Rights Reversion and Contract Adjustment

Over the past year, I have been working with Hyojung Sun of the University of York on a report that was commissioned by the UK's Intellectual Property Office. This research was prompted by recommendations from the DCMS Select Committee's Inquiry into the Economics of Music Streaming that there should be changes to UK copyright law to help benefit music creator revenues. These recommendations concern a reversion right (similar to the termination right in the US) and a right of contract adjustment (similar to adjustment right that is outlined in the European Unions's Digital Single Market Directive). The report was published two weeks ago and is available here in html form and here in pdf form. 

Following the publication of this report, Chris Cooke of Complete Music Update commented that government, rights holders and music creators should now begin a 'formal remuneration conversation'. 

Owning the Masters

My new book, Owning the Masters: A History of Sound Recording Copyright was published by Bloomsbury yesterday. It tells the story of how this form of copyright was developed and claimed by the recording industry, and how recording artists are now claiming this copyright for themselves. The book also looks at how this copyright has been applied to different forms of distributing music - physical products, radio, downloading, streaming - and how it shapes and is being shaped by our digital age. As the blurb says, 'This is an essential subject for an understanding of the economic, artistic and political value of recorded sound'.

Like recorded music, the book comes in a variety of formats: hardback, paperback, eBook. 

Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Era

 

For the past year and a half I have been investigating the subject of creators’ earnings, working alongside my excellent colleagues Hyojung Sun, David Hesmondhalgh and Kenny Barr.

 

We have produced two reports, one investigating streaming revenues, while the other looks at the turn to ‘buy-out’ payments in the audio visual market. The reports were commissioned by the IPO, who have published them today (available from this link).

 

The IPO are trailing the first report as ‘ground-breaking research into how creators earn money through streaming’, and a separate report issued by the government yesterday has described it as ‘the most comprehensive study of music creators’ earnings ever completed in the UK’. Music Ally have meanwhile described it as ‘an important study that deserves to be read widely’. Please read!

Mercury Queen

The Conversation has published an article that I’ve written about last night’s Mercury Prize. Their edited version can be accessed this link. The original can be found below.

 

 

Sometimes the result feels obvious. Arlo Parks, the bookies’ favourite, was always likely to win the Mercury Prize for the best British and Irish album of the year. This is not because Collapsed in Sunbeams is the most worthy album musically. Each of the shortlisted records could have made a claim in this respect. Instead, it is because the prize tends to be awarded to artists who capture the zeitgeist. Parks typifies 2021 in a way that escapes the other nominees. Outlining their decision at the award ceremony last night, the judges commended ‘just how much she represents a generation of people and talks about themes that are so timely to now’. Collapsed in Sunbeams provides succour for our pandemic lives, ‘we need Arlo Parks’ music: it’s healing, it’s comforting, it’s uplifting.’

            It would be going too far to suggest that artists create albums with the Mercury Prize in mind, but the award does form part of promotional strategies. Above all else, it is regarded as providing a sales boost. Unlike the Booker Prize for fiction, with which it is often compared, this boost forms part of the media coverage (and part of the prize’s Wikipedia page). The shortlisting of Collapsed in Sunbeams resulted in a sales increase of 16.7%. Another of the nominees, Laura Mvula’s Pink Noise, witnessed a 50% rise.

Yet there is a tension in this prize. It attempts to capture the pulse of the nation, but in many ways the long-playing record is a thing of the past. Some commenters believe that albums reached their peak as an artform half a century ago. In the current century, this format can be viewed as being an irrelevance. Rather than listening to albums in toto, consumers are now more likely to stream individual tracks. In 2019, the British research company, MIDiA found that just 10% of consumers listened to physical albums, and only 10% listened to albums in full on streaming services. The preference, instead, is the algorithms of playlists.  

