In
a united movement by chart topping artists and break out musicians alike,
musicians are banding together to stop Pandora from lobbying to lower royalty
rate payments to musicians on music streaming sites. Pandora is looking for Congress
to cut its royalty rates and make music streaming royalty payouts be equal to
terrestrial radio stations. In an earlier blog post, I opened up this topic to
touch on the threat of music streaming gaining the same reputation, rights and
recognition as standard radio stations. Now, artists are clashing with music
streaming sights because music-streaming services want a larger cut in an
artist’s musical content. These artists believe music streaming services are
not even comparable to radio, music distributors or record stores, where
royalty rates are less because these companies provide an actual service, and
are simply a medium like YouTube that facilitates and permits unlimited, free
music playing.
Moreover,
some artists heavily rely on these music royalty rates despite the fact that
payment are as low as $0.007 - $0.01 per stream. As a result, musicians are
going a step further by “supporting a bill that would increase the royalty
rates paid by radio and satellite companies” (Graziano). Not just to obtain a larger
cut in royalties, but this is also a defensive, strategic ploy by the musicians
to show Congress that not only is decreasing royalties wrong but the rates are
already too low, unfair to musicians and the payout needs to actually increase.
Musicians believe that music streaming companies need to “go back to the
drawing board” and find a new way to derive revenue besides memberships and
cheap advertisement spots (Graziano). Music streaming sights need to realize that
artists could potentially decline to provide their content to these website,
similar to what Taylor Swift and ACDC does. The musicians must be recognized as
“the foundation of Internet Radio” and without new, creative content from
musicians, the music streaming services will lose foot traffic, memberships and
advertisement dollars.
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