Skip to main content
Global Edition
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Musicians in lockdown rage against industry machine

Duration: 01:30s 0 shares 1 views

Musicians in lockdown rage against industry machine
Musicians in lockdown rage against industry machine

Lockdown bans on live performance have left many British musicians on the breadline, fueling a campaign for them to get a bigger share of the profits from streaming their songs online.

Edward Baran reports.

Lockdown bans on performing live have left many British musicians on the breadline.

It's fuelled a campaign, led by Tom Gray from Mercury music prize winning band Gomez, for them to get a larger share of profits from streaming their songs online.

Despite his band's music getting hundreds of thousands of Spotify plays a month, he says very little cash ends up in his pocket.

"Maybe a few pennies.

I mean no, nothing.

I mean, such a negligible amount that it's not even worth talking about.

It might be, I might be able to get a coffee out of it every now and again." That's because the money paid by consumers for major online music platforms goes into a central pot that's distributed to artists according to market share.

To compound matters, one veteran of big stadium performances, Queen's Brian May, doesn't see live shows returning anytime soon.

"We sold 400,000 tickets for the leg that we just cancelled, which is heartbreaking really... I don't know how soon it's going to be a good idea to get a number of people, a large number of people, into a confined space.

I dunno if that's gonna be cool even in a year's time." The streaming companies say they're trying to help artists during lockdown, Spotify has pledged to match donations to music charities up to a total of 10 million US dollars... While Apple Music launched a 50 million dollar fund for independent record labels and distributors.

You might like