14 DAY TRIAL // The scandal of music royalties is heating up, especially after Taylor Swift decided to remove all her songs from Spotify, one of the most popular music streaming platforms.
Aloe Blacc, the famous musician and songwriter, is taking Swift’s side, saying that streaming services aren’t paying enough for artists.
In a piece he wrote and published on Wired, Blacc explains that one of his best-known songs, Avicii’s “Wake Me Up!” which he co-wrote and sung, was the most streamed song in Spotify history and the 13th most played song in Pandora since its release in 2013, with more than 168 million streams in the United States alone.
“And yet, that yielded only $12,359 in Pandora domestic royalties— which were then split among three songwriters and our publishers. In return for co-writing a major hit song, I’ve earned less than $4,000 domestically from the largest digital music service,” Blacc writes.
He explains that one of the reasons why Swift removed her work from Spotify was because she wants to be compensated fairly for her work, something that the singer has been known to stand up for in various interviews.
He qualifies the rates that songwriters are being paid with as “abhorrently low,” especially since it takes roughly one million spins on Pandora for a songwriter to earn just $90.
The situation isn't helping songwriters
Blacc notes that nowadays music consumption has changed drastically and that purchasing and downloading songs has given way to streaming. As a result, the revenue streams that songwriters relied on are drying up.
“But the irony of the situation is that our music is actually being enjoyed by more people in more places and played across more platforms (largely now digital) than ever before. Our work clearly does have value, of course, or else it would not be in such high demand. So why aren’t songwriters compensated more fairly in the marketplace?” he wonders.
He calls for streaming companies to start giving songwriters more money, in actual correspondence with the number of plays the tracks have on their platforms; a fair amount. He wants company execs to stop building their fortunes on the back of the hard work of the music industry.
Blacc joins many other artists who have been slamming the amounts paid by music streaming services. Spotify, on the other hand, says that it’s been paying some 70 percent of its revenues to the music industry. The service has 40 million monthly active users, out of which only 10 million pay subscriptions.