Measuring the Measuring

In late 2017, UK Music published their latest Measuring Music report. UK Music is a lobbying group for the ‘collective interests of the recorded, published and live arms of the British music industry’. Measuring Music is one of their campaigning documents and it therefore contains headline-grabbing statistics. One of the most eye-catching is that live music is worth £1bn to the UK economy, while recorded music is only worth £640m.

            This phenomenon has been reported in turn by media institutions, such as the BBC and the Financial Times, and by industry players, such the Music Publishers Association, Ticketing Business News and Billboard. It is also noted in the recent UK Live Music Census.

            What these news reports miss out, however, is that that the live music statistics and recorded music statistics are not directly comparable. UK Music admit as much in their separate ‘methodology’ document, albeit only in terms of their calculation of the Gross Value Added (GVA) Contribution, the figures that illustrate the contribution of each music industry sector to the British economy. UK Music state that GVA ‘is most simply understood as the value of sales minus the cost of bought in goods and services used up in the production process’, but also admit that calculating GVA is not straightforward at all. As a result, ‘This means that it is likely that the ratio of GVA to Gross Output that we apply may vary between the different elements of the core music industry. It is bespoke to the core as a whole, not to the component parts of the core’.

            GVA is nevertheless only one of the factors that help to make any direct comparisons between live and recorded music questionable. In fact, the figures are more profoundly skewed by other elements of the methodology, notably decisions about what makes up the ‘core music industry’ and what makes up the ‘wider music industry’; about what to include within each sector of the music industries; and about what to exclude from these sectors. Recorded music suffers in comparison to live music in each of these methodological respects.

            ‘Core music industry’ occupations are counted towards the trade figures; ‘wider music industry’ occupations are not. The core includes live industry revenue from ‘ticketing agents’ and ‘concert venues and arenas’, but it does not include recording industry income from ‘music retail (shops)’, ‘music retail (digital)’ or ‘other music-based digital services for consumers’.

            This discrepancy becomes more apparent when we look at what is included within the ‘recorded music’ sector and what is included within ‘live music’. Recorded music is restricted to the wholesale income of sales of physical formats and downloads, as well as the money that record companies make from streaming (of both the ad-supported and subscription varieties). It does not include the money that the retailers and streaming companies make from selling these goods. The Live music figures, meanwhile, include ‘Total ticket sales for all kinds of live music events’. In contrast to recorded music, they feature the share of income that goes to the retailers of the tickets: ticketing Agents are included. This makes a significant difference. If the retail income from recorded music were included, its totals would rise by at least 30% in the case of the streaming and downloading trade and by around 40% in respect of physical sales. Conversely, ticket agents earn about 10% of the income from ticket sales. On top of this, the live music figures include ‘food and beverage sales’, ‘merchandise’ and ‘venue parking’, as well as ‘camping fees’ for music festivals. It could be argued that recorded music generates similar ‘ancillary’ income (record shops generate merchandise sales and many also now sell food and drink), but these are not included in the figures. The list of trades included under live music is also more expansive. The figures incorporate music festival organisers, music promoters, music agents and production services. Recorded music does include ‘design and production of physical product and packaging’ alongside those employed by record labels themselves. Nevertheless, it does not include the money generated by ‘music producers, recording studios and staff’. These could be considered intimately connected to recorded music, but they are given a separate section within the Measuring Music report.

            There is a more significant omission, however. The live and recorded music figures are concentrated upon those who make a living because of the work of musicians and composers: the record companies, manufacturers, ticket agents and venue workers. The income of the musicians and singers is not included under the headings of recording or live. The policy, instead, is to subtract artist income from these totals and to place it in the combined field of ‘musicians, composers, songwriters & lyricists’. This makes a difference in three respects. In the first instance, it enables the Measuring Music report to argue that artists are the biggest income generators of all. Their total GVA contribution is calculated at £2b. This is double the live income figure and more than three times the amount calculated for recorded music. Secondly, because the figures for composers and performers are combined, we do not get a picture of how much money they are each deriving from recording and how much from live music. This is significant, as we need these figures to get a more accurate picture of the money that is being generated in these two fields. A third factor results from the fact that Measuring Music does not drill down into its figures. We do not get to see how much record companies are earning from recorded music in comparison to recording artists and composers, and nor can we assess the distribution of income in the live music field.