Artists have responded in kind. Some, such as Calvin Harris, no longer make albums. There is divergence between singles and albums acts. Statistically, singles can be viewed as being more representative of the public. This week’s number one, ‘Bad Habits’ by Ed Sheeran, has been streamed over 400 million times on Spotify alone. In contrast, prior to last night’s award, Collapsed in Sunbeams had just 43,311 UK sales.

            The record business still clings to the idea of the album, nonetheless. The Mercury Prize is organized by the UK’s trade body, the BPI. Rather than accept the dominance of the access mode of listening, the recording industry converts streaming activity into ‘album equivalent sales’. Figures are reported on the basis that 1000 streams across all tracks of an album is equal to the sale of one physical album. Music business analyst Tim Ingham has described this formula as ‘self-evident madness’. It is based on the notion that the two tallies will generate similar royalties. This is economically false: the calculation has been in place for ten years, a period in which the average per-stream rate has halved, while the average price of a physical album has increased. In addition, it provides a false equivalence across different methods of consumption. In reaching the 1000 streams total, there is no need for listeners to experience the music as an album. The figures are instead compiled from their atomized activities.

            The Mercury Prize has been in existence since 1992. Ostensibly, its thirty winners have fulfilled the same function: they have captured the spirit of the times to create the best album of the year. Since the turn to online services, however, the award has undertaken an additional role. It is upholding the idea of the album in the face of technological change. The televised event is even structured like a record. There are twelve shortlisted nominees, matching the average number of tracks on album. They perform their hit tracks in turn, mirroring the pattern of a compilation LP.

            This might feel anachronistic, but it is a worthwhile task. Many artists do still think in terms of collections songs. The album continues to provide a great resource with which to outline a musical vision. The prize also does an effective of job of introducing audiences to these albums and increasing their ‘sales’. Put another way, would any of us prefer a Mercury Prize for the playlist of the year?

Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Age Survey

 

 

I am involved in a research project that is examining music creators’ earnings in the streaming age. As part of this project, we're looking for UK-based music creators, at all stages of their careers, working in all genres to take part in the debate by completing a short survey: https://bit.ly/3l3MKtx. The questions should take around 10 minutes to answer and all contributions are fully anonymous. 

 

The survey has been devised in consultation with representatives of songwriters, composers, performers and producers, alongside stakeholders from the recording and music publishing industries. It has been prepared by AudienceNet, and is funded by a Research England grant to the University of Leeds. It forms part of the Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Age project undertaken by the Universities of Leeds, Middlesex and Ulster, which has been commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office in partnership with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre.

 

Please make sure you participate before it ends, midnight on Wednesday 24 March 2020.

Unfinished Symphony

Three years ago to the day I was writing about the Verve’s 1997 song ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, searching for the author who had been most deprived. Famously, the composition has been attributed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as a result of the inclusion of a looped sample of their song ‘The Last Time’, as recorded by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra in 1965.

            There have been developments. Richard Ashcroft, the singer of the Verve who wrote the main body of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ (i.e the 'unsampled' parts of the song) has become increasingly outraged at his lack of royalties. In November last year he declared, ‘I’m coming for that money. Someone stole god knows how many million dollars off me in 1997, and they’ve still got it’. He was pointing towards Jody Klein, the son of Allen Klein and inheritor of his publishing company, ABKCO. It is ABKCO who control the Rolling Stones' early repertoire and who had demanded 100% of the publishing royalties for ‘Bittersweet Symphony’.

There are reasons for Ashcroft’s intensified fury. Firstly, he was promoting his new album, Natural Rebel and this publicity was good publicity. Secondly, as I pointed out in my original blog entry, in the days of physical products he would not, ultimately, have been deprived. He may not have had the publishing for the Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, but he did write the majority of the songs on its parent album, Urban Hymns, and would have received nearly 70% of the songwriting royalties each time a copy was sold. Urban Hymns is a platinum selling record in America and it is the 17^th best-selling album of all time in the UK. Unfortunately for Ashcroft, streaming has taken us to a world where it is singles rather than albums that rule. ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ is his most successful song and he receives nothing for it when it stands on its own. He suggests that it is worth $50 million and that this money has been stolen from him.

