Tag: Transparency

Transparency Starts Upstream for Streaming Royalties | HuffPo – Chris Castle

We’ve often noted that if the economics at the top of the waterfall are near zero dollars (in microcents) then what trickles down will not get any better…

We’ve seen stories recently about various successes for artists in negotiations with major labels about “transparency” in the payment of the artist’s share of streaming royalties received by record companies. This is great news of course, but the new buzz word “transparency” should be understood in context. There is nothing the digital services would like more than to deflect the ire of artists and songwriters who are enraged about minuscule royalties away from the services and onto record companies or music publishers.

Creators need to be alert that they are not being duped into a false deflection because even in the best case, record companies can only pay on the royalties they receive from services.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE HUFFINGTON POST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-castle/transparency-starts-upstr_b_8238934.html

by trichordist

Streaming “Transparency” and the 70% Black Box Lie… The Solution Is #gettherateright

The argument goes something like this…

Streaming companies are paying 70% of their revenue but artists are not getting paid enough. This must be the result of record labels and rights holders not passing on the right amount to artists.

The first question is, how do we know that streaming services are actually, really paying 70% of their top line gross revenue to rights holders? We know what the revenue of a transaction is on iTunes, because it is factually transparent – it is the list price being charged. We all know this, and we can all verify this. A $9.99 album on iTunes pays out $7.00, or 70%. Same thing for a $.99 song that pays out $.70, that’s also 70% of revenue.

But when if comes to streaming services however we do not know what the revenue is that should be credited to artists and rights holders. This is what is actually of concern. There is a big black box at the top of the waterfall from which all other money flows downstream.

So if streaming services are paying 70% of revenue, what exactly is that revenue? Let us see it. So here we are with the issue of transparency. If we can’t actually see or know what that number is then yes, the low payouts are very much of concern and have very little to do with intermediaries.

We can disagree about how the 70% of revenue is passed onto artists from iTunes and other transactional sales. But one thing is clear, we all understand the transparent economics of how much money is generated on each transaction. This is not so with streaming. So without transparency at the top of the waterfall, everything that follows is suspect.

More importantly, and more to the point, if there are established retail and wholesale rates for each stream, the calculations become immediately transparent in the same way they are with Itunes. See, the issue here is not what is going on downstream, but rather what is happening at the top of the waterfall.

“WE HAVE A MONETIZATION PROBLEM”

The truth is by now (and everyone should be able to agree on this), we know that streaming creates too little revenue relative to the value of the product. In other words the product is being sold to the consumer for less than the cost that it takes to create and produce it, and still remain sustainable.

In simple terms this is expressed as selling a Porsche for one dollar. It doesn’t matter how many Porsche’s you sell for one dollar while paying out 70% of the revenue, there will never be enough money to actually pay for the cost producing the car. Porsche’s, like professional music are expensive to produce. Despite the advances in recording technology, it is he cost of human labor that is the most important in the value chain.

This is the economics of music streaming in a nutshell, but with one added twist. The Porsche may be sold for one dollar one month, and be sold for only eighty cents the next month, and maybe the month after that sold for a dollar and ten cents. This is because of the fixed (and unsustainable) revenue pool that is divided by the total number of plays.

The common sense solution would be to establish a fixed per stream rate at each platform. This is the most simple way to encourage transparency and fairness as the revenue generated per stream can be transparently and easily calculated from top line data – no more black box at the top of the waterfall. The funny thing is, the people shouting the loudest for transparency also seem to be the most opposed to the easiest solution. Why is that?

So, if we are to have conversations about transparency let’s at least be clear about what it is that we actually need to see.

 

by Trichordist Editor

@BerkleeCollege Shows They Aren’t Serious, Responds to Our Criticism with Straw Man Argument

Professor Whiteboard Trichordist vs Berklee item 1

Berklee College of Music has still not addressed our fundamental criticism of their report. 

A few days ago I had an email conversation with Panos Panay who may or may not have authored the flawed Berklee College of Music report on transparency and fair pay in the music business.   In our conversation he indicated that he thought our list of omissions were valid criticisms of their report.  I encouraged him to issue a follow-up report or letter.

