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.

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.