            Jagger and Richards appear to have listened. Last week Ashcroft received the Outstanding Contribution to British Music prize at the Ivor Novello Awards. He used the occasion to announce:

As of last month Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to give me their share of the song ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. This remarkable and life affirming turn of events was made possible by a kind and magnanimous gesture from Mick and Keith, who have also agreed that they are happy for the writing credit to exclude their names and all their royalties derived from the song they will now pass to me.

I’m not sure if this is a happy ending. In the first instance, the copyright details for ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ have not yet been changed. The money, at present, is still going ABKCO. In addition, if the song is to be credited to Ashcroft, this might ruffle feathers elsewhere. Ashcroft believes he should have the sole credit for the song and has justified this as follows:

I was saying to myself, ‘look, rock n roll is a spirit, and if I want to sample something and make it into a hip hop/rock n roll anthem, it’s still rock n roll. And it’s even more rock n roll because it’s another white English kid, influenced by hip hop, sampling some fucking white English guys, influenced by black blues guys, and it goes on and on and on. But sonically what I’m saying at the end with “Money Money” is that you lot are just a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of Xerox of a Xerox’.

What he’s attempting to state here is that, while the Rolling Stones took much of the inspiration for their song from the Staple Singers’ ‘This May Be the Last Time’, the Staple Singers in turn had drawn upon traditional music of no fixed authorship. It is only Ashcroft who is an originating author.

            This is dubious enough in itself, but what Ashcroft fails to mention is that the riff in the Andrew Oldham Orchestra sample does have an author and that it is not Jagger or Richards. The motif in the sample is only loosely based on Keith Richards' guitar playing. The main credit for it should instead reside with David Whitaker, who composed and arranged the orchestral score.

            One of things about rethinks is that they prompt further rethinks. Popular music has always had multiple authors – writers, arrangers, musicians, singers, producers, engineers, mixers – and it has always been unfair with its attributions of credits and royalties. Traditionally, many songwriting disputes have been settled out of court. This has suited publishers, as they do not want legal precedents to be set. It has also suited the victorious authors, as they have not want it known who is receiving shares of income and who is being deprived. Ashcroft might wish he had been quieter. If he has been successful in his pursuit of stolen dollars, then it might prompt the Staple Singers and the estate of David Whitaker to think about the money that is being taken from them.

Just Like Christmas?

Four years ago I wrote with optimism about the way downloading was shaping the UK’s Christmas charts. It was allowing old songs to nestle alongside the new, thus there were 14 festive classics in the 2013 charts. Mariah Carey was at number 13 with ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’, the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl were at number 14 with ‘Fairytale of New York’ and Chris Rea was at number 53 with ‘Driving Home for Christmas'. I argued that ‘One effect of the permanent availability of “singles” is that, more than ever, the charts are reflective of what is going on in the world’. I found it ‘hugely pleasant’ that ‘it is the right Christmas songs that are doing well’.

            In July of the following year the Official Charts Company began to include streaming figures as part of their tabulation of the UK charts. The effects have been criticised. The charts have slowed down (Drake’s ‘One Dance’ was number one for months) and pop tyrants have taken them over (Ed Sheeran had 16 songs in the top twenty in a single week). As a result, the formulas have been changed. The ratio of streams to sales has been increased from 100:1 to 150:1. Longevity has been handicapped: if a record has been on the charts for more than 10 weeks and its sales have declined for three consecutive weeks, its ratio of streams to sales is increased to 300:1. Profligacy has been penalised too. Artists are no longer allowed to have multiple chart entries. They are instead restricted to their three most popular tunes.

            But what can be done about nostalgia? The trend that I identified in 2013 has been amplified by streaming. Downloading made all songs available as singles. Streaming has made all songs available for free (if using ad-supported services) or for rent (if using subscription services). The charts used to monitor exchange value only. Now, with streaming figures included, they increasingly monitor use value. This usage is increasingly shaped by playlists. And the playlists of the streaming companies are oriented towards the hits of Christmas past.