Yesterday Berklee did indeed issue a follow-up.  But it was less of an actual correction or update and more of a defensive “fuck you.”  Yes, they squandered their opportunity to have a real discussion, by following up with a bullshit straw man argument, that completely misrepresents our criticism of the report.  These guys are not interested in a real and honest discussion.  Therefore don’t expect an honest discussion at their conference either. In other words don’t waste your money.

Here’s what they say about our criticism in their follow up:
“Some have questioned the role of digital services in this debate. It is important to remember that most online music services pay 70% of their revenue to rights holders (except YouTube, who should be encouraged to pay more than their current 50%), and we believe that this technology for distribution is a good thing. It is impossible to put the “Internet genie back in the bottle” — let’s not forget that the main source of industry woes 5 years ago was piracy — and at least a business model has evolved that has people paying for music again” 

Classic straw man argument.

We don’t think “the technology” is a bad thing, and we are not trying to put the “internet genie back in the bottle.”  If you want to put it in terms of “internet genies” we are asking the internet genies to drop their NDAs and to exhibit more transparency on advertising revenues and expenses.   This is clearly illustrated in the whiteboard photo above.  Further the email record clearly  indicates that Panay understands our criticisms.  The only conclusion is that Berklee knowingly misrepresented our criticisms of their report.

This is classic demagoguing.  Trying to neutralize your critics by dishonestly claiming they are saying something they are not.  Berklee implies we are “trying to put the internet genie back in the bottle”  or somehow we are against streaming technology because they wish to portray us as hopeless luddites that are completely out of touch with the modern world. Yet facts are facts, our criticism illustrates a deeper understanding of the revenue flow in the digital world than their sloppy and biased report.

I don’t understand how someone at an academic institution can engage in this sort of demagoguing and still have a job.   My academic institution would really have a problem with me issuing an official statement in the name of the institution that engaged in this level of dishonesty.

At the very least from a public relations stand point Berklee needs to learn to stop “poking the bear.”  Especially this bear.  They just gave us at least five new posts on why rights holders and artists should NOT go to their “Rethink”  conference.

 

BUT SPOTIFY IS PAYING 70% OF GROSS TO ARTISTS, ISN’T THAT FAIR? NO, AND HERE’S WHY…

 

Why Digital Exec’s ARPU is Bad Math and also Bad Philosophy for Artists.

 

 

by Dr. David C Lowery

The Streaming Price Bible – Spotify, YouTube and What 1 Million Plays Means to You!

Several of our posts on streaming pay rates aggregated into one single source. Enjoy…

[UN to Airlift Calculators, Behavioral Economics Textbooks to Digital Music Industry]

musicstreamingindex020114[EDITORS NOTE: All of the data above is aggregated. In all cases the total amount of revenue is divided by the total number of the streams per service  (ex: $5,210 / 1,000,000 = .00521 per stream). In cases where there are multiple tiers and pricing structures (like Spotify), these are all summed together and divided to create an averaged, single rate per play.]

If the services at the top of the list like Nokia, Google Play and Xbox Music can pay more per play, why can’t the services at the bottom of the list like Spotify and YouTube?

We’ll give you a hint, the less streams/plays there are the more each play pays. The more plays there are the less each stream/play pays. Tell us again about how these services will scale. Looking at this data it seems pretty clear that the larger the service get’s, the less artists are paid per stream.

So do you think streaming royalty rates are really going to increase as these services “scale”? No, we didn’t either.

[ BREAKING! Apple Announces Itunes One Dollar Albums and Ten Cent Song Downloads In Time For The Holidays! | Sillycon Daily News ]

 

StreamingPriceIndexwYOUTUBE

We’ve been waiting for someone to send us this kind of data. This info was provided anonymously by an indie label (we were provided screenshots but anonymized this info to a spreadsheet). Through the cooperative and collaborative efforts of artists such as Zoe Keating and The Cynical Musician we hope to build more data sets for musicians to compare real world numbers.

In our on going quest for openness and transparency on what artists are actually getting paid we’d love to hear from our readers if their numbers and experience are consistent with these numbers below. At the very least, these numbers should be the starting point of larger conversations for artists to share their information with each other.

Remember, no music = no business.

whatyoutubereallypaysFor whatever reason there appear to be a lot of unmonetized views in the aggregate. So let’s just focus on the plays earning 100% of the revenue pool in the blue set. These are videos where the uploader retains 100% of the rights in the video including the music, the publishing and the video content itself.

