Artists should take a principled stance against Spotify for songwriters

The following MBW Op/ed comes from David Israelite, President and CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association. The NMPA is the trade association representing America’s music publishers and their songwriting partners.

Neil Young recently pulled his music from Spotify, sparking a conversation about Joe Rogan, and what started as a podcaster boycott has launched a deeper scrutiny of the platform’s ethics on multiple fronts.

Whether it’s payments to musicians, its podcast hosts, or its founder’s investment in military AI technology, let’s not forget its treatment of songwriters. Right now, Spotify is aggressively trying to devalue the very people it relies on, which should force even more powerful artists to protest.

Since the dawn of streaming, Spotify has fought to pay songwriters as little as legally possible. Four years ago, the court that determines streaming royalty rates ruled that Spotify must increase what it pays authors and music publishers by more than 44%, to around 15% of its revenue. Although that was still too low, it was a huge step forward for music makers.

Unfortunately, shortly after this decision, Spotify took the unprecedented step of leading the charge to appeal this royalty increase, alongside Amazon, Google and Pandora. It was a devastating blow to the same creators he simultaneously celebrated on billboards and at parties far from the courtrooms of Washington, D.C.

This call threatens the bedrock of the entire music industry. If Spotify and Amazon are successful, songwriters could return about 10% of their earnings, adjusted for inflation, by far the lowest royalty rates in history.

Many artists don’t know this is happening because their record labels are able to trade with Spotify in the open market and often those same labels share platform equity. The reason they can and songwriters can’t goes back to a complex legal framework from 1909 that places songwriters under a compulsory license, meaning any artist can record and any platform can play a piece of music for a small fee dictated by the government. .

Copyright law is complex, but in short, Mr. Young, like most artists or song performers, has the legal right, through his record label, to remove his music from any digital platform. . However, songwriters do not have this right. As one can imagine, it’s extremely difficult to pressure Spotify to do better.

Taylor Swift has pulled her music from Spotify to be offered on its free tier. This started a global dialogue about the depreciation of music by streaming. It was proof that artists have influence. The law has left writers with so little sway that the only way to gain some financial fairness against the world’s biggest streaming service is for big-name artists to take principled stances as allies against heavy-handed tactics. used by Spotify.

“The old model of songwriters thriving on terrestrial radio is long gone, as streaming platforms have naturally reduced the time listeners spend on AM/FM stations”

It is extremely sad to come to this. The devastation of the industry by piracy in the early 2000s led us to often celebrate the “recovery” brought by streaming platforms. But in reality, these platforms have created a whole new problem for the songwriting class. As the record labels enjoyed a renaissance, songwriting went into a depression.

Don’t be fooled by headlines about billions in catalog sales. It’s the one percent, and these rights deals are bets on multi-decade exploitation, largely for the biggest artists in the business who also write music. The average successful songwriter, whose name you may not know but who writes the hits you know by heart, barely lives off streaming.

The old model of songwriters thriving on terrestrial radio is long gone, as streaming platforms have naturally reduced the time listeners spend on AM/FM stations. So without touring, merchandise, and big sponsorship deals, streaming revenue will dictate the future of the songwriting business, or lack thereof.

The money is there. Spotify will respond by saying that it already pays a lot for music rights. What he won’t clarify is that the vast majority of those funds go to record companies and artists. Record companies and artists shouldn’t be asked to take less. Spotify should pay more. The split between what performers get paid and songwriters are about 5:1. The company, which has a market cap of over $30 billion, has the ability to expand the pie and pay fairly, and engage the songwriting community in doing so. Instead, they fight, devastating the creations they should invest in.

Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, India Arie and others have expressed their concerns and taken action based on their beliefs, and we know that many, if not most, artists are also very committed to fairness to authors- composers. A calculation must be forced regarding how Spotify has consistently worked against them. Like other industries – from agriculture to fashion – where worker exploitation has been exposed – Spotify has to face the fact that its tactics have consequences.

Imagine what could happen if many other artists of their caliber shed the same light on what Spotify is doing to undermine songwriters and therefore users insisting on fairness as well. A sound music ecosystem is possible, if enough people demand it.The music industry around the world