What can be assumed, however, is that the majority of income reported under ‘recorded music’ will result in related income for musicians and composers. They will receive royalties from each sale, download, stream, radio play, public performance or licensing deal. Moreover, while there are variations in the amounts that artists will receive, these are within parameters: approximately 15%-20% of the income from sales and streams will go the recording artists, 8.5% will go the songwriters and their publishers; performing rights relating to the sound recording will be divided 50/50 between record company and musicians, while songwriters will receive at least 50% of the performing rights income for the composition.

            In contrast, there are several income streams reported under ‘live music’ that will not result in corresponding income for performers or composers. In the majority of cases this will include the sales of food and beverages at gigs, the parking income and camping fees, and also the money that venues charge to put on events. Other income figures for live music can be widely variable, including the shares that artists receive from ticket sales and the money that they make from merchandise. The general tendency, however, is that the gap between the rich and poor is wider in live music than it is in recorded music. Live music income is oriented towards star performers and heritage acts, as well as to artists who perform cover versions of these performers songs. Performers down the lower end of the scale may earn nothing from live music or even operate at a loss. Recorded music, in contrast, has a more equal basis. The stars here obviously do make more money than the obscurities, but they do so from generating multiple sales and streams, rather than by charging higher prices than their competitors or by demanding higher fees.

            In one respect UK Music’s decision to separate the income of composers and performers into a category of its own is justified. Although these artists have different income streams for their recorded and live work, the profits and losses in these areas are intertwined. The report depicts a sequential process whereby it is songwriting that enables the creation of successful records, and successful records that prompt successes within live performance. This sequence moves in various directions when it comes to revenue, however. Live performance drives the sale and usage of recordings, and recordings drive the sales of tickets for gigs. Beyond this, as Measuring Music argues, the most successful artists are not just selling their music; they are selling themselves ‘as a brand, reputation or image’.

            At the same time, the categorisations employed by UK Music are of tactical use. As stated above, Measuring Music is a campaigning report. It seeks to gain the government’s support for the UK music industry as a whole. In doing so, it has a dual task. One objective is to point out the value of music. Therefore, the report documents the vast amounts of money that are being accumulated and the large numbers of people who are being employed. At the same time, the report calls for aid. It wants the government to intervene so that yet more money can be made and so that jobs in each sector can be secured.

            UK Music is a coalition between record labels, publishers, artists, managers, songwriters, collection societies and the live music industry. It aims to promote a unified front. It does not want to identify injustices amongst these industry sectors. Therefore, despite the widespread criticism of streaming royalty rates for musicians and songwriters, this report will not show you whether record companies and publishers are profiting at their artists’ expense. Similarly, while prices for tickets have risen sharply in recent years, Measuring Music provides no clues as to whether the live music industry could be more altruistic towards smaller venues or to nascent performers.

Instead, it locates responsibility for low rates of pay outside of the core music industry. As with virtually all industry documents from last year, its main beef is with the ‘value gap’: if there is unfairness in music it is due to YouTube and Facebook and their pesky ‘safe harbours’. Michael Dugher, the CEO of UK Music, stresses that ‘these platforms offer little adequate reward to the investors and creators of the “content”. As a result, their safe harbours must be removed.

The report also suggests that the closure of this value gap within the recording industry will help all parts of the music economy. In doing so, it absolves the live music sector from any responsibility for the distribution of its riches. Dugher notes:

Live music did have another great year as millions of people poured into festivals, stadiums and venues to see and hear their favourite acts. And live music is a fantastic driver for growth. But future talent will never get the chance to shine if we continue to see cuts in music in schools and closures in venues where artists need to learn their craft in the first place. To reach the big stage you need to have a hit record and you need to be able to pay the bills. That means that those who create music and invest in it must be properly rewarded. That’s why we must urgently address the ‘value gap’, particularly on the new and exciting platforms that many people now use to listen to music.

This would appear to indicate that, despite the headline figures about live music’s dominance, when it comes to artists’ recompense it is recorded music that is primary.