Plays  Earnings  Per Play
2,023,295 $3,611.84 $0.00179
1,140,384 $2,155.69 $0.00189
415,341 $624.54 $0.00150
240,499 $371.47 $0.00154
221,078 $313.47 $0.00142
TOTALS TOTALS AVERAGE
4,040,597 $7,077.01 $0.00175

So it appears that YouTube is currently paying $1,750 per million plays gross.

We understand that people reading this may report other numbers, and that’s the point. There is no openness or transparency from either Spotify or YouTube on what type of revenue artists can expect to earn and under what specific conditions. So until these services provide openness and transparency to musicians and creators, “sharing” this type of data is going to be the best we’re going to be able to do as East Bay Ray comments in his interview with NPR.

As we’re now in a world where you need you need a million of anything to be meaningful here’s a benchmark of where YouTube ranks against Spotify.

Service  Plays  Per Play  Total  Notes 
Spotify To Performers/Master Rights 1,000,000 0.00521 $5,210.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only
Spotify To Songwrtiers / Publishers This revenue is for the same 1m Plays Above 0.000521 $521.00 Gross Payable to Songwriter/s & Publisher/s (estimated)
YouTube Artist Channel 1,000,000 0.00175 $1,750.00 Gross Payable for All Rights Video, Master & Publishing
YouTube CMS (Adiam / AdRev) ** 1,000,000 0.00032 $321.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only

The bottom line here is if we want to see what advertising supported free streaming looks like at scale it’s YouTube. And if these are the numbers artists can hope to earn with a baseline in the millions of plays it speaks volumes to the unsustainability of these models for individual creators and musicians.

Meet the New Boss: YouTube’s Monopoly on Video | MTP

It’s also important to remember that the pie only grows with increased revenue which can only come from advertising revenue (free tier) and subscription fees (paid tier). But once the revenue pool has been set, monthly, than all of the streams are divided by that revenue pool for that month – so the more streams there are, the less each stream is worth.

All adrev, streaming and subscription services work on the same basic models as YouTube (adrev) and Spotify (adrev & subs). If these services are growing plays but not revenue, each play is worth less because the services are paying out a fixed percentage of revenue every month divided by the number of total plays. Adding more subscribers, also adds more plays which means that there is less paid per play as the service scales in size.

This is why building to scale, on the backs of musicians who support these services, is a stab in the back to those very same artists. The service retains it’s margin, while the artists margin is reduced.

[** these numbers from a data set of revenue collected on over 8 million streams via CMS for an artist/master rights holder]

Here’s what 1 million streams looks like from different revenue perspectives on the two largest and mainstream streaming services.

Service  Units Per Unit  Total  Notes 
Spotify 1,000,000 $0.00521 $5,210.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only
Spotify same million units as above $0.00052 $521.00 Gross Payable to Songwriter/s & Publisher/s (est)
YouTube 1,000,000 $0.00175 $1,750.00 Gross Payable for All Rights Video, Master & Publishing
YouTube CMS Master Recording (Audiam / AdRev) 1,000,000 $0.00032 $321.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only
STREAMING TOTALS  3,000,000 $7,802.00 TOTAL REVENUE EARNED FOR 3 MILLION PLAYS ON SPOTIFY AND YOUTUBE 
Itunes Album Downloads 1,125 $7.00000 $7,875.00 Gross payable including Publishing

Here are some compelling stats on the break down of what percentage of videos on YouTube actually achieve breaking the 1 million play threshold, only 0.33%

CHART OF THE DAY: Half Of YouTube Videos Get Fewer Than 500 Views | Business Insider

Some 53% of YouTube’s videos have fewer than 500 views, says TubeMogul. About 30% have less than 100 views. Meanwhile, just 0.33% have more than 1 million views.

That’s not a huge surprise. But it highlights some of the struggles Google could have selling ads around all those unpopular videos, despite the money it has to spend to store them.

