Copyright — ownership of songs and albums as creative works — is a riotous knot of rules and processes in the music industrywith the players much more numerous and entangled than the ordinary fan might think. For music listeners, a song is a song is a song. But for the music business, every individual song is split into two separate copyrights: composition lyrics, melody and sound recording literally, the audio recording of the dn. Sound recording copyrights are owned by recording artists and their record labels. Those parties may have nothing to do with the people who write the lyrics and melody of the song and thus own the composition copyright. For the majority of times when somebody listens to a song, both types of copyright kick in, generating two sets of royalties that are paid to the respective parties. Sometimes labels work with agents that can license bigger etreaming all at once, saving time and trouble but wedging in an extra fee. The specific percentage payouts within these deals depends on the type of service and the negotiating power of all the names involved. Putting music in film and television and commercials, a. A fee is paid upfront, and royalties are also paid once the particular film or television show has been distributed and broadcast. The process is further different for radio services, though, which typically use blanket, buffet-style licenses that determine payment rates on mass scale. That difference — which the music industry largely considers an unfair loophole — means that whenever a song is played over the airwaves, it only makes money for its writers, streamingg artists. While album sales dwindle and streams may only pay out fractions of a cent at a time, live shows — be it tours, festivals or one-off concerts — are commanding some of the highest ticket prices .
The pay equity gap has been researched and debated for decades, with little real progress to show for it. But the reckoning may finally be here.
That said, one question continues to plague the industry: where is all that revenue going, and how can artists get their hands on it? Here, we breakdown step by step where the money is going. Since their introduction, streaming services have grown to become the primary platform for music consumption within the North American and European music markets. Pro Rata Model. The Pro Rata model, currently used by all major streaming platforms, means that monthly revenue from premium subscription costs and advertisement revenues is collected into one pool of money. Meaning that, even if a user never listens to the most streamed artists on the platform, a percentage of the money they pay will be given to the most streamed artists. This system becomes even more convoluted when royalty distribution is broken down further. A signed solo artist needs over a million streams on Spotify just to make the federal minimum wage, and an unsigned artist needs over , streams. Big name artists such as Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke have been very vocal about their discontent with the way in which royalties are distributed by Spotify. The company argues that Spotify has not made sufficient efforts to identify rights holders. As you can see from the flowchart, there are many layers money has to go through before it actually reaches the artist or the songwriter. This may have been acceptable when streaming services were starting out, but many artists and other industry higher-ups are arguing that things need to change to get the artists what they deserve. When Spotify first started, it took a little while to grow the user base. It was understandable that they had to make some cuts in places to grow the company, as does any company starting out. In , Spotify had 36 million active users, 6 million being subscribers, but by , Spotify has grown to million active users with more than 87 million being subscribers. Many argue that this system is not fair to the artists, leading to new ideas on how the system should actually work. User-centric Structure.
How streaming services determine royalty pay for each artist
Are there any alternatives that treat the artist well? They are not obligatory. Spend the money on downloads or CDs instead. As always, there is no universal answer because it depends on all sorts of factors.
The streaming era has transformed the way music—and money from music—is made, and cemented who holds most of the power.
At that point, global sales of recorded music were headed for their 13th decline in 14 years, with the overall value of the industry nearly cut by half since the turn of the century. It looked like the digital revolution really did turn the music business into a moldering husk. But now, like any good zombie during an apocalypse, the industry is once again primed to devour the world on a massive scale. Much of the rise is thanks to people paying for subscriptions to streaming music services. In , Spotify suggested that income would recover dramatically once it hit 40 million paid users; million people now subscribe to Spotify. And analysts expect streaming to rack up millions more paying customers once it catches on in China, India, and other emerging markets. According to the artists, managers, label executives, and industry observers I spoke with for this piece, streaming is transforming the music business in a way that should allow certain artists to keep a bigger share of the earnings from what they create. A few experts even admit that many musicians who might once have sustained modest yet viable careers may now have to give up on their dreams of making a living from their work. That world has dried up. Mike feels a responsibility to remind listeners how much their support means for artists who work with independent labels, and who rely on the narrowest of profit margins so they can retain as much creative freedom as possible.
Keating earned the most per stream from iHeartRadio in 2019, but was streamed significantly more on Spotify
The discrepancy bothered her, but the salary was comfortable, the work was rewarding and she was glad why don t artists make more money off of streaming have the job. She bit her tongue. The salary depends on who gets the gig, but the role stays the. McFarlane rallied an association of civilian managers and specialists, collectively known as CAMS, to unpack what was happening.
