The UK government has announced two new initiatives being introduced by record companies which, Creative Industries Minister Chris Bryant says, are “an important step in ensuring creators are fairly paid for their work”. Industry and government will now monitor the impact of both initiatives over the next year, though the Council Of Music Makers says that – even with these commitments – “much more still needs to be done” to address core issues around creator remuneration.
The first initiative is a commitment by labels to pay per diems to songwriters who are brought into recording sessions with other artists by labels, something songwriter organisation The Ivors Academy has been campaigning for. There is no guarantee that songs written in these sessions will ever be released – which is when a songwriter would start to earn – and campaigners have long argued that, at the very least, writers should get expenses and per diems for their time when taking part in these sessions.
Welcoming that commitment, Ivors CEO Roberto Neri says, “there is no music industry without songwriters and these payments will ensure that songwriters are not out of pocket when turning up to work. