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?

[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.

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

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

[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!

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.

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!