While Spotify might have built the wall, it was at UMG's behest (threat).
The less-than-1,000 streaming threshold is a bit like Brewster's Millions. Once you aggregate them, you have a large pot of money.
It's more like enclosure rather than a prediction market, even though market dominance plays out in the same way. First and foremost, it's always about licenses and not music. Licenses can be traded, music less so. Licenses are fungible.
As a UK Government Digital Creator Report stated:
There is no evidence that there was ever a time when recorded music was the basis of substantial income for large numbers of musicians, even when total revenues were higher, in the 1990s. (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2021, p.18).
Thanks for your comments. “Substantial” is doing a lot of work in that quote you cite. What is more important to me is the effect of streaming on “sustainable” income for professionals.
Yes, that's what the report covers, based on interviews and surveys with more than 700 music professionals in the UK. As well as access to record label accounts.
Sustainable is also a very loaded word and does a lot of heavy lifting. Especially when one considers factors like gender based income inequality, which Hesmondhalgh's report highlights.
As Jacques Attali pointed out in an earlier time, it's an economy of repetition. Through repetition, artists demonstrate their accumulable value.
When considering sustainable income, the recent UK Music report: Black Music Means Business - https://www.ukmusic.org/research-reports/black-music-means-business/, presents evidence of the commercial, cultural and community impact of Black Music across 30 years of recorded music, from 1994 to 2023. Despite the revenue generated from these music-making activities, its practitioners and communities are also underrepresented, undervalued, and under-resourced by the same reporting systems: music industry, education, cultural institutions and government. One of my colleagues worked on the report to scrap the Metropolitan Police's use of Form 696 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41946915. Sustainable income becomes problematic when the forces of law and order make it difficult to engage in legitimate music-making activities that do not impact other musicians, only a select few. This will affect who appears at festivals, venues and so on.
Anyway, thank you for writing the article and engaging in this lively debate. It's the sort of discussion that Luminate and Billboard, along with many others, will not entertain because it exposes the uncomfortable truth.
You also have to factor in that our tracks are being used to thrain their AI music production models
Tons of AI tracks are then published by spotify, which then in turn pushes those tracks to reach the 1000-streams mark and can then collect that royality which in turn lowers the amount of streams to real artists.
So they found a way to even access a good portion of the money that is supposed to go to the bigger artists...
If you're looking to make money from a track with less than 1000 streams, you might have bigger concerns. Now as for AI tracks taking a piece of the pie - that is a real issue.
Seems like an edge case but I see your point. I believe the idea is to separate the working artists from the hobbyists. Ideally if music is your career, you're able to reach that 1000 stream club on the grand majority of your songs.
I’m not talking ifs, I’m talking the reality for many professional musicians and indie labels - even the Smithsonian Folkways label is losing from this
Nice article read.
Your point about the 88% is well made.
Some observations:
While Spotify might have built the wall, it was at UMG's behest (threat).
The less-than-1,000 streaming threshold is a bit like Brewster's Millions. Once you aggregate them, you have a large pot of money.
It's more like enclosure rather than a prediction market, even though market dominance plays out in the same way. First and foremost, it's always about licenses and not music. Licenses can be traded, music less so. Licenses are fungible.
As a UK Government Digital Creator Report stated:
There is no evidence that there was ever a time when recorded music was the basis of substantial income for large numbers of musicians, even when total revenues were higher, in the 1990s. (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2021, p.18).
Cheers
Thanks for your comments. “Substantial” is doing a lot of work in that quote you cite. What is more important to me is the effect of streaming on “sustainable” income for professionals.
Yes, that's what the report covers, based on interviews and surveys with more than 700 music professionals in the UK. As well as access to record label accounts.
Sustainable is also a very loaded word and does a lot of heavy lifting. Especially when one considers factors like gender based income inequality, which Hesmondhalgh's report highlights.
As Jacques Attali pointed out in an earlier time, it's an economy of repetition. Through repetition, artists demonstrate their accumulable value.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time out.
Which report are you quoting, is it the DCMS committee report, the Government response, or the final CMA report?
Hesmondhalgh et al., 2021, p.18. This is where the quote comes from and where the statements on income inequality are made. The difference is about £5,000. Link and other info here: ‘Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Era’. Intellectual Property Office. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1020133/music-creators-earnings-report.pdf.
When considering sustainable income, the recent UK Music report: Black Music Means Business - https://www.ukmusic.org/research-reports/black-music-means-business/, presents evidence of the commercial, cultural and community impact of Black Music across 30 years of recorded music, from 1994 to 2023. Despite the revenue generated from these music-making activities, its practitioners and communities are also underrepresented, undervalued, and under-resourced by the same reporting systems: music industry, education, cultural institutions and government. One of my colleagues worked on the report to scrap the Metropolitan Police's use of Form 696 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41946915. Sustainable income becomes problematic when the forces of law and order make it difficult to engage in legitimate music-making activities that do not impact other musicians, only a select few. This will affect who appears at festivals, venues and so on.
Anyway, thank you for writing the article and engaging in this lively debate. It's the sort of discussion that Luminate and Billboard, along with many others, will not entertain because it exposes the uncomfortable truth.
Be well.
You also have to factor in that our tracks are being used to thrain their AI music production models
Tons of AI tracks are then published by spotify, which then in turn pushes those tracks to reach the 1000-streams mark and can then collect that royality which in turn lowers the amount of streams to real artists.
So they found a way to even access a good portion of the money that is supposed to go to the bigger artists...
By chance have you seen subvert.fm? They are currently only about the downloads portion, but the issues they care about are similar!
If you're looking to make money from a track with less than 1000 streams, you might have bigger concerns. Now as for AI tracks taking a piece of the pie - that is a real issue.
Why shouldn’t we be paid for every stream? If you have 50 tracks with 999 streams each, that’s 49,500 unpaid streams… etc…
Seems like an edge case but I see your point. I believe the idea is to separate the working artists from the hobbyists. Ideally if music is your career, you're able to reach that 1000 stream club on the grand majority of your songs.
I’m not talking ifs, I’m talking the reality for many professional musicians and indie labels - even the Smithsonian Folkways label is losing from this
The type of music factors in here. Many noise / avant-garde / free jazz artists don't hit that level often.
Thanks. I feel even worse now.
This is an interesting comparison—makes sense though.