David Lowery Blasts NPR Intern On File-Sharing

[DownInFlames]

iTunes music is DRM-free, and has been for awhile.

[Mass_nerder]

Without wanting to venture too deep into this debate:

I have to say that maybe 50% of my collection I did not pay for, but the difference between music I acquire vs. music I pay for is shrinking.
I used to argue that I didn't want to pay for an entire album, if I only wanted one song; Itunes, and other similar services have rendered that moot.
Then I downloaded because I wanted to hear the album sounded before I purchased it; Podcasts, Bandcamp pages etc...have rendered that moot as well.

I find that a lot of the bands I listen to offer their music digitally for free now anyway, then provide vinyl/cds through smaller labels/distros which I'll gladly support.
I spend more buying the vinyl because I love collecting it. I like the idea of passing on music to my kids, like my dad did for me. I find more value in having something in my hand.
Tough to do that with a bunch of pirated digital music, I suppose.

[cral12]

Originally Posted by troutman

From post #3

The enemy is Spotify, MOG, Rdio et al who license entire music catalogs from labels at great cost. The labels (in my case Warner Bros) then pay a pittance in royalties to the artists. The winners in this vast charade are the labels and venture capitalists.

Believe me I know. I recently received a royalty statement from Warner Bros in which I found that one of our most popular songs, ‘Natural’s Not In It’ had been streamed or downloaded through paid online services, almost 7000 times. That netted me $17.35. Now that was just one song out of our entire Gang of Four catalog. The statement amount in total, my share, came to $21.08. There was a big, red-inked stamped message on the last page that read, “Under $25 do not pay.”

Isn't "Gang of Four" from the UK?

[Mass_nerder]

Originally Posted by cral12

Isn't "Gang of Four" from the UK?

Yes

[Flash Walken]

On the one hand I am empathetic towards the artists.

At the end of the day, though, I can't separate that from the fact that this is not at all about the artists, it's about an outdated dinosaur of an industry attempting to guilt me into propping up the industry rather than the artist.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Louis C.K.'s gambit to sell tickets to his comedy shows himself is paying off.

The comedian said Wednesday that after just 45 hours, his tour has sold 100,000 tickets and taken in $4.5 million in sales. He's bypassing ticketing services like Ticketmaster to sell tickets only on his website.

On Monday, he began selling tickets for $45 without fees. His 39-city stand-up tour kicks off in October.

After announcing the results, he tweeted: "I guess it was a good idea."
Louis C.K. previously sold downloads to his special "Live at the Beacon" for $5, a move that was widely hailed and has since been imitated by other comics. It made more than $1 million in 12 days.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/art...160601365.html

While I am empathetic that artists are not more appreciated in society and better compensated for their efforts, paying 14.99 for a ####ty cd that the band/artist sees less than 10 percent from isn't going to change the public perception of art in our culture.

Frankly, I think my local art scene has benefited from music piracy.

[troutman]

Pandora Users Played David Lowery's Song a Million Times and All He Got Was $16.89


http://www.spin.com/articles/pandora...gn=spintwitter

[Bobblehead]

When a terrestrial radio station plays a song, how much does an artist get in royalties?

If a single radio station with an average of 100K listeners played a song 10 times, how much would an artist receive?

If Pandora hadn't played it a million times, how would his income from that song change? Would he have sold it more? Would terrestrial radio stations have played it more? How has his income stream from this song been affected by Pandora?

He thinks what he received is too low. Most people believe their work is undervalued. But in reality, what should a 20 year old song be worth?

[troutman]

Lowery said Pandora paid him $16.89 for more than one million plays of "Low" during the last three months of 2012. (He only owns 40 percent of the song, but the implied $42.23 that Pandora would've paid all songwriters still seems fairly paltry; Lowery also gets a performance royalty, which he says is "higher but also quite lame.") By comparison, Lowery indicates that nearly 19,000 plays of "Low" on U.S. terrestrial radio netted him close to $1,400, while a mere 179 plays on Sirius XM satellite radio yielded about $182.

[MarchHare]

If Lowery doesn't like the royalties he's receiving from Pandora, then why did he agree to their licensing terms? And don't say, "He didn't negotiate the deal, the record company did," because then I'll ask just why he signed a contract that allowed his label to license his streaming rights for such a pittance.

Also, is it possible to determine how many of those Pandora streams resulted in a new fan who would have otherwise been unaware of his music? How many of those new fans went to one of his shows and/or bought some of his merch?

Believe it or not, but there was a time when record labels would bribe radio stations to give airtime to their artists' songs. The American congress investigated this activity and eventually made it illegal. If broadcasting songs to the public for free is considered an essential part of promoting an artist, shouldn't everyone in the music industry be embracing Pandora, Rdio, and the like?

And maybe I'm out of the loop, but is music piracy even a wide-spread problem anymore? I don't know anyone who illegally downloads music these days. The reason record industry profits are shrinking is because iTunes has made it so customers are no longer forced to spend $15 for a full album when they only want one song.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

If Lowery doesn't like the royalties he's receiving from Pandora, then why did he agree to their licensing terms? And don't say, "He didn't negotiate the deal, the record company did," because then I'll ask just why he signed a contract that allowed his label to license his streaming rights for such a pittance.