            The results are there for all to see. This week’s Official Singles Chart Top 100 includes 26 Christmas songs. The vast majority of them are old. Wham! are at number three with ‘Last Christmas’; Mariah Carey is at number 4; the Pogues at number 7; and Chris Rea is at number 20. In the age of physical formats most of the Christmas songs that made the charts would have been new releases. In this week’s charts only a third of the Christmas hits come from the current decade, and just two were released in 2017. These new songs have not done well. Sia’s ‘Santa’s Coming for Us’ is at number 65. Gwen Stefani’s ‘You Make It Feel Like Christmas’ has edged into the charts at number 100.

            There has been outcry: newness is being thwarted. Writing in Music Week, Mark Sutherland asked: ‘What point is there trying to write a new Christmas song when the public is likely to just stream the classics non-stop instead anyway?’ I have been invited to comment on this phenomenon, contributing to Tom Fordy’s ‘Ed Sheeran versus Ed Sheeran: Why We're All Losers in the Race for Christmas Number One’ article in the Telegraph and Eleanor Lawrie’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas? Where are the New Festive Classics?’, which is available on the BBC website.

            There is still cause for optimism, however. On the one hand, these classic Christmas songs offer great collective enjoyment. On the other hand, canons are ever-evolving things. As James Masteron points out in the BBC article, ‘You consider something like the Mariah Carey song - it was a huge hit back in 1994, but I don't remember it being particularly notable as a cultural touch-point for another 10 years after that. It was only in the middle of the last decade that people began to wake up to the fact that, actually, this is a classic’. The same is true of Chris Rea’s single, Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ and even ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! They resonate more deeply now than they did in the years they were released. The past is always changing and nostalgia isn’t what it used to be (Ho! Ho! Ho!).

This slippage between the old and the new is captured brilliantly in Low’s ‘Just Like Christmas’:

           

On our way from Stockholm,

            It started to snow,

            And you said it was like Christmas,

            But you were wrong

            It wasn’t like Christmas at all

            By the time we got to Oslo

            The snow was gone

            And we got lost

            The beds were small

            But we felt so young

            It was just like Christmas

In fact, this Christmas song is another that grows in stature with every passing year. It was released in 2004. It didn’t make the charts then, and it didn’t make the charts this year. Surely, however, it is only a matter of time before it makes a Spotify playlist. And then it is only a matter of time before it enters the mainstream canon of Christmas favourites. That’s unless they change the chart rules . . .

            

Baby, You're a Firework

Everyone loves fireworks. On Saturday night I went to the huge display at Alexandra Palace, an annual event that is prompted by the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ attack on British parliament, albeit that Fawkes and politics are curiously absent from the celebrations these days. There were thousands of people there. It was one of those rare occasions where you see a true cross-section of London’s population: all ages, all sexes, all sexualities, all nationalities, all races and all faiths. There’s a problem with fireworks displays, though. The first explosions are always astonishing, but how do you sustain attention over a 20-minute set? It can all start to seem a bit tedious and wasteful. At worst you feel like Aimee Mann in her song '4th of July', which commemorates America's fireworks night: ‘Today's the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town I just think / What a waste of gunpowder and sky’. You know that there will be a climax at some point, but climaxing is about the only thing that fireworks know how to do.