Success Ratios, New Music and Sound Recording Copyright

The journal Popular Music has recently published my article ‘Success Ratios, New Music and Sound Recording Copyright’. This piece draws upon several posts that I have featured on this blog, including ‘There’s No Success Like Failure’, ‘Should the Masters Own the Masters?’ and ‘The Loser’s Standing Small’. The abstract is as follows:

This article addresses the uses that record companies have made of two rhetorical tropes. The first is that only one in 10 artists succeed. The second is that they are investing in new music. These two notions have been combined to give the impression that record companies are taking risks both economically and aesthetically. They have been employed to justify the companies’ ownership of sound recording copyright and their system of exclusive, long-term recording contracts. More recently, the rhetoric has been employed to combat piracy, extend the term of sound recording copyright and account for the continuing usefulness of record companies. It is the argument of this article that investment in new music is not necessarily risk-taking; rather, it is the policies derived from risk-taking that provide the financial security of record companies.

Tantalising stuff, eh? If you have access to the Cambridge University Press database you can access the article via this link. If not, I hope to have more material published on this subject in the not too distant future.

Mark E. Smith 1957-2018

Nobody told us that popular culture was going to make us feel old. Nevertheless, as the deaths of childhood heroes occur with increasing frequency, my generation is being alerted to its mortality.

It’s hard to take in Mark E. Smith’s death, coming so soon after the passing of Cyrille Regis. Regis was my main idol when I was 10 and 11 years old and I was completely obsessed with football. I switched allegiances to music when I was 12. Within a year or so The Fall were my favourite band.

All Fall fans have their moment of entry story. Mine takes place during a woodwork lesson at Blackminster Middle School during the spring of 1980. I had smuggled a tape recorder into class. My friend Stuart Freer brought with him a recording of the live album Totale’s Turns, which we some how managed to listen to while our classmates were smoothing edges and drilling holes.

It was the funniest thing we had ever heard. We concentrated on the bizarre pronouncements of Mark E. Smith. The fantastic spoken introduction to the album: ‘The difference between you and us is that we have brains’. Further taunting of the audience: ‘Are you doing what you did two years ago? Yeah? Well don’t make a career out of it’. Taunting of the band: ‘Will you fucking get it together instead of showing off!’. And general piss-taking of popular music norms: ‘This is a groovy number’. Our favourite track was ‘Cary Grant’s Wedding’.

It was an odd way of getting hooked, though. The album is out of tune and poorly recorded. It’s got the most amateurish of all of the Fall’s amateurish sleeves. A scrawled black and white front cover, listing the unglamorous locations of the gigs, and a typed back sleeve, headed ‘Call Yourselves Bloody Professionals?’

Yet I saw them as a pop band, offering a parallel but plausible alternative to the contemporary charts. This feeling was compounded by the brilliant run of records that followed: the singles ‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’/ ‘City Hobgoblins’ and ‘Totally Wired’; the album ‘Grotesque (After the Gramme)’; the mini-album ‘Slates’. These rockabilly-driven releases are still my favourites by the band. They have the best lyrics too.

I spoke about these records at the Messing Up the Paintwork conference on the Fall, which took place at the University of Salford in 2008. I argued that Smith placed his music alongside pop: the Fall commented on the charts and they wanted to be in the charts. My thoughts were eventually polished up and published in the book that followed.

The conference was revelatory. Not only were there some great papers about the group, it was clear that Mark E. Smith welcomed the academic attention. He did not make it in person, but he did broadcast a telephone call at the post-conference gig. His former manager, producer and several family members were present. I spent much of the evening talking to his mum. She was absolutely lovely and she revealed a different side to the usual acerbic portrayal of her son. He was devoted to her, sending her postcards from every territory the band visited, as well as giving her money whenever he could afford it. I asked her if she worried about him. Of course she did.

The last Fall song that I listened to before Smith’s death was ’50 Year Old Man’, a latter-day triumph that is as hilarious as Totale’s Turns. Smith made it to 60 but it was clear he was dying. The pictures that emerged of him before Christmas revealed as much. I was checking fan websites over the holiday season, fearing for the worst.

What an incredible legacy, though. The Fall are one of those underground bands who deserve to be overground. Their music – like that of the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart – will live on for a long time. It’s been great hearing them on the radio and on the news over the last few days. I was also glad to hear them being played at a children’s party that my daughter was invited to. The kids liked it, I think.

‘Life should be full of strangeness’, Smith sang in ‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’, ‘like a rich painting’. He gave us this richness and for that we should be eternally thankful.

Cyrille Regis 1958-2018

This is supposed to be a blog about popular music, but the passing of Cyrille Regis has to be mentioned. He was my hero when I was a boy and he has remained a hero all my life.

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 . . .

