The convenience and low costs of music streaming services have made them a hit with users. Musicians have benefited, too, because the services offer an effective platform for them to advertise their brands and distribute their product to a worldwide audience. But a debate is raging within the industry about fee scales as well as the alleged lack of transparency regarding payment structure.
The issue has been percolating since the advent of Napster in 1999, but the debate came to a boil when pop superstar Taylor Swift recently decided to restrict her new album, "1989," from streaming service Spotify.
Swift's shunning of the popular service has had a ripple effect across the industry, prompting other artists to speak out – like country mega-star Garth Brooks – who last week called YouTube "the devil" in a Rolling Stone Country interview. "They claim they pay people," he reportedly said. "[But] they're not paying anything."
Angel said he's not sure how the payment models at the digital music services can be rectified.
"I'm not sure of the profit margins of Spotify and Pandora. They claim that they don't make a lot of money or some years they lost money," he said. (Last week, the New York Times reported that Spotify had more than $1 billion in revenue but had yet to turn a profit.)
"It takes a few years to get profitable, but when they do start making bigger profits, I would hope they would give a bigger share to artists. Obviously for Taylor Swift, she's made a statement. . . . It's interesting, because I was listening to the business channel and they were talking about music and they said that 1 percent of the musical artists in this country account for over 70 percent of the income. And the only real income is from performing live because the actual money for royalties is dwindling."
The questions are getting louder, and the answers are unclear. But one thing seems to be for certain: many in the music industry feel the system is broken.
"To be fair, there are people who have been trying and corporations that have been trying, and that's the important part," said Butler. "We can't fixate on the perfect solution, but we can fixate on a fair solution. Let's find a way to be fair. When you're not transparent, you're not starting from a good place."
