> The label heads told MPs their cut from streaming was a fair reward for the risks involved in developing artists, recording, marketing and distribution.
Smooth, but also a juicy lie because:
Labels haven't paid for new artist development since Napster was shutdown. New artists learn their craft on their own dime and record their first (or more) album in their bedroom. There is no cost for marketing or distribution with streaming.
Recording costs are subtracted from artists' payments by labels.
What the label head deliberately left out is that new deals are "360 deals", meaning the whole pie, where the label gets additional revenue streams: streaming royalties, live performance, merch and often Patreon (pays the rent for a lot of artists) payments.
Regarding the £37 for 1 million streams, that would take some forensics to unravel. But factors are if Numan doesn't own his masters, what the separate songwriting credits are, and that US streaming services operate with legal rules that disadvantange artists when paying for streaming.
The artists who've done well at capturing value are Steve Vai (self-managed, as advised by Frank Zappa) and Joe Bonamassa (dedicated boutique artist mgmt.) It gets real thin after that.
Source: I know Youtube music artists and have done the math with them. I tell them not to sign label deals (be their own publisher), and as a result they're all cash flow positive while following their artistic vision - with no lawyer surprises.
Smooth, but also a juicy lie because:
Labels haven't paid for new artist development since Napster was shutdown. New artists learn their craft on their own dime and record their first (or more) album in their bedroom. There is no cost for marketing or distribution with streaming.
Recording costs are subtracted from artists' payments by labels.
What the label head deliberately left out is that new deals are "360 deals", meaning the whole pie, where the label gets additional revenue streams: streaming royalties, live performance, merch and often Patreon (pays the rent for a lot of artists) payments.
Regarding the £37 for 1 million streams, that would take some forensics to unravel. But factors are if Numan doesn't own his masters, what the separate songwriting credits are, and that US streaming services operate with legal rules that disadvantange artists when paying for streaming.
The artists who've done well at capturing value are Steve Vai (self-managed, as advised by Frank Zappa) and Joe Bonamassa (dedicated boutique artist mgmt.) It gets real thin after that.
Source: I know Youtube music artists and have done the math with them. I tell them not to sign label deals (be their own publisher), and as a result they're all cash flow positive while following their artistic vision - with no lawyer surprises.