Rates Lowered For Streamed Music In the UK

An anonymous reader tips the news that the UK's music collection society, PRS, has announced a new pricing plan it hopes may entice YouTube and Pandora back to the UK market. Pandora pulled out at the start of 2008, and YouTube began removing content from the view of UK users last March. "From 1 July 2009, firms will have to pay 0.085p for each track streamed, down from the previous rate of 0.22p. [The] head of the music streaming service We7 told BBC News he welcomed the new charges. 'It's brilliant. Not so much the rates but the realization by the PRS that things have to change in the digital world. Till now it's felt like they were not listening,' he said. ... 'They [the PRS] are getting in touch with the reality of the digital world.' [The PRS's managing director said] 'We've laid our stall out and listened to everyone who would engage with us. We've consulted with the 25 firms that represent 97% of our revenue over the past six months and have been given opinions from many others. We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work, but we also wanted to make sure that the framework was in place to enable the digital market to grow.'"

Comments

How much do the Artists get?

[Krneki]

I don't see how much the Artists get from the "0.085p for each track streamed".

I bet it's extremely low.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[zippthorne]

Must be "Verizon math." I'd guess p==pounds, not pence as you would expect.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[erroneus]

As usual, artists get next to nothing. It's not a big difference. What they are facing is the realization that, especially in hard economic times, having a stranglehold on entertainment does not mean they can make people pay whatever they dictate. When faced with 0.22p being rejected and given 0.00p, they saw that people were more willing to go without than to pay too much. They CANNOT afford to let people realize that going without isn't such a bad option.

People are addicted to their lifestyles in that they are very reluctant to change. But when they see that some change might not be so bad, that endagers what the music industry has come to rely on.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[slim]

I don't see how much the Artists get from the "0.085p for each track streamed".

I bet it's extremely low.

Bear in mind the PRS represents songwriters. So the performer gets nothing from this, unless they're also the songwriter.

As such a fair proportion of what's collected should go to the songwriter - since the PRS is not in itself a profit making institution, and this money doesn't go towards record company expenses such as marketing.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[hattig]

If you're a lowly hobbyist/free internet radio station, with 100 listeners on average, playing 10 songs an hour, then each day you would stream 24000 songs, which would have costed you £52.80 before, but now costs you £20.40 - a significant saving.

If you're streaming to an average of 10,000 listeners, this turns you from having to have income (adverts, subscriptions, etc) of £5280 a day just to cover music costs, to income of £2040 a day - which is far more attainable.

If 1,000,000 people a day listen to internet radio for an average of 2 hours each, with 10 songs an hour, then the previous income for the group was £44,000 a day - not bad going, but I expect with this new pricing they hope that more streams are made, so that eventually 2m people listen for 4 hours a day to get them £68,000 a day income.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[slim]

I remember a day when the composers and songwriters were also the performers.

Nothing has changed in that respect whatsoever. Kanye West writes his own material. Frank Sinatra sang songs written by someone else. Mozart wrote music to be performed by other musicians.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[slim]

Er, Performing Rights Society?

Yes, you pay this Society for the right to perform the material they manage.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[drinkypoo]

Since you can easily get the download for free (often much more easily than paying) what consumers are really interested in from the rights holders is a license. The consumers are willing to go without the license.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[pbhj]

And -- best of all -- it's money that the record label doesn't get to touch.

Only if you own the copyright on your music. Which writers initially give up to the publishers.

"PRS for Music is a not-for-profit membership society. Music creators - writers, composers, publishers - join PRS for Music and give us permission to license to use of their music."

Which musicians making a living from selling music do not have publishers? They for example say things like:

"Collecting societies, like PRS for Music, exist to simplify the arrangement between the millions of music-users who require permission and the music creators who can provide a licence."

They define publishers as "music creators". On the whole very few professional music creators (the people who actually make the music) can provide a license. The publishing companies, Sony / Warner / EMI et al., own the rights and hence collect the royalty payments.

PRS think 1 person is an audience and that them listening to the radio constitutes a performance ( http://www.prsformusic.com/playingbroadcastingonline/music_for_businesses/Pages/WhatisPRSforMusic.aspx ):
"There is no statutory minimum of people required to constitute an audience. However, in some cases, PRS for Music does not charge a licence fee to workplaces with a single (lone) worker."

Note that if that person listens to a CD instead they need both a PRS and a PPL license in addition to paying the price for the CD.

---
Why does ./ have to strip out whitespace and make this unreadable?

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[shark72]

I should have been more clear. When referring to "labels" I meant record labels... the folks who press and ship CDs and who deal with recordings. Publishers deal with the music and lyrics in non-recorded form.

