James Gordon, Part Five: How Are Musicians Going to Survive?

In this last post based on my two interviews with Councilor James Gordon, I change tack and ask him about what it's like to be a musician in the 21st century. The pandemic certainly hasn't helped, but musicians---like journalists and authors---have been in free fall for decades as the Internet and the neo-Liberal consensus plays havoc with all the old ways in which people used to make a living.

Cloudwalking Owl · Streaming Service Question

James is right to be concerned about the pernicious effect of streaming services on the music business. I did some research and it appears that "the deck" is heavily stacked against people like him getting much money. 

The first issue that comes up is that there seems to be a lot of complexity involved that---whether it is necessary or not---is bound to confuse a lot of musicians. Readers need to understand that there are various different revenue streams. According to what I've read, there are the following complexities.

First, there's the distinction between royalties paid as performer versus composer. 

Secondly, there's a distinction between streaming music as live performance versus recorded music---exactly what category does streaming music fall into? It is sorta like live music in that it comes through a specific venue and you don't have a tangible item---like a sound file or album---that you can put into a device and listen to away from the streaming service. But, on the other hand, once you've paid your fee, you can play it whenever you want, as many times you want.

Third, Web-based streaming services are international. That means that there are different regulations governing things like taxation and royalty splits. Moreover, each different geographic region where the streaming service operates is governed by a local regulating body, which has it's own particular character. A key part of this is most of these regulatory bodies take a cut of the royalties in order to pay for the job of regulating how this money is split up and sent back to the individual artist. 

A further complication arises with regard to whether or not the artist is working as an independent who self-publishes their work, or, whether they have signed a contract with a distributor who controls where the music gets published. (That's how James ended up with a song complaining about Spotify being published on the service.) Depending on the relative sophistication (and relational power) of the artist when they signed their contract with their distributor, the amount of money they receive varies. And, as James mentioned, there is obviously a difference between the sort of deal that a "mega star" gets versus a "middle range" musician like James, and, someone who is just on the first rung of the ladder.

 

Added to this is the further complication that many streaming services have two different streams: a paid one and one based on advertising. It appears that some streaming businesses pay different rates to musicians depending on whether their work is mostly listened to through a paid subscription versus a "free" advertising based one. 

What this means for the individual artist like James is that it has to be damned hard to understand exactly what he is being paid per song. There are charts that get published comparing the different rates per service, but casual readers have to understand that the numbers are gross approximations based upon a variety of different assumptions. Having said all of that, according to the chart below, Councilor Gordon grosses .318 cents (on average) per song download on Spotify. Subtract the cut that the publisher takes, and you can see why he is "singing the blues" over royalties.

 

Individual track pay out, from the Sound Charts Blog.
Used under the Fair Dealing provision.
I've also tried to "sharpen" the numbers and letters using GIMP.
You might want to click on the image to get a clearer picture. 

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Cloudwalking Owl · Musician Collective Effort

James mentions Miranda Mulholland, who has a section of her personal blog devoted to her work advocating on behalf of fellow musicians. 

Miranda Mulholland, original photo by Steffen Paulus.
From her website gallery section, cropped by Bill Hulet.

Among other things, she offers a flowchart for musicians who are attempting to navigate the complex Canadian laws that govern royalties and how they collect them. I think it might be useful for people to take a look at it to get an idea of the issues involved.

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I have three things to add to this that I think people should remember. 

The first one is that big business has a tremendous ability to squeeze money out of individuals through chicanery. I'd like to offer an analogy from the film industry. Did you know, for example, that the original Star Wars movies never made a profit? It's true. You see if it made a profit, then various actors and other people involved with it would be able to make a percentage of it. Alas, it has always been a money loser. Take a look at the following You Tube story to show you the sad story.

Another thing that I think people should understand is how tremendously pervasive streaming music has become. In a 2018 Verge article the following pie chart broke down US music sales according to technology. As you can see, streaming services have captured 75% of the music industry. Most of the people who pay for streaming services or use one based on advertising have been convinced that they've already paid for the music that they listen to and it is going to be very difficult to convince them that they need to pay even more for tunes. This is going to be especially difficult as most of them are stuck doing crappy "gig economy" jobs while the top 20% siphoned off most of the wealth and refused to let anyone build affordable housing for them.

Finally, it's important to understand how wildly the number of competing musicians has grown over my short lifetime. When I was young, I pretty much only listened to CHUM FM and could only buy records at a department store, like Woolworth's. Things have changed dramatically.

I don't subscribe to a streaming service now, but I do listen to on-line radio and You Tube. I love the fact that the mass market has split up to the point where I can listen to damn near anything I want. This has included things that I would never, ever be able to hear when I was young. It turns out that I like a lot of strange stuff including European techno, traditional Chinese---even central Asian throat singing.

I consider this a very good thing. The problem is, however, that because the market has absolutely shattered into a million pieces, it is just that much harder for any individual musician to become a professional. Even if everyone was like me and dutifully sought out some way to pay at least some of these performers for the music we really like listening to, the odds are that some of the people like James Gordon and Miranda Mulholland---who could make a "middle-of-the-road" living as musicians before things changed---are no longer able to do so. 

Cloudwalking Owl · Patronage System To Pay Musicians

One example of a country that treats musicians with a little more respect is Ireland, which gives a tax exemption to it's artists. Here's a short government video that explains the system.

I don't really know how the government would be able to help support "creators" without being forced to choose "real artists" from "mere poseurs" and "tax cheats"---I'll let the economists and lawyers figure that out. But it occurs to me that there might be a way that the government would be able to give some sort of tax break to people who choose to be "patrons" of the arts. There might be some sort of system where everyone gets a certain amount of their tax money that they can channel to the artist of their choice which they can simply write into a form when it is time to pay their taxes. And, as I've said many times on this blog, the Guaranteed Annual Income could go a long way towards helping people like James and Miranda. 

We live in times of economic transition and I think that we should all be willing to experiment to see if we can find new ways of doing things.

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James mentions patronage. Well, that's a good idea. If you like these articles and you can afford it, why not support the author by making a monthly subscription? (Thanks for being so awesome Diana!) It's easy to do using Patreon or Pay Pal.

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The take away from this conversation is that the old model funding for the arts is broken. Collectively, the following ideas present themselves to my mind.

1. Musicians could form a strong union that would allow them to fight for a bigger part of the streaming music pie.
2. Musicians could form their own co-operative streaming service that would pay better rates.
3. The government could use the tax code to help musicians through either directly cutting taxes for them---as in Ireland, or, by creating tax incentives to increase the number of people willing to become their financial patrons.

Individually, people can do things right now if they have the means.

1. People who listen to music can wake up and realize that streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and, You Tube don't actually pay an adequate amount of money to musicians. This means that if you listen to a particular person or group a lot---and you can afford it---you really should either by supporting them through a patronage system like Patreon or buying their music through a download store. (Do people still sell CDs?)
2. If you like performances, you can go to their shows and buy some "merchandise". (Personally, I don't like performances because the ear-splitting volume hurts my ears. But I understand some people actually enjoy the experience of going deaf.)

Music has been part of the human condition for a very long time. It has survived lots of ups and downs. It will survive both streaming services and the COVID pandemic. But I think it's important that anyone who is self-conscious, concerned, and, well-off should consider doing what they can to help individual artists directly and the whole industry collectively. 

It's been a long ride and I would hate to see the guy with the guitar case kicked off the bus. Just to give you an idea of how long the trip has been, take a look at the following Peter Pringle video. It is his attempt to recreate a performance of the oldest known existing piece of human music---the Epic of Gilgamesh---as performed using the instrument and language of the time. 

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Moreover, I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!