An Artist-Friendly Music Industry

The music industry – like many other entertainment industries – is undeniably flawed. Labels are in the money business not the art business. The industry itself was founded on racism and misogyny and survives to this day on the exploitation of artists particularly Black and women artists. I can continue but this site is largely aware of the issues in the industry already. I wanted to start a discussion about how the industry can change to be more artist-friendly.

Independence & Label Reform

Independence from labels is the most possible it has ever been. Yet barriers still exist that prevent it from being truly possible. To give some context on this I recommend having a brief read through my previous thread on the music industry here here. An artist like Frank Ocean is heralded as proof that artists can be independent. This is a false comparison. Frank indeed has no record deal and owns his masters, but this only occurred after he was a star. He already had capital, he already had a fanbase and he already had connections deep in the industry. Even with this he isn’t independent in a true sense. He has a publishing deal with Warner-Chappell (again read the music industry thread for context on what this means), he has a deal with indie label XL Recordings to distribute physicals, he is signed to a music management agency and he distributed blonde and Endless with the help of an Apple deal.

Apple signed a deal with Frank Ocean for exclusive initial access to both Endless and blonde in 2016

To herald Frank Ocean as an example of an artist who is proof that independent artists are viable in the current climate is wrong. While its possible for artists to be fairly independent, it’s not even possible for a major artist with resources to be truly independent from labels yet. Services like Spotify and playlists are deeply tied to labels, as are Billboard, management is still needed to do a lot of the bureaucratic work and publishing is often a nightmare to navigate without a deal.
So what can be done?

Awareness

Awareness is the single most important thing when it comes to label reform. These labels are not going to change. They want money, they want to stay alive and functioning. They will be predatory and capitalistic because that is how they are built. It is vital that young artists take time to understand what it means to own masters, what a 360 contract is, how an advance works and to have good legal representation when it comes to signing a contract. The good news is that the tide is shifting. There’s a massive push especially in Hip-Hop for artists to own their masters. Even young artists like NBA YB and Lil Pump are pushing for ownership of their masters. Will this make them independent? Not a chance but it is a massive difference in awareness.

New Platforms

Are you an entrepreneur? I believe the future of labels lies in yet to be created platforms. Think about crowdfunding. Currently people buy merch, they buy songs to support artists and they sit in Discord chats creating groups to raise money to buy leaked songs. What if we directed these funds into a crowdfunding platform for new artists. The consumer benefits when artists have creative freedom. The biggest thing stopping new artists from being independent is a lack of money. If artists had a platform where they could raise money from dedicated fans to put towards promotion, towards PR, towards sample clearance, towards distribution, then independence would become significantly more viable for young artists.

Masters are one of the reasons labels are so powerful. While awareness after signing is good, its vital that artists like YB are aware of this before they sign draconian deals.

Restrictions

This is unlikely to happen, but another option is regulation on labels. Labels should not be able to sign artists to 360 contracts in my opinion. If government regulation prevented this, we would start to see a fairer industry.

Streaming

Streaming is obviously the future of music. Anyone denying this is delusional. While criticism about payment from streaming services is somewhat overblown – a ‘sale’ from streaming means the same amount of money is generated as a pure sale – it needs to increase. As labels lose influence, streaming services gain influence. So what needs to happen in this area?

No Exclusives

Exclusives benefit no one but streaming services. Artists lose a significant part of their fanbase who can no longer access their music, consumers are unable to access the music via the platforms they pay for and streaming services gain more consumers and labels line their pockets from the exclusive deal. It is imperative that any indication of streaming services moving towards exclusives in any real capacity is met with harsh criticism.

Drake’s behemoth 2016 album ‘Views’ was another Apple exclusive. Fortunately the practice seems to have halted

Progressive Payment Scheme

This is maybe the thing I’m most excited about. There are valid criticisms to this – labels could choose to take a scaling rate from artists for example, but I think this could make a massive difference in streaming value. A lot of people say that streaming services should just pay artists more. This is not really viable. Spotify only became profitable for the first-time last year. They can’t just increase payments by any significant amount while staying afloat.

I propose they run streaming profits like tax brackets. Currently Spotify do the opposite. The top artists earn more per song than smaller artists. A Finland study concluded that “It is also clear that the pro rata model favors the few top-tier artists who get the biggest amounts of plays.”

Thom Yorke of Radiohead was one artist raising concerns with streaming. Not a coincidence that he is signed to an indie label

I wanted to take some time to a***yze proper values, but the data just isn’t available. But I’ll run an example with made up numbers to explain:
Let’s say we have 100m streams total for one day on Spotify. 90m of these streams are on songs that have 20m+ lifetime streams (Group A). 5m are on songs that have 10-20m lifetime streams (Group B). 3m are on songs that have 1-10m lifetime streams (Group C etc.). 1m are on songs that have 500k-1m streams. 500k are on songs that have 50k-500k lifetime streams. And the other 500k are on songs that have 0-50k lifetime streams. I don’t know how true this is but it’s a rough estimate.

