David Byrne’s recent op-ed for “The Guardian” where he finds another reason why music is dead or dying (gentrification of nyc the other day) has no suggestions as to how to save music from recorded music’s worsening ability to turn a buck. One would think that if Byrne had a cross to bear it would be with youtube who have made a generation clueless as to the entire concept of the album and unwilling to pay a dime for any recorded music.
For all of Bryne’s rantings about Spotify, and despite Thom Yorke and Byrne’s point that musicians aren’t making much more than pennies off Spotify, he seems to be missing the boat.
If Byrne wants more money off Spotify than Byrne should renegotiate his deal with major record labels who are part owners of Spotify.
If the major indie labels (all distributed by the big three by the way) want more money off Spotify, they should pull their clients and re-negotiate the terms of their contracts.
As is obvious, musicians can just say no, but if they just say no, what will they do then? The Musical world needs to Unionize and negotiate with the streaming services froma position of power. It isn’t Spotify’s fault that the only people they were forced to cut in was UMAC, WB and SONY; it is the musicians fault for being so short sighted in their contracts where their approval wasn’t needed.
Look, blaming Spotify for the loss in recording revenue is like blaming Oppenheimer for nuclear weapons: you’re shooting the messenger. If it wasn’t Spotify it would be somebody else and eventually most music will be streaming services.
The exceptions will be all the people, the vast majority of human beings, who buy a couple of albums a year and don’t want a streaming service. They’ll listen on Pandora or Youtube and buy what they want to.
So if musicians want more money from Spotify they better Joe Hill themselves and if Byrne wants to help so much he better stop being a muso git like Thom Yorke and get his hands dirty. Whining won’t help and nothing will change it.