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!
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?
On 25
August I took part in the book launch for The
Present and Future of Music Law, a collection edited by Tony Rigg, a music
industry practitioner, business consultant and educator affiliated with the
University of Central Lancashire, and Ann Harrison, a partner at SSB Solicitors
Limited and the author of the classic guidebook, Music: The Business.
It was a game of two halves. In the first section, Rigg and
Harrison discussed the current state of music law with industry experts,
including Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order, music industry executive Silvia
Montello, and Sumit Bothra, the director of the management company ATC.
The second half featured the contributing authors introducing their
chapters in discussion with the editors. I led the way with my chapter, ‘Copyright,
Royalties and Industrial Decline’, which opens the book.
The launch is available via YouTube (my bit starts around
the 50:30 mark):
The Present and Future
of Music Law is a great collection but as an academic publication it has a
typically high price. However, for a limited period there is a discount if ordered direct from the publisher, Bloomsbury.
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.
It has been
a long time coming. Dave proposed the idea for the book at the inaugural Working in Musicconference, which took
place in Glasgow in January 2016. What a five years it has been since then. The
Trump presidency has come and nearly gone. The UK has had the Brexit vote and
is set to leave the European Union at the end of this week. Covid-19 has
transformed the world.
On a
personal and professional note, the saddest event has been Dave’s death. He
passed in January 2019, having kept from me how seriously ill he had become. Music by Numbers is the last book project
that he worked on. I hope that I have managed to complete it with the
care and skill that Dave’s legacy warrants. One of the most satisfying aspects
for me is that this edited collection contains chapters by many of his friends.
Music by Numbers provides the first in-depth examination of the use and abuse of statistics
in the music industries and addresses five key areas: sales and awards; music
industry policy; live music; music piracy; and digital solutions. Its aim is to
expose the culture and politics of data. The book has been published by Intellect,
with the brilliant help of production editor Aimée Bates. It can be ordered via
this link.
On Thursday I was interviewed on the fruity American
television programme LIT Entertainment News about a turnaround: in America vinyl records are outperforming
compact discs. Trade figures for the first half 2020 demonstrate that vinyl
sales constituted 62 per cent of the revenues for physical formats.
It was the first time since the 1980s that vinyl had generated more money than
CDs.
This is
something that had been predicted. Sales revenues for vinyl records have
increased every year since 2006. Sales revenues for compact discs, in contrast,
have declined annually since the millennium. When 2019's trading figures were announced it was predicted that, if trading patterns continued, vinyl would be on course
to surpass CDs.
Some people called this a long time ago. In my book Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record, I quote the music journalist Adam Woods, who stated in 2004,
‘it
is easy to believe that the formatcould
thrive even as the CD begins to lose ground to the Internet’. I also have a
2011 quote from Lyor Cohen, who was then the CEO of the Warner Music Group,
stating that ‘vinyl will definitely outlast CDs’.
It should be
noted that vinyl is outperforming compact discs in terms of revenues but not in
terms of units sold. One of the reasons why vinyl is generating more money is because each album typically costs two and a half times more than a CD. It is also the case that, in our time of lockdowns, it is more likely
that consumers will purchase vinyl than CDs. The former format appeals to
collectors and remains accessible via mail order. The latter format is more
casually purchased and will be neglected in times of shop closures. Trade
figures also indicate that the overall market for physical records is paltry.
Vinyl accounts for four per cent of the American market. Streaming, on the
other hand, accounts for 85 per cent.
Yet the figures are still remarkable.
Vinyl looked on course for obliteration twenty years ago; it is now firmly
established as a recording format that both consumers and the recording
industry will invest in. Pressing plants have struggled to keep up with demand.
Equally impressive is the fact that vinyl sales have continued to increase
despite the strictures of Covid-19. In the United States they are up four per
cent year-on-year. In the UK the trade magazine Music Week has reported that vinyl has defied ‘coronavirus chaos to post big rises’. Sales
for the third quarter were up 41.4 per cent on 2019. This is largely due to the
rescheduling of Record Store Day, but is demonstrative of the public’s
commitment to this format.
After fifteen years of sales increases and a resolute performance in the
face of coronavirus we should probably stop talking of vinyl’s revival. Instead,
our focus should be elsewhere. The compact disc has been defeated. Will it now
become an object of fetishism for collectors?