Unless I'm mistaken, Pandora doesn't license music. Under US Law they're allowed to stream basically anything they want as long as they pay the royalty rate set by the government.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

When a terrestrial radio station plays a song, how much does an artist get in royalties?

If a single radio station with an average of 100K listeners played a song 10 times, how much would an artist receive?

If Pandora hadn't played it a million times, how would his income from that song change? Would he have sold it more? Would terrestrial radio stations have played it more? How has his income stream from this song been affected by Pandora?

He thinks what he received is too low. Most people believe their work is undervalued. But in reality, what should a 20 year old song be worth?

Performers don't get paid anything from normal radio. The songwriter and/or rights holder makes the money off of that. The amount varies depending on a bunch of factors, but I think it's usually a few cents per play per station.

With things like Pandora (whose royalty rates are based on newer legislation, primarily the DMCA) the performer and the owner of the recording (usually the label) get the bulk of the money while the songwriter gets basically nothing. That's what Lowery is complaining about, as he even mentions that he gets a different and larger cheque for his performance on the song. So much of the law is pretty archaic and based more on when people would buy sheet music or have their songs played by an orchestra than any reality of the last 70 years. It also doesn't help that you have artists expecting the good times from the '90s to continue forever, where they'd be able to release a crappy album with 1 or 2 good songs and pull in millions because of the lack of options for consumers.

One of the bigger problems for smaller scale artists isn't even the amount of royalties they're entitled too, but rather getting them at all. Some of the larger organizations (record companies primarily) simply don't pay or severely underpay royalties and there's not a lot the artists can do about it. If a moderately successful artist thinks they're owed $50K in royalties, it's basically up to them to prove it, which can be a daunting and expensive task when you're going up against a label or radio conglomerate with scores of lawyers and accountants on staff.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

And maybe I'm out of the loop, but is music piracy even a wide-spread problem anymore? I don't know anyone who illegally downloads music these days. The reason record industry profits are shrinking is because iTunes has made it so customers are no longer forced to spend $15 for a full album when they only want one song.

I doubt most people under 30 are paying for very much of their music libraries.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by troutman

I doubt most people under 30 are paying for very much of their music libraries.

I doubt many people under 30 still have 'libraries'.

Streaming, baby. "the cloud"

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by troutman

Lowery said Pandora paid him $16.89 for more than one million plays of "Low" during the last three months of 2012. (He only owns 40 percent of the song, but the implied $42.23 that Pandora would've paid all songwriters still seems fairly paltry; Lowery also gets a performance royalty, which he says is "higher but also quite lame.") By comparison, Lowery indicates that nearly 19,000 plays of "Low" on U.S. terrestrial radio netted him close to $1,400, while a mere 179 plays on Sirius XM satellite radio yielded about $182.

OK, but 1 play on Pandora probably averages 1 person hearing it.

1,000,000/19,000 = 52.6

So unless they're only an average of 53 people listening to the radio when that song was being played, a heck of a lot more people heard the song via terrestrial radio. So using the "number of plays" is a terrible metric.

Cutting the numbers another way:
Pandora paid $0.00001689 per set of ears listening ($16.89/1,000,000).
Terrestrial radio paid $1400. If they are paying a similar price per set of ears listening, that would mean $1400/.00001689 = 82,889,284 listeners.
Divide that by the number of times played 82,889,284/19,000 = 4363 listeners per play.

Is it reasonable to expect that a terrestrial radio station has an average of at least that many listeners at any given point in time? Going by this ratings period, the radio station with the lowest ratings in Calgary appears to have much higher ratings than that. *

So if you go by the number of people who probably actually listened to the song, Pandora is overpaying!

Actually, from following this over the years, traditional radio stations have had a pretty darn good deal when it comes to royalties (at least in the US - I'm not sure how Canadian rates differ).

The truth is somewhere in between, but I still contend that this article lives up to the website/magazine that published it - Spin.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.




* although I may be reading those rating wrong. It is easy to see who is higher, but knowing exactly how many are listening at any given moment may not be totally clear.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by troutman

From post #3

The enemy is Spotify, MOG, Rdio et al who license entire music catalogs from labels at great cost. The labels (in my case Warner Bros) then pay a pittance in royalties to the artists. The winners in this vast charade are the labels and venture capitalists.

Believe me I know. I recently received a royalty statement from Warner Bros in which I found that one of our most popular songs, ‘Natural’s Not In It’ had been streamed or downloaded through paid online services, almost 7000 times. That netted me $17.35. Now that was just one song out of our entire Gang of Four catalog. The statement amount in total, my share, came to $21.08. There was a big, red-inked stamped message on the last page that read, “Under $25 do not pay.”

Spotify, Rdio, etc, are not the enemy. The labels are. He even proved that point. These streaming services have paid a great price to get access to the music catalog of record labels (who control everything in this case) and THEY are the ones who pay the artists a pittance.