Publishers come in all shapes and sizes. Many, many composers and lyricists are also their own one-person publishing companies. Those with less business acumen (or who simply don't want to deal with things) will make use of a publishing company, but even in these cases, the publisher takes a minority of the revenue. As you mentioned, there are a few monolithic publishing companies that handle the publishing for thousands of works (Warner-Chappell comes to mind). In a few cases, publishing companies are owned by music conglomerates which also own record labels (Sony ATV, per your example).

But regardless of a music publisher's size or ownership, they're in service to the composers and lyricists. There's little point in signing up with a publisher that takes 100% of your publishing earnings -- this was prevalent in the 1960s with the "song factories" that used the work-for-hire model, but much less so today.

You're correct that collection societies provide an opportunity for big publishing companies to make a lot of money, but I don't think it's as bad for composers and lyricists as you paint it. As mentioned, the cash split is much more favorable to the composers/lyricists than the royalties for sales of recordings, and (unlike selling CDs) it's relatively easy for writers to be their own publishers.

Re:How much do the Artists get?

[slim]

Jeez, I wish I hadn't picked Kanye West. I had a bit of a mental block for modern artists, especially with trying to reach an international readership.

How about, Colin Meloy writes his own songs. Emmy The Great writes her own songs. Radiohead write their own songs. Cold War Kids write their own songs.

Grace Jones did not write her own songs. Neither Peggy Lee nor Shirley Bassey wrote Hey Big Spender.

Ah, sod specifics. There are great performers of yesteryear who didn't write their own songs. There are plenty of artists today who do write their own songs.

Also: there was plenty of crappy music in whatever era you look back so fondly upon. History prefers to remember the good bits.

Writing your own material is a ridiculous metric of artistic quality. Burt Bacharach is a terrible performer.

Dual Standards

[eldavojohn]

What I don't understand is that PRS asks for 3-5% of your Net Broadcasting Revenue yet if you're an online radio they ask for 6-8% of your total revenue. Why aren't these figures closer?

Also confusing to me is that I thought YouTube reached a deal with these guys back in 2007? Did that just fall apart?

Re:Dual Standards

[tttonyyy]

Also confusing to me is that I thought YouTube reached a deal with these guys back in 2007? Did that just fall apart?

The PRS wanted to increase the fees. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm back in March:
 

Mr Walker told BBC News the PRS was seeking a rise in fees "many, many factors" higher than the previous agreement.

I think they only realised they were shooting themselves in the foot after the trigger was already pulled.

Re:Dual Standards

[Richard W.M. Jones]

What I don't understand is that PRS asks for 3-5% of your Net Broadcasting Revenue yet if you're an online radio they ask for 6-8% of your total revenue.

Because they're a monopoly, backed by the power of the government, so they will define each market as they please and set their prices in each market based on maximizing the amount they can get away. Literally they'll do this until companies run away and exit the business, as apparently happened with YouTube.

If they wanted 20% from people wearing green clothes, they could demand it, because the people with green clothes would have no other choice other than to not play music in their shops and offices.

Rich.

Re:Dual Standards

[Spad]

What I don't understand is that PRS asks for 3-5% of your Net Broadcasting Revenue yet if you're an online radio they ask for 6-8% of your total revenue. Why aren't these figures closer?

Simple. While most web-based "radio" services have revenue, the majority don't make a profit and if they do it's generally a fairly small profit, so taxing their net revenue wouldn't make the PRS much, if any, money.

Comparitively, most over the air radio services have to make a profit to keep operating if they're commercial and if they're non- or not-for-profit such as student or hospital radio then they tend to come under fixed-rate tarrifs that are independent of their revenues.

Re:Dual Standards

[ledow]

Yeah, and when I read this story on TheReg / BBC, having read the previous stories covering the desired price increase, I nearly pissed myself. Well done to Google / Youtube for calling their bluff. This price *drop* (instead of their intended price increase) just goes to show that they can't afford to lose the exposure of being on YouTube (UK). So what does that tell you about their business model? It's not about "1 CD = 1 customer", it's about general brand, advertising, overall exposure and the majority of people wanting to just download and listen to music cheaply with restrictions.

They tried to profiteer, Google told them to get stuffed, they didn't listen, so Google pulled the plug (in the UK at least, you couldn't access YouTube music vids for certain songs), suddenly they're crawling back with a rate LOWER than they had started out from, because something's better than nothing. If they'd just kept their greed to themselves, they would have been on that original, higher rate.

We're coming closer to the real value

[Opportunist]

Wake me up when we're at 0.00.

Pandora back in the UK?

[Shrike82]

As a former user of Pandora in the UK I'm waiting for them to make a statement about this. The death of Pandora here was a real blow to me as a music lover. While the rate reduction isn't exactly mind-blowing in size I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be enough for it to return to the UK without me having to resort to unreliable proxies or VPNs.