Currently Spotify pays $0.00318 per stream roughly. This means 100m streams is equal to $318k. Group A gets 90% of this - $286k, B gets 5% - $16k, C gets 3% - $10k, D gets 1% - $3k and E and F get $1500 each. You can see the issue with this. Artists with lower lifetime streams need money more than artists who have songs with millions of streams. And streaming constitutes a massive part of artist revenue in the current industry. I propose that instead the streams are paid out on a progressive basis.

For example – the first 50k streams of a song pay at a rate of $0.10 (30x as high). The next 450k pay at a rate of $0.05 (15x as high). Up to 10m streams pays at $0.01 (3x as high). Up to 20m streams pays at the current rate of $0.003. Over 20m streams pays at $0.024 (23% lower than the current rate.). This works exactly like a tax system – you will always have more money for each additional stream but as you move through the brackets the value of each additional stream lowers. Under this model using the numbers above artists in Group A receive $216k, B receive $16k, D receive $10k, E receive $25k and F receive $50k. The total amount paid out is still the same but now it goes proportionately more to artists who need it – rather than artists with billions of streams who the labels take a significant chunk from.

Just as one more example we’ll look at Blinding Lights by The Weeknd. It has 1.2bn streams on Spotify. Under the current payment scheme this represents around $3.8m in revenue. Under my proposed progressive system this would be done like this

The first 50k streams pay out $0.10 so that’s $5k
The next 450k streams pay out $0.05 so that’s $22.5k
The next 9.5m streams pay out $0.01 so that’s $95k
The next 10m streams pay out at the current rate so that’s $32k
The next 1.18bn streams pay out at $0.024 so that’s $2.8m

Total payout is now around $3m. This is exactly the type of song the system targets. It reduces payouts after a point in order to fund higher payouts for smaller songs.

earnings under my proposed progressive scheme vs the current scheme. the point at which my scheme becomes worse for the artist is when their songs has over 180m streams

Charts

Finally charts. There is an idea that streaming is ruining charts. This is patently false. Charts nowadays represent the least label influence in years. The bundle rule will help a lot. But any label influence is still a problem and hurts smaller artists so I have some propositions.

Cut Radio

Radio is antiquated, pop-dominated, and major label dominated. It serves only as a tool for labels to force songs onto people and onto the charts. Labels can directly pay for radio plays which directly count for chart placement. It is long past time for Billboard to remove Airplay entirely from chart calculations.

The top songs for radio in the first half of 2020. Note how pop-centric and label dominated the list is

Remixes

Remixes currently are additional – so remixes of songs count towards a chart position regardless of whether the remix constitutes more than half of the chart points. For example, if The Weeknd releases a blinding lights remix, any streams or purchases of that count towards chart position even if the remix never gets credited on the chart. I propose that instead, whichever is the highest charting of the remix or the original song gets credited and charts with only that versions chart points. This will help stop labels from keeping the Top 10 stagnant through remixes and alternate versions.

Sales Rule

Currently 4 purchases of one song are allowed on a credit card. Next week you will see Nicki Minaj chart a song in the top 3 that no one is listening to. They buy 4 clean copies, 4 explicit copies, 4 copies from one website and 4 copies from another. This is being absolutely abused and its time to change the rules. 2 copies should be the limit and it should be 2 copies across multiple platforms or versions. If a remix is released 1 additional copy of that is allowed per card.

Discussion

I want to know what you guys think

What are the biggest issues with the industry right now in your opinions?
What changes do you agree with here and what don’t you agree with?
What changes do you think could help?
Do you think things are getting better or worse for small artists?

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10 million streams only 30k

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i completely forgot that exclusive albums existed

No wonder these artists mostly survive on concerts

Artist-friendly

make so much money

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lmk if yall got @'d cause idk if it works to do 10 or not

Wasn’t Uzi only paid 900K for
Xo

IN SAFE THREAD

artists dont make that much money lol

if you want me to bring out details I can but labels reap so much of the profit

Touring

No wonder Russ is so rich, mf keeps all his profits from touring and streams

superstar artists shouldn't have to tour to make money

wild right

under my proposed system it would pay out $125k instead of $31k

If I made a song that got 10 million plays and I made less money off of it than I make working a 9 to 5 I’d kill myself no cap

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Fax

@ragedsycokiller did you get notified ?