago
Doesn't spotify already distribute your subscription money to artists, based on your listens?
- dinglejungle 6y ago
  Yes, but it's much more likely your money is going to record labels rather than artists with something like Spotify. With Bandcamp, you are typically directly paying the artists, and you can always pay above the minimum price set by the artist if you wish.

hobofan 6y ago

CDs aren't the only merch to sell and all the other stuff (shirts, etc.) is easier to produce than ever and very profitable, and I feel like most people are well aware of that being one of the most direct ways to support their favourite artists.

72deluxe 6y ago
This is true, but a tiny proportion of people buy merchandise compared to music. You will always find the t-shirt stand easily accessible at a gig for the artist despite the thousands of people at a venue, so believing that t-shirt sales will someone keep the artists profitable is likely wrong.
- hobofan 6y ago
  I don't have the personal experience from gigs with "thousands of people", as the only ones I've been to were not that huge, and at those the merch stands were always swarmed. If you are playing for an audience that big you are probably already good on ticket sales alone (which also tend to become more expensive once a certain audience threshold is crossed). I also wasn't just guessing/assuming that, but relaying what I've been told by friends who are musicians (see also my sibling comment).
Uehreka 6y ago
I hear this argument a lot, but never from musicians. I think it might be a factoid that music listeners spread around because it makes us feel better about what seems like an irreversible movement in the industry (which benefits us, since we get to pay less money for music). But in the end, if we want to incentivize artists to focus on making good music (as opposed to merch) we should probably be paying them for the music. That’s not to say we can will the current streaming trend out of existence (we can’t), but we shouldn’t necessarily let ourselves feel good about where this is going.
- hobofan 6y ago
  This isn't just a random factoid that I picked up, but what was relayed to me be multiple friends from bands that make part of their living off of music, and that mostly from merch. They are not in big well-known bands, but merch makes them enough money to pay their costs and also take time out of their freelance jobs to work on their music. They do sell some CDs, but never made a lot of money off of that (they haven't been around in a time where CDs mattered), and when I asked some of them once they said that they estimated that the loss of CD sales probably cancels out with the cheaper production costs of shirts. For most bands that are not huge, they never made a lot of money with CD sales (in stores, not at the concert venues) anyway, as most of that money went to the labels anyway. The bulk of money was always in concerts and merch. There are some reasons for criticizing streaming services and how they shape the music industry, but I don't think that replacing CD sales with less well paid streaming fees are a big one. That really only hits musicians that are already well beyond making a living off of music. I personally don't like the focus on merch for funding creatives either (this also includes Youtube creators and similar), as I don't really need that many t-shirts personally that I would buy one from all of them. I rather buy their music via Bandcamp or donate to them via their Patreon.

f311a 6y ago

The founder of Patreon had the same problem, he lost most of his income from a band. That's why he created Patreon.

konjin 6y ago

There's a difference between a $20 CD and a $10 all you can listen to music account with no commercials. The artists are getting less money because music is worth less today. Technological change is making that job obsolete in the same way that illuminated manuscripts have become obsolete.

elmo2you 6y ago
I am tempted to agree with what you say. I do believe that modern technology has lowered (financial) barriers to access art, no doubt. However, if it's only artists that appear to be mostly suffering from this new reality, while big (record/copyrights/tech) corporations still appear to be doing very well, I'm inclined to argue that this is probably more about unfair distribution (even more than it traditionally already was) than about the argument you put forward. No matter how you slice that cake, if in the end artists have to struggle to get by while others make a killing from exploiting their creations, then there is something fundamentally wrong. Personally, I think that today it might even be more wrong than it has been for a long time.
rob74 6y ago
What job? The job of the artist? I sure hope not! I mean, ok, we don't have illuminated manuscripts anymore, but we still have typographers, illustrators (for books), painters etc., so the job has evolved, not disappeared completely. What technological change will eventually make obsolete are probably the record companies...
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  A lot of scholarly publishers today, even very respected names, no longer provide typesetting and expect authors to do all the work and provide a camera-ready PDF. The whole scene of publishing genre fiction directly on Amazon also eschews quality typesetting and often even basic editing and proofreading. Just saying. There are a lot of jobs today that the market apparently no longer wants to pay for, even in the book world.
marvin 6y ago
It’s not just that. The distribution models also discriminates against small bands. If the four bands I’ve listened to in December received 70% of my Spotify subscription payment, this would be much less of a problem.

Closi 6y ago

Your post seems to blame the streaming companies rather than the record companies. 1 million streams in Spotify generally nets you c£2,740 - so in Gary Newman's case the issue is presumably the record label taking a huge £2,703 cut. Independent artists can sign up directly with Spotify and get paid per stream, and Spotify's payment model is pretty transparent (they take a 30% cut of subscriptions and share the rest by time listened).