            

When do Productions become Productions?

Following on from the last entry, I’ve been wondering when it is that we realise that records are produced? My guess is that it’s the opposite to Jimmy Webb’s thoughts about songwriting. He realised that there was a process to composing songs because some of them sounded the same. In his case, it was follow-up singles that revealed the mechanics of the songwriters’ job.

            I think that we start to think about production when we notice that records sound different from one another. This is most revelatory when we hear two records by the same artists but they don’t feel like kin. It is then that it dawns on us that the artists are not solely responsible for the sound of their records. There is somebody else at work.

            I thought about producers later than I thought about songwriters. This may have been to do with the genres that were dominant when I was growing up. As I have previously stated, it was glam rock that sound-tracked my earliest years. Although the glam rock artists sounded different from one another, they all sounded like themselves. This is because they had the same producers throughout their runs of hits. Chas Chandler produced all the Slade singles. Tony Visconti produced everything for T. Rex. Phil Wainman, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman were responsible for singles by The Sweet. Mike Leander sculptured the Garry Glitter records. These records were brilliantly produced, but the consistency of production masked the producers’ art.

            Punk was my next musical love. It was different from glam. Here, most of the bands had different producers from project to project. The Clash albums all have different producers and they have different sound worlds as a result. The same is true of the Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Fall, Stiff Little Fingers and many other punk and new wave acts. The results often felt like a betrayal. As a fan, you had bought into the particular sonics of a band. You also felt that the band was responsible for those sounds. You were let down.

            But then you started to reverse the process. Maybe the reason why those first records sounded great is because of the work that was being done by the producer. Maybe future records could also sound great if the right producer landed the role. Maybe I want to be a producer too.

When do Songs become Songs?

When we are very young it feels as though songs have always been there. In fact, some of our earliest song memories retain this sense. It seems odd to us that there is a person out there who sat down to write ‘Wheels on the Bus’ or ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, just as it seems outrageous that ‘Happy Birthday’ could be in copyright.

            Once we can talk we can make songs of our own. Kids soon start to come up with tunes. This is true folk music, borrowing lyrics and melodies from previous works and melding them with something original.

At some point we also start to like contemporary music. We begin to see films and videos of pop stars. They don’t seem to be doing much. Making music is easy.

            There is a time, however, when we begin to realise that there is a craft to songwriting. 

When does this occur?

In my case, it was power ballads that did it. My 1970’s youth was saturated with the brilliant racket of glam rock. Nevertheless, the era also had love songs such as ‘Without You’ by Nillson, ‘My Love’ by Wings’ and ‘The Air That I Breathe’ by the Hollies. To me, these songs felt composed. Their wide-ranging melodies and controlled emotional heft could not be conjured out of thin air. I knew that I couldn’t make music like this myself, and with that realization I understood that there must be someone who could: there are songwriters. It was only later, after struggling more seriously to make my own music, that I realised it’s as hard to create ‘Come On Feel the Noize’ as it is to create something quieter.

The great American songwriter Jimmy Webb recently provided a fascinating answer to the question. For him, it was record company policy that revealed the songwriter’s art:

I was languishing by the radio listening to songs, and I made a connection. Brenda Lee would have a big hit with ‘I’m Sorry’, and they’d come up with another record that sounded a little like ‘I’m Sorry’. Not too much like I’m Sorry, because that would ruin it. There was an epiphany; I became aware of the process that was going on behind the scenes. I divined this process on my own.

This flies in the face of mass cultural theory. If Adorno is to be believed, the standardization and pseudo-individualization of popular music will turn people into passive dupes. Yet here they are inspiring them. It was this industrial process that made Jimmy Webb want to become a writer himself:

Then, later, I would find out that in the industry it was called a ‘follow-up’. There was a name for it. So I was writing songs. I remember writing a song called ‘It’s Someone Else’, and I thought, ‘That would be a great follow-up for The Everly Brothers’ ‘Let It Be Me’’. And 25 years later I told Artie Garfunkel the story, because he loved the Everly Brothers, and he ended up cutting it. I was 13 years old when I wrote my first follow-up.

Moreover, Jimmy Webb was the most idiosyncratic of the professional songwriters who emerged in the 1960s. This is the man who wrote ‘Wichita Lineman’ and ‘MacArthur Park’. You can love the mechanics and you can know the mechanics, but this does not make you mechanical.