READ: The key numbers that explain the wage gap. No matter how you crunch the numbers—regardless of sector, position or number of working hours—women continue to earn less than men. Overall in Canada, the earnings gap between men and women who work is about 31 per cent, according to the most recent Statistics Canada income numbers. Full-time working women, meanwhile, earn 26 per cent less than why don t artists make more money off of streaming working men.
Comparing hourly wages, that number shrinks to 13 per cent, and after controlling for gender differences around factors like industry, occupation, education, job tenure, province of residence and union status, a mysterious eight per cent gap remains. The reasons are many and complex.
But there are signs the tide is turning. Something shifted when Donald Trump—who has admitted to sexual assault—was elected U. Getting dangerously close to slipping backwards, they dug in their picks. For the women of CAMS, the movement helped validate their own cause.
The legislation, which set Canada apart as a world leader in pay equity, called on all federally regulated employers to evaluate workers based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and pay them accordingly. Certainly, some things have changed for the better. According to Statistics Canada, women began outnumbering men on convocation stages in Since then, the proportion of university-educated women has more than doubled in Canada, from 14 per cent to over 35 per cent.
While the numbers are encouraging, it makes the persistent wage gap all the more outrageous. And more than half those polled believe maternity leave plays a major role in exacerbating wage inequality in Canada. More robust research shows there are kernels of truth in the arguments for the gap. In one study, for instance, researchers asked more than a hundred STEM professors in the United States to consider a candidate for a lab manager position.
Women of colour, Indigenous women and those with disabilities are even further. Indigenous women earn as little as 46 cents on the dollar. Baked into the wage gap numbers are more slippery factors like sexual harassment and overt discrimination.
They lose opportunities for promotions, they lose opportunities to accrue seniority and experience. They may be driven out of careers altogether. They smile, wave and go about their business. To passersby, the workers look like colleagues doing the same job. But their pay stubs tell two altogether different stories. At Canada Post, a Crown corporation, rural and suburban mail carriers earn about 30 per cent less than urban employees. Regardless of geographic lines, though, the work is the.
Women still make up the majority of rural mail carriers—about 70 per cent—while men account for 70 per cent of workers in cities. To some extent, pay and working conditions have improved for Anderson and nearly 9, of her colleagues since rural and suburban mail carriers joined the union that represents city postal workers.
After years of union pressure, Canada Post agreed to undergo a pay equity evaluation, which began in January. We agreed with the union on a process to study the matter further and have been working through that process.
The process is ongoing with much constructive discussion and will soon include a third-party arbitrator to help bring resolution. The employees in question are performing not just similar work, but the same work—in unionized positions and under government employers.
What that says for private-sector employees, whose salaries are often kept private, is worrisome. And it inspires little hope that those doing different work of similar value can easily appeal for equal pay. Midwives in Ontario offer one such example. And the more that work is associated with women, or stereotypically done by women, the lower it is paid.
That tendency has played out for decades. In one notable study, researchers from Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania examined U. Take recreation jobs, for instance: In the latter part of the 20th century, park and camp jobs shifted from being male- to female-dominated.
During that same period, wages dropped 57 per cent, adjusting for inflation. The reverse is also true: As men took over previously female-dominated jobs—like computer programming, for example—wages went up. Her father, a lawyer, MP and early feminist, raised her and her two sisters to do as much as, or more than, her brother. I had a background where I was able to do what I wanted to do as a woman.
Of the graduates called to the bar that year, she was one of six women. Marvelling at the progress, Hynna wonders aloud how much the gender wage gap has narrowed since the days she helped draft legislation to close it. She pauses just long enough to muster a rallying. Women are getting angrier. Many of those interviewed for this article expected the problem would have been solved by now—that as women became university educated and entered the workforce, particularly in high-paying sectors, the wage gap would spiral in on itself like a black hole.
The government previously said it would introduce legislation in spring Compliance could be expensive for companies. And in the face of widespread opposition to small-business tax changes across Canada and minimum-wage hikes in Ontario, pay equity reform may well inspire hostility among stretched employers. Even Trudeau, the self-professed feminist leader, has been conspicuously quiet on pay equity.
McFarlane started her career in amid a flurry of public interest in and political promise for gender parity. When she agreed to spearhead the CAMS pay equity case inmany colleagues assumed she was on her way. She was close to retirement, after all. Filed under: PayEquity Editor’s Picks gender wage gap pay equity pay gap wage gap.
Recording and Writing Music …
Mechanics, June 26, Music streaming is now at the very center of the recording industry. At the same time, the music streaming market is becoming exponentially more and more complex. As ofthere were over DSPs with streaming capabilities, from regional players and niche services to international giants of Apple, Spotify and alike. So, how do you navigate this complex landscape of the streaming market and maximize your streaming revenue? The music steraming is full of opportunities, but what are the platforms you should focus on? How much do different DSPs pay the artists?
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