Next Big Sound (a/o May 16th):
Re: My Song Was Played 3.1 Million Times on Pandora. My Check Was $39...
Not attacking anyone here or trying to stir the pot any more, but I'd like to know if anyone has a valid and insightful answer to any of these questions:
How does one determine the proper royalty amount for one person listening to one song one time via a streaming service? Should it be $.0011, or $.002, or whatever Pandora or Spotify or any other service supposedly pays out? What is the value of one person in an empty bar playing that song on the jukebox one time? Isn't this a similar situation, except that jukebox plays actually require the listener to pay for the play when streaming services don't necessarily? If this song were played on the radio once and 3.1 million listeners heard it, what would the songwriter get paid? And are the PROs even accurately tracking these plays and making those payments?
I feel as if it's very difficult to evaluate what these payments should be. And it's hard to complain about getting any money where there was none before. Can you really blame digital music for the fact that there are half as many professional songwriters now as there were a decade ago? Or has the industry just not figured out hope to cope with the change in technology yet?
The CD had its issues, but record companies compensated for that by charging absurd amounts for them. $20 for a CD? Many people's response to being ripped off like this for so long was to get all they could for free when Napster and the like came along, and record companies have been paying for it ever since. The record industry may be dying, but the music industry is actually thriving. In fact, music "consumption" is higher than it has been in a long time. The question is, how do we now compensate artists/songwriters for the change in technology while allowing the companies that provide that technology to survive?
All thoughts welcome.
Thanks,
Jasper
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