Streaming Platforms Score a Win Against Artists… Again.
So back on March 19th, it was documented that all of these streaming platforms came together and decided to challenge this whole CRB movement of getting songwriters 44% more on their royalties.
But first, a little history, the Copyright Reality Board or CRB, is a panel of three judges appointed by the Library of Congress to oversee royalties back in early 2018, they voted two to one to uptick the amount of money that is to be distributed to songwriters. So once this decision was made, the board gave a onemonth long appeal process window to just hear the voices of concerns from the opposing parties like Spotify and Pandora, and of course, they all express their concerns or really dislikes because they don't wanna pay us any more money, the National Music Publishers Association President even came out and said, the fact that you're even going to fight this or to even express your concerns with the idea of paying songwriters more as effectively declaring war on the people that provide you content of which you make money every single day.So fast forward to right now, recently, after all of the people on the board for the CRB heard the appeals from Pandora and Spotify and others, and now it seems like they are walking back some of their decisions that they made back in 2018, not all the details are out yet, but when they are, you know, I'm gonna talk about it. Since Coronavirus hit, it seems as though the Board is very interested in listening to the labels and also the streaming platforms about the 44% mechanical royalty hike, as in they're interested in negotiating this I'm sure somewhere in all of this legislation, they're saying, Oh, we can't afford this, this will put us out of business, how much money do you need before you have enough... The people that are out there that are creating all this content that you're profiting from should be getting paid more, but it looks like they are going to play hard ball and they're going to force this on down the road using their lawyers to essentially make streaming less profitable for musicians and more profitable for the people who own the streaming platform, which by the way, don't own the music at all.
While I believe it's very important that everybody gets compensated for their work, streaming platforms provide an amazing opportunity for people to connect with fans across the world that we didn't used to have, and they should be financially compensated for that.
It shouldn't be criminal rates and the musicians should be able to profit from that in some kind of way, and it seems like the threshold for profiting off of a piece of art, it takes a very long time to make, and it's very expensive to make just seems a little too far removed, just my opinion.