Swedish songwriters have written an open letter demanding a bigger slice of the revenue generated from digital music streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube.
The piece headlined ‘It’s time to say thank you for the music’ and published in Aftonbladet, one of Scandinavia’s biggest newspapers, is signed by 133 songwriters and producers behind hits by acts including Janet JacksonRobyn, the Saturdays and Britney Spears.
They point to a recent study, which reported that songwriters are receiving as little as 3% of the revenue that streaming services pay out to the music industry in the US. “No corresponding research has been done in Europe, but the allocation of revenue here surely doesn’t differ substantially,” say the songwriters. Digital music services and record labels use non-disclosure agreements, so it is impossible for songwriters themselves to know for sure exactly what the figure is.
They say the songwriter’s voice is rarely heard, “even though the vast majority of music gracing the sales and streaming chart is created by songwriters who are not artists”. Unlike performers, songwriters don’t have the option of touring, selling merchandise or being “compensate[d] in any other way for the loss of income experienced due to the digital market”.
“The unavoidable result is that the record labels and other music industry players risk sawing off the branch they’re sitting on, as very few songwriters will be able to afford to create music other than as a hobby,” says the letter.
Meanwhile, the founders of Spotify have said they don’t understand why a number of artists have refused to license their music to the service. During the media storm that followed Taylor Swift’s decision to remove all her music from Spotify last November, , co-founder Martin Lorentzon told a Swedish newspaper that he had “zero understanding” for artists’ demand for better remuneration.
“We have totally turned around a music business in freefall by working in blood, sweat and tears, and we are heaping money back to the music industry,” said Lorentzon. “At the same time all music is free to steal, or do what you want with, on The Pirate Bay, torrent clients, Soundcloud, YouTube or Grooveshark.”
Spotify says it has paid the music industry more than $1bn since its 2008 launch, but the Swedish songwriters say that very little of that revenue has gone to them. A recent study, ordered by French record label trade body SNEP, showed that 73% of the payouts from streaming subscriptions go to the labels. Three-quarters of Spotify’s users don’t subscribe to the service, however, opting instead for the ad-funded version. Though deals are covered by a non-disclosure agreement, it’s understood that major labels have a minimum per-stream rate on that version, while songwriters do not.
The signatories, including Eagle-Eye Cherry, Andreas Johnson, and members of Hellacopters, Peter Bjorn and John, and the Wannadies, attribute the lopsided distribution to the major labels insisting on tough terms in order to licence Spotify in the first place – including shares in the company and huge advances – while the music publishers and STIM, who represent songwriters, initially agreed to terrible licensing terms in order for the service to even get off the ground. “Nobody wanted to stand in the way of technological progress, or of the opportunity to slap the pirate sites on the fingers,” they explain.
The letter, published on Monday, has been timed to appear in the newspaper on the same day that the Swedish Society of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (SKAP) is meeting with the labels, Spotify and other music industry stakeholders, in order to try to create a more balanced allocation of digital revenues.
The first step, the songwriters say, should be to discuss increased transparency. “STIM and other collective rights organisations are forced to sign confidentiality agreements, which prevent them from revealing – even to their own members – what the splits of the revenues are.”
The open letter continues: “The music industry may be the only business in the world where the subcontractors – the songwriters – aren’t allowed to know how much they get paid for their products, the songs.”
The second step, they say, should be to find a distribution model that allows the whole industry to prosper, “not just the labels and distributors, who are making a living off the value we music creators produce”.
The third discussion point is that very few streaming services feature songwriter and producer credits, something they would like to see amended.
Sweden has been in the forefront of the streaming revolution, being the birthplace of both Spotify and Soundcloud – as well as The Pirate Bay. The effects of illegal downloading hit the country particularly early and hard, while legal downloading never got a chance to establish a foothold. Streaming now claims a whopping 79.2% of the total Swedish record music market. But as the streaming market has matured there are signs of stagnation in overall revenue from recorded music. After half a decade of growth – admittedly starting from a very low point in 2008, when Spotify launched – revenue from recorded music was reportedly down 0.4% in 2014.
It remains to be seen if the stakeholders in the Swedish recorded music industry can hammer out an agreement that satisfies all parties, yet the Swedish songwriters’ open letter ends on an optimistic note: “Sweden has come a long way in the development of digital music services. It’s also reasonable to expect that our relatively small music industry and historical spirit of consensus among the different actors in the music industry should show the way to a more sustainable and equitable model.”
Earlier this month, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) launched a campaign entitled The Day the Music Died to demand fair share for songwriters.