            There is an answer to this fireworks conundrum. Why not try dancing to them? Dancing is always interesting. It can be enhanced, further still, by visual effects. The Alexandra Palace festival was sound-tracked by DJ Yoda. He was brilliant, weaving together short bursts of music from a large array of genres. He was also thoroughly modern with his faith in the past. Yoda knows the musical state of play. After 15 years of downloading services and a decade of Spotify, there is an audience that knows a huge amount of music and is open to all types. You can play anything from any era as long as it’s good and it’s right. And so we had songs drawn from the 1950s to the present day, and from styles as diverse as hip-hop, folk music, trance, post-punk, jazz-funk, soul, movie soundtracks and mainstream pop. We danced to Deodato’s version of Also Sprach Zarathustra and we danced to the Beastie Boys’ ‘Intergalactic’. The biggest hits of the night were a remix of the Weavers’ ‘Wimoweh’ from 1952 (a song, it seems, that we have all grown up with) and a brilliant segue of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ (from 1983) into Rihanna’s 2011 hit ‘We Found Love’ (the trance clichés of this track are irresistible). Of course the whole thing ended with Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’. Except it didn’t. There was an encore sequenced to ‘Feelin’ Good’, Nina Simone’s classic from 1964. These are great times to be a DJ. And they are great times for explosive dance.  

Where is the Public Interest in Business-to-Business Licensing?

At the end of June I spoke at the 19^th Biennial IASPM Conference in Kassel, Germany. My main theme was blanket licensing and how it is under threat: some artists are refusing to licence their songs to streaming services; some publishers are withdrawing their repertoire from broadcast licensing; and Blockchain technology has been proposed as a means of individually licensing the use of music in venues, shops, hotels and industrial premises, as well as for individually licensing broadcast and online. For me, these developments are not good. If blanket licensing goes, the public will lose its democratic access to music. Artists will suffer too: the winners will no longer compensate the losers.

            My talk drew on a blog entry from last year and it could be considered out of date. Twelve months ago there were many celebrity holdouts from Spotify and there was much talk of 'windowing', i.e. restricting the availability of new releases. Today, this is no longer the case. Spotify has become an aspirational brand. Artists, record companies and publishers are no longer restricting their content on this streaming platform.

            This latest phase does not detract from my larger point, however. Blanket licensing is being eroded. We will miss it when it’s gone. You can access my paper via my academia.edu page.

             

Playlists vs Playlists

Listeners have generally been suspicious of radio playlists. They represent the most obvious and perhaps the most extreme example of gatekeeping within the music industries. Although they now pool diverse sources of data, the general practice has remained the same: a small committee of radio employees is responsible for choosing the entire output of the station. Music is prioritised and sorted. In many cases it is consigned to oblivion. And this is not necessarily due to its quality. The committee is susceptible to gimmicks and bribes.

            We now have streaming playlists too. These rely on even more data than the radio playlists. They are also more numerous. A radio station might only have a limited number of records on rotation. The streaming playlists cover a wider of amount of music by genre and by mood. Some of these playlists are based primarily on algorithms. Spotify’s ‘discover’ playlists, for example, are determined by music you have previously listened to. These streaming playlists do still have much in common with radio playlists, however. Ultimately, it is down to a committee, or even an individual, to make decisions about inclusion.

            And yet many people look upon streaming playlists more favourably. It feels as though they cater for personal needs. Radio station playlists, in contrast, often feel as though they are designed for an idealised and stupefied consumer. This consumer, as with all idealised individuals, bears no resemblance to anyone who actually exists.

            I prefer radio playlists, however. And this is because they engender suspicion. The listener knows that their taste is being prescribed. This process works in much the same way as canonisation. The radio listener is subjected to a body of works, which is presented as the dominant culture in the field. When it comes to the canon, it is good to have knowledge of what a self-appointed elite has determined as the best that has been thought and said. And if you are a popular music fan, it is good to know the records that have been picked and promoted to be the most commercially successful. At the same time, however, this prescription gives you something to kick against. It encourages you to search for alternatives. It also encourages people to produce alternatives.

            Streaming playlists work differently. They are an example of the internet’s tendency to produce echo chambers. These playlists are designed for a ‘you liked this, now try this’ culture. The digital realm has been criticized on this basis precisely because it streams. People only encounter media that chimes with their own views. They only come across art that reflects their pre-established tastes. These listeners don’t get to hear a central canon of works and nor do they get to hear anything that challenges their algorithmic self.