I've bought a couple of CDs of bands that I'd only discovered through Pandora in the past - I'll bet that the PRS don't factor those new sales into their bleeding heart stories about how streaming music is forcing songwriters to live in cardboard boxes. Hyperbole I know, but they took my Pandora away dammit!

Re:Pandora back in the UK?

[Shrike82]

exactly.

Exactly.

We all know that every time you pirate a CD the artist actually loses money. ThePirateBay keep track of it all you see, and they send their findings to the PRS and the RIAA. They then debit money from artist's bank accounts for every pirated copy. You music pirates should be ashamed of yurselves...your taking money away from people like Britney Spears. She needs another mansion dammit!

are they insane?

[spyrochaete]

I can't be the only one to notice that 5% of comments on just about every single Youtube video ask the question "what song is this?"

This is free guerrilla marketing by a genuinely enthusiastic public, with real live potential customers clamouring, publicly, to know what they're hearing and where they can get it. You can't buy marketing like that. If the music industry was smart they'd provide a free Youtube service that identifies a video's soundtrack and includes a "buy now" link to iTunes or maybe a first-party store.

Re:are they insane?

[sy5t3m]

Are they insane? Yes, they are.
These are the same people who claim that playing TV or radio in public requires a license, even when there is no charge to view or listen, despite that section 72 of the copyright, designs and patents act says otherwise. They then attempt to sue police stations among others for breaking their fictitious interpretation of the law.

Re:are they insane?

[Ginger Unicorn]

I particularly begrudge paying these gouging extortionists for the privilege of playing music in a shop that sells their fucking music.

Spotify

[maccallr]

Spotify works well for me in the UK. I was sceptical until I tried it.

I have used Pandora a while back, and it was kind-of impressive, but didn't rock my world, and had many limitations.

With Spotify, you have to know what you want to listen to, but that's not so difficult really.

I'm assuming Spotify has direct licensing deals with the labels and shows a middle finger to the PRS!

"...when composers were also performers"

[N Monkey]

I remember a day when the composers and songwriters were also the performers.

Must have been a real pain for anyone doing symphonies. >8->

Re:Anyone know what the story with...

[jank1887]

the cake is a lie!

Re:The thing that amused me about TFA...

[notarockstar1979]

I don't think non-profit means what you think it means. It certainly doesn't mean you can't make a profit (I know one that makes a tidy little profit every year). It just means that profit is not the motivator for the business. Usually it means that the organization is operating for the "public good". I'm sure they're chartered as a public service organization of some sort.

Next up, cheaper bacon?

[Lemming Mark]

When I go into my local butchers, sometimes the radio is on. The butchers have to buy a license from the PRS - there's a letter on the wall certifying that they have, in fact, paid for the license to play radio in public. If people were going "Oh, I don't really want any bacon today ... hmmm, I do really dig the music at the butchers, though! Lets go anyhow ..." then perhaps it would be a *little* understandable (though not necessarily reasonable) that PRS wanted a share of the profits. But I really really don't think people are going to the butcher to listen to music and party amongst the cold meats. In any case I can already listen to the same stuff on my own radio!

Perhaps whilst they're reducing their rates the PRS could relax some of their more ridiculous rules about public listening and then I can afford (marginally) more bacon. Om nom nom nom.

Artists DO get paid for their work

[serutan]

"We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work..."

A little clarification: Musicians, even the ones with recording contracts, get paid to Perform, like they have for thousands of years. Very few musicians ever get actual money from record sales, because in a standard recording contract all the expenses of producing a record -- from recording to manufacturing to advertising and distribution -- are deducted from the musician's royalties, which in practice means musicians almost never receive a dime no matter how many records they sell. If the companies really wanted to "ensure the music artists are paid for their work," they could try actually paying royalties instead of making them disappear through bookkeeping.

What musicians do get out of recording is publicity and exposure, which gets them bigger gigs and higher ticket prices, which is where they make a living. Exposure is exposure, whether it comes from people buying a record, listening to it on the radio or at a friends house, downloading an mp3 for free or shoplifting a copy from WalMart. In no way does the method of acquiring the copy hurt the musician.

This endless "protecting the artists" refrain on the part of record companies is complete nonsense. Music "piracy" hurts them and them alone. If record companies suddenly ceased to exist, most musicians would be completely unaffected because they don't have recording contracts. The other .01% (a number I pulled out of my ass, but let's just say a tiny fraction) would have to get exposure in a different way, say for example by posting their songs for downloading, or by having wardrobe malfunctions onstage, hanging out with Paris Hilton, or going in and out of rehab a lot.