Fairer royalties for streaming, demands lobby group

Royalties paid to musicians must be modernised to reflect the digital environment in which music is largely consumed, according to AMP (Artists, Managers, Performers), the recently formed alliance between the Musicians’ Union, the Music Managers’ Forum and the Featured Artists Coalition. In a submission to the EU consultation on copyright, the group calls for streaming royalties to be split equally between the artist and the label.

AMP believes paying streaming royalties on a sales basis, which is current standard practice, makes no sense and is unfair to artists. It is asking for complete transparency in accounting for all digital income related to musicians’ work, and specifically for artists to be given a 50/50 split of streaming royalties. At the heart of its demands is the assertion that streaming is not a ‘sale’ in the traditional sense and does not involve any of the associated costs for a record company. General Secretary of the Musicians’ Union John Smith said: “It is no longer necessary for a record company to pay to manufacture, store and distribute physical product. In the pre-digital era, artists understood that these costs went some way to justifying the low royalty rate. There are none of these costs associated with streaming, so why are the labels paying a royalty based on a physical sale?”