An artist needs to generate THREE MILLION PLAYS on the two largest and most popular streaming platforms to equal just 1,125 album downloads from Itunes. This is an important metric to put in context. In 2013 only 4.8% of new album releases sold 2,000 units or more. So if only 4.8% of artists can sell 2,000 units or more, how many artists can realistically generate over four million streams from the same album of material?

in 2013 there were 66,565 new releases, only 3,237 sold more than 2,000 units = 4.8% of new releases sold over 2,000 units

in 2013 there were 915,482 total releases in print, only 14,856 sold more than 2,000 units = 1.6% of ALL RELEASES in print sold more than 2,000 units.

This is even more important when you start to consider that many artists feel that growing a fan base of just 10,000 fans is enough to sustain a professional career. Note we said solo artists because these economics probably need to be multiplied by each band member added for the revenue distribution to remain sustainable. So a band of four people probably need a sales base of 40,000 fans to sustain a professional career for each member of the band.

Each 10,000 albums sold on iTunes (or 100,000 song downloads) generates $70,000 in revenue for the solo artist or band. To achieve the same revenue per 10,000 fans in streams, the band has to generate 30 million streaming plays (as detailed above) if they are distributing their music across the most common streaming services including Spotify and YouTube.

In 2013 the top 1% of new releases (which happen to be those 620 titles selling 20k units or more) totaled over 77% of the new release market share leaving the remaining 99% of new releases to divide up the remaining 23% of sales.

This appears to confirm our suspicion that the internet has not created a new middle class of empowered, independent and DIY artists but sadly has sentenced them to be hobbyists and non-professionals.

Meanwhile the major artists with substantial label backing dominate greater market share as they are the few who can sustain the attrition of a marketplace where illegally free and consequence free access to music remains the primary source of consumption.

What’s worse is that it is Silicon Valley corporate interests and Fortune 500 companies that are exploiting artists and musicians worse than labels ever did. New boss, worse than the old boss, indeed.

So whose feeling empowered?

RELATED:

UN to Airlift Calculators, Behavioral Economics Textbooks to Digital Music Industry

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

 

 

 

 

by Trichordist Editor

Google and YouTube want “Transparency and Openess” except when it applies to Google and YouTube!

Censorship anyone? Hmmmmm…

Because information wants to be free, as long as it’s your information. Which brings us to this: YouTube is now threatening to completely sever its relationship with digital distributor ONErpm, thanks to some ‘over-sharing’ of information in a recent guest post on Digital Music News. According to ONErpm founder Emmanuel Zunz, YouTube is unhappy that certain payout details and percentages were disclosed, with a complete blacklisting being threatened.

According to ONErpm, YouTube has demanded that the entire guest post – here – be ripped down, which would obliterate nearly 100 comments and the knowledgebase that comes with that (not to mention the detailed information in the post itself).

“Yt is threatening to cancel our agreement,” Zunz emailed. “It’s a very serious issue for us.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
YouTube Demands the Removal of a Digital Music News Guest Post…

The idea that Google is an open and transparent company is simply laughable to anyone who has actually dealt with the company and given Google’s monopoly over video search, when it makes threats about cutting someone off from YouTube, those threats are amplified with what is called a “force multiplier” in some circles (or an “A-hole multiplier” in others).  An amplification that varies directly with the effectiveness of YouTube’s monopoly over online search, a monopoly perfected for years by Google subsidizing YouTube with profits from its other monopoly businesses.

READ THE FULL STORY AT MUSIC TECH POLICY:
More Stupid New Boss Tricks: Google’s YouTube Artist Relations Debacle

RELATED:
So Much For Innovation, YouTuber’s Meet The New Boss…

by trichordist

Two Sincere Questions for The Future Of Music Coalition #SFMUSICTECH

We notice that Future of Music Coalition has submitted testimony to congress asking that they “represent” artists in the Copyright Reform process begun by Congress.

So since they’ve  volunteered to represent us.  We feel it only fair that they answer these two questions:

1. Who selects your advocacy positions?  
AFM, AFTRA, NARAS, Nashville Songwriters Assn, and ASCAP all have democratically elected boards who set the organizations’ positions.  Do you have members who vote for leadership?  If not, who is making those decisions?

2. Who funds your organization?
Google is listed as your first sponsor of your primary event.
http://futureofmusic.org/events/future-music-summit-2012

How much money do you get from Google?  Do you think you should be taking funding from a source many artists believe to be opposed to their interests?

FOMC Spondors

by Trichordist Editor