            Streaming playlists are hugely popular. They are driving the successes of Spotify and they have provided stiff competition for pop radio. This is changing the musical landscape. The consequences are not necessarily good for either the mainstream or the underground. As streaming has risen to prominence the singles charts have become moribund. They are moving very slowly and there is little public awareness of what they contain. Although there is undoubtedly a lot of commercial music being made, there is no dominant pop culture. As such, there is no rallying point for musical rebels to gather around. They don’t know what to be alternative about because they don’t know what they are alternative to.

Come Play With Me

On Wednesday, Music Business Worldwide reported that Spotify is gaining extra income by making its own recordings and inserting them into its playlists. These playlists are a modern form of Muzak: wishy-washy instrumentals, curated according to genre. By these means Spotify brings you ‘jazz, chill and peaceful piano playing’. These playlists are also extremely popular. The article reports that five of these Spotify-owned tracks have each racked up more 500,000 streams, while one has been played over a million times.

            Spotify is playing an old game here. When physical formats were dominant, businesses and artists would play tricks with formats in order to rake in extra copyright income. When a customer bought a 7-inch single, for example, the b-side would earn as much in songwriting royalties as the a-side. As a result, some business moguls would deliberately force artists to include works that they controlled as b-side material. Artists too would take advantage of b-side credits. The Rolling Stones balanced their early a-sides, which were cover versions, with group-composed b-sides. And similar games were played with albums. When a physical album was sold, the copyright income would be spread equally, regardless of the popularity of each track. As such, some groups deliberately chose to divide the publishing spoils (witness the Who’s album, A Quick One, which includes compositions by Roger Daltry and Keith Moon, in addition to Pete Townshend’s and John Entwistle’s more popular songs), while others had members who usurped the credits (Roger Waters of Pink Floyd went from the egalitarian splits of Dark Side of the Moon, which includes a false compositional credit for Nick Mason for ‘Speak to Me’, to the complete control of The Final Cut).

Ironically, it had been thought that streaming was bringing such games to an end. Streaming income, such that it is, is based on plays rather than sales. As such, the copyright worth of b-sides and album tracks has been reduced, while the bias towards hit singles has been increased. Spotify does have a successful longer format, however: it is the playlist rather than the LP. And as we have learned, they have now found a way to monetize it to their advantage: by creating their own works and inserting them in a sequence alongside better-known recordings.

There is one difference from previous practice, however. The tricks with b-sides and album tracks were centred on songwriting income. Spotify is making its money through sound recording copyright. Music Business Worldwide reports that the company isn’t necessarily interested in the publishing money, it is the ‘master rights’ in the recordings that they are most keen to own. This is reflective of the income split that has been somewhat forced upon them by the record companies and which has had the publishers up in arms. The record companies generally see 55-60% of the revenue from streaming services, the service providers retain 30%, which leaves the publishers with just 10-15%. Is this evidence that the money is no longer in the publishing?

The Collective Licensing Question: To B2B or to B2C?

Music industry income can be divided into two main categories. There is business-to-consumer (B2C) income, the music that the public pays for directly. This includes record sales and live music. There is also business-to-business (B2B) income, music that is purchased by licensees from licensors. This includes broadcast music and the use of recorded music in public premises.

            As always, when it comes to matters of music and copyright, there are oddities and there are complexities. Curiously, the music that the public pays for is often private, whereas the music that is licensed between businesses is usually public. The B2C purchase of recorded music is regularly an individualistic affair. The consumer will select titles from the wide repertoire of music. They will choose when and where to listen to them. Each of these processes can take place in a solitary fashion. B2B licensing, in contrast, is the music of everyday life. This is particularly the case with the blanket licensing of music for radio stations, bars and shops. In these situations it is the collection societies who perform the task of the ‘2’. They sit between the licensor and licensee. If a music user obtains a blanket licence it will give them unfettered access to the entire repertoire of music of the collection society’s members. As I have written elsewhere, this process provides a reversal of Lord Macaulay’s oft-quoted beliefs. He argued that copyright ‘produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly ... to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad’. The music industries’ most obvious monopolies are the collection societies. Collective licensing makes music abundant and it prices it democratically.