If you want to own your music, then don't deal with a label. But a label is (so far) the best way to get your music to the masses.

The best example of the tyranny of labels is Victory Records and Toh Kay/Streetlight Manifesto.

Q: I wanted to hear the Toh Kay record. The music video – before Victory took it down – was beautiful and so was the song. My gosh. What happened?
A: Victory had given Streetlight a choice: either completely kill the Toh Kay record (their absurd reasoning was that its sale would “cannibalize” Streetlight sales, ha!) or hand it over to them so they can release it and exclusively profit from it. Streetlight has experienced and documented years of Victory not paying royalties while continuously profiting from their music, so it was a no-brainer. We had to cancel the record, no matter how much we all loved it and how hard the guys worked on it. That music video, by the way, is also “illegal”. So if you saw it – your eyes are criminals.

Source: http://streetlightmanifesto.com/pre-orders-faq/

The music industry as it stands is dying. Your best option is to get yourself a following and then strike out on your own. Labels will kill you in the end. You have to market directly to the consumer, or directly with the distribution service.

[Flash Walken]

One thing I found interesting is the latest Jay-Z album. Now, without having control of antiquated distribution methods, private entities can bankroll albums for use in their own promotions. Samsung by the sounds of it are 100% behind Jay-Z's latest release, and it's almost entirely for the marketability of it.

There is tremendous potential now I think for ease of access to the arts, which is going to be beneficial for the market leaders in the corporate sector who can begin to harness it early.

21st Century patronage.

[kermitology]

Jay-Z is interesting because he is one artist who entirely controls his own destiny. You're gonna get paid when you created the label that your music is licensed to.

[Bobblehead]

And someone actually went ahead and did a breakdown of how much songwriters and performers get paid broken out over differing distribution models.

Lowery doesn’t disclose the Pandora performance royalty but he declares it “unsustainable."5 This is a fascinating perspective: apparently in Lowery’s view a performance royalty of $1,275 is unsustainable but the AM/FM world of $0 is totally fine?

http://theunderstatement.com/post/53...han-16-dollars

[rogermexico]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

When a terrestrial radio station plays a song, how much does an artist get in royalties?

If a single radio station with an average of 100K listeners played a song 10 times, how much would an artist receive?

If Pandora hadn't played it a million times, how would his income from that song change? Would he have sold it more? Would terrestrial radio stations have played it more? How has his income stream from this song been affected by Pandora?

He thinks what he received is too low. Most people believe their work is undervalued. But in reality, what should a 20 year old song be worth?

I will dig out a SOCAN statement for some exact figures, but if a single radio station with an average of 100K listeners plays a song 10 times an artist might receive up to two or three bucks. Maybe, depending on if all of those plays get tracked and logged.

It depends on the station. You get one amount for campus/community radio, a little bit more for CBC, a little bit more for commercial stations. But it's only a few cents - I think a CJSW play gets you roughly a quarter - provided it comes during a SOCAN sampling period.

You get a fair bit more for TV. I think it's 3 - 5 bucks but again I'd have to check a statement. And you get more if its international. So for example, my old band had songs used twice as theme music for TV shows - once in Canada and once in Germany. I think we got a bit of a bump for the international one.

Once I remember my log in credentials for the SOCAN website I'll come back with the actual rates.

To put it all in perspective - I've forgotten the password for the site that tracks my song writing royalties. That's how little money we're talking about here.

[Itse]

Piracy has no effect on sales. This has been studied multiple times, and the results are pretty much the same. It actually propably mildly increases sales.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21856720

Besides, while profits are down, music sales are actually up. So really what we have is not a situation where people are buying less music, we have a situation where music has less value as a commodity.

So why are profits down?

To start with, there is much more competition for the entertainment dollar these days (especially the games industry, which has grown into an entertainment giant).

Also; before most people had even heard of the internet, analysists were saying that the CD era was one of inflated sales numbers, as people were replacing their old LP's with CD's from the same artists. The music industry tried it's best to turn reselling the same products to the same customers in new formats a continuous cycle (remember the minidisc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio...?).

However, that project failed and now digitalization has essentially killed that business almost completely.

Even further, music business has been inflated ever since the album era began. It was well studied that most people never listened to the albums they bought all the way through more than once or twice. In the vinyl era many never even flipped a single over. With albums becoming longer from 30 minutes to 45 minutes and now typically an 1h+, people were paying for more and more music that they didn't actually want.

This was good business, but it also ended.

None if this is news to the entertainment industry, so they are not really lobbying for tougher piracy laws because they think piracy is hurting sales.

Piracy is a crime is because making it a crime has proven to be nice new business model, and corporations are competing in coming up with convoluted logical leaps to create new streams of income through legal means.

For example a recent EU court decision means that propably in the future the IP industry will get a piece of the sale of every printer and printing product. Because you know, they COULD be used to print copyrighted material.

It's insanity, it's scam, and it has absolutely nothing to do with poor suffering artists.