Guest post By Mike Huppe
President & CEO at SoundExchange
Creators – whether they be writers, actors, or musicians – are the heart of the entertainment industry. They inspire us with their words, move us with their performances, and get our blood pumping with their beats.
Now two of the major unions representing creators – the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) – have gone on strike to make the case for better pay and residuals, improved working conditions, fairer treatment in the age of streaming, and protections against the widespread use of artificial intelligence to replace creators.
This is the first time that writers and actors have gone on strike at the same time since 1960, and it has brought the movie and TV industry to a virtual standstill. After cable increased content to fill a new crop of channels, streaming platforms fueled an explosion of new series and features to feed a new business model. Now, production has ground to a halt and the availability of new movies and shows will dwindle in the coming days, weeks, and months.
At its core, this dispute is about ensuring that, even as business models evolve and change, creators are treated fairly so they can continue to do the work that brings meaning to them and joy to us.
At SoundExchange, we love creators. We champion their work. We’ve seen the music industry go through technology-driven disruption (just as the motion picture industry is now), and we were created to ensure that streaming music business models enable creators to make a living doing what they do best. We’ve been fighting for 20 years to build a fairer, simpler, and more efficient music industry – by successfully increasing royalty rates across a variety of platforms; by holding accountable those who seek to cheat creators; by increasing the speed and transparency of payments, and by scoring a big win for music creators with the Music Modernization Act in 2018 (which provide comprehensive music licensing reform).
And we continue to fight these battles.
As streaming matures and new royalty models are debated, and as technology platforms evolve in Web3 and the metaverse, SoundExchange will remain a strong and vocal voice to ensure creators are fairly compensated. As artificial intelligence improves and matures at an astounding rate, SoundExchange became a founding member of the Human Artistry CampAIgn to demand that the rights of human creators are at the center of any copyright and intellectual property decisions, and we are proud that both SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are among the coalition’s members.
And it’s worth noting that music performers are still not compensated – at all — for their work when played on AM/FM broadcast radio. For this reason, SoundExchange is a driving force in the effort to convince Congress to act on the American Music Fairness Act, which would require multi-billion-dollar radio corporations to pay performance royalties like digital streaming platforms do.
So, to the creators out there on strike, we say this. We stand with you and hope that these disputes can be resolved quickly in a way that supports fair treatment, compensation, and protections for creators. And for those of you who are registered with SoundExchange, we will continue to work every day to make sure that you receive the digital royalties that you are due in a timely manner.
We know this mission matters more now than ever.
[This post first appeared on LinkedIn]
Snoop Dogg had strong words for Spotify, Apple Music, and other music streaming services during an interview with former Apple Music Creative Director Larry Jackson at the Milken Institute Global Conference.
“I know I’m going off-script right now, but fuck it. This is business,” said Snoop “In a room full of business people and somebody may hear this so the next artist don’t have to struggle and cry for his money because some of these artists are streaming millions and millions and millions and millions of fucking streams and they don’t got no millions of dollars in the pot.”
We’re hearing more and more commentary like this post from John:
So how would that work? It probably couldn’t be a “strike” of the same kind as the UK Musicians Union strike against the BBC in 1980, the Writers Guild strike in 2007 or some of the handful of other famous ones. Those strikes were all related to creators who were employed by employers and that employment formed the basis of a collective bargaining agreement. Strikes are authorized by a vote of the membership and are a sign that collective bargaining has not produced a fair result.
Strikes or work actions usually produce images like this:
Another difference between collective bargaining strikes and artists against streaming is the striking workers’ well being. Strikes impose a cost on both sides and the costs are often a heavier burden for the worker.
Streaming is not that way. For most artists, streaming cannibalizes more sales that it offsets with income. David has written about this extensively. The choice for most artists is not getting streamed more–that is the false promise that Spotify tries to get you to buy into with their various payola schemes that are blatant exploitation.
Songwriters have led the way on this with the Ferrick and Lowery class action against Spotify and David’s class action against Rhapsody. The uprising against the ruling class in the frozen mechanicals protest is another example of songwriters standing together against exploitation.
Streaming presents different choices. The choice is whether to be on a streaming platform at all. YouTube can force you to participate due to their scummy manipulation of the loophole ridden DMCA, the worst nightmare that an incompetent and lard layered Congress ever imposed on creators at the behest of lobbyists, and that’s saying something. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with another MLC to make sure you know your place.
So you have to think about what a streaming strike would actually look like. It certainly would not have great economic impact for most artists because the income they would give up starts so many decimal places to the right.
One way to get started is to maintain an “Unfair” list for services that engage in anti-artist behavior. Like this guy:
What should the criteria be to get on the “Unfair” list? What would we all do with the unfair list?
We’ll be taking suggestions and thinking about exactly how this would work.
The Trichordist 
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