            The second issue is that the categories of B2C and B2B are not clear-cut. Although records and gigs usually classify as B2C, they include an element that can be considered B2B: the songwriting copyright. This money is passed from record companies and venue owners to composers and publishers by means of the collection societies. However, although the specifics of this income move from business to business, it is the consumer who generates the money. This income is built into the dealer price of recordings and forms part of the ticket price of gigs. This is Will Page’s viewpoint in his influential Adding Up the Music Industry reports. It is in fact possible to extend this line of thinking to the entirety of collection society income. In the final analysis, the consumer pays the copyright royalties for broadcast music: with public service broadcasting they are built into the licence fee; with commercial broadcasting they form part of the cost of the goods that are being advertised. And it is the consumer who foots the bill for the use of the collection societies’ music in public premises: this expense is added to the costs of the products that the premises are trying to sell.

This is not the perspective of the collection societies, however. They maintain that all of their transactions – broadcast, online, public performance or recorded media – should be categorised as business-to-business. Responding to a Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) enquiry, PRS stated that ‘our primary customers are our members and affiliates but in our capacity as a rights licensing body, the licensee can be seen as a customer’. The MMC reported that ‘PRS did not accept that the ultimate music user, the listener, was its customer’. This outlook is reflected in the PRS for Music website, which is divided between sections for its licensor members and its licensee customers. There is no portal for listeners. PPL’s website is similarly divided between a section for its members and a section for music users. MCPS shares this twin perspective. When I worked for the company in the late 1990s, the executive director, Chris Martin, encouraged us to think of the society as being an estate agent, facilitating the sale and purchase of (intellectual) property. The concern was not with the music listeners, the people who actually had to live in these musical buildings.

The collection society’s B2B perspective has been influential. MMC investigations into PPL in 1988 and PRS in 1997 aimed to find out whether these societies were operating in the ‘public interest’. Their reports dealt with a circumscribed ‘public’, however. They dealt solely with the interests of licensors and licensees. In each case the MMC sought the correct balance between the amounts music users should pay and the amounts music creators should receive. Ultimately, they endorsed the practice of the collection societies ‘because the convenience they offer to both the owner and the user of copyright is unlikely to be matched by any other means’. They did not consider the listener.

The raison d’être of the collection societies is ‘to do collectively what creators cannot effectively do for themselves’. This is putting them in jeopardy, however, as what seemed ‘unlikely’ in the 1980s and 1990s is less so today. Creators are breaking ranks. Record company members of PPL are self-administering the income from streaming. Many publisher members of MCPS are also withdrawing from this field, as they too feel that they can negotiate higher streaming income licences on their own. These manoeuvres weaken the collection societies. They are losing out on a significant area of income, which has a knock-on effect for their cost-effectiveness as a whole. The collection societies also face the prospect of blockchain technology, which could make it possible for any of their members - whether large conglomerates or individual writers or musicians – to self-administer their rights. Graham Davies of PRS is fatalistic about this. He has stated, ‘If there were a new model which meant that our members didn’t need PRS that would be fine in principle. We should disappear because we would no longer add any value’.

This is B2B thinking. It is restricted to the value that collection societies hold for licensors and licensees. There is, however, a consumer value in collective licensing. If the collection societies go they will take blanket licensing with them. This will be disastrous. We are already witnessing its effects in streaming: the repertoire of even the biggest providers is patchy, principally because the biggest stars are holding out for more pay. Its effects will be felt more profoundly when it comes to the licensing of broadcasters and public premises. If we lose blanket licensing in these areas then music really will become more expensive and scarce. It is time, therefore, to start collectively thinking B2C.