Over the past few years, streaming has become a prominent way in which people consume music. There are now many different apps that can be downloaded in order to do so, some having a monthly fee to use it to its fullest potential. Many don't understand this small fee, that ranges anywhere from five to ten dollars, saying that music is their right to have accessibility to, instead of a good that is purchased.
I think almost all of us can say that there was a stage in our lives when we illegally downloaded music. This stage for me occurred in middle school. I now go to a music school and have been taught the ways in which artists, songwriters, and producers get paid and it is far from the glitz and glamor that it may appear to be and have been given a new appreciation for how important it is to pay for the music that I listen to. To put it into perspective "Happy", by Pharell Williams, was the top performing single of 2014 and it only made $2700 in publisher and songwriter royalties from forty-three million Pandora streams.
The royalty rate, or the rate at which artists are paid each time their songs are physically bought or streamed, is incredibly important to an artist's revenue which is why certain people including me have thought that streaming services such as Spotify have been doing artists a disservice.
In 2014 Taylor Swift took her entire catalog of music off of Spotify. She felt that Spotify was not paying their artists fairly and did not want her music associated with a brand that didn't think it was important to pay the people behind the music fair wages. This feeling stemmed from the fact that many people who use Spotify do not have premium and are using it for free.
For every person that listens to it for free, the artist is getting paid less than if the listener would have bought Spotify premium. They also had a no-exceptions policy on windowing, which is when an artist releases his or her music exclusively for paid subscribers on a streaming service. This has changed.
Spotify has renegotiated with Universal Music Group in order to allow for a two week windowing period and in turn, they will pay a lower fee to record labels. With this new agreement, Swift has put her music back onto Spotify. Swift's influence has not only affected Spotify but other streaming services as well.
In 2015 Swift refused to put her music on Apple Music unless they started paying artists for the streams that were occurring in subscribers three-month trial period. Taylor faced a lot of backlash for this statement, with people saying it was selfish of her to ask for this since she had so much money. The thing is, is she wasn't doing it for herself. She was acting on behalf of new and less popular artists who truly needed any royalty money they could get in order to make a living for themselves. She won this battle and Apple agreed to pay royalties no matter when the music is streamed.
As a musician, it is so important for people to pay for music. So if anything I hope this article has inspired some to go and get an Apple or Spotify subscription. Musicians want to make music because its what they love to do, but in order to keep making art they need to have the money to be able to do so. Music has value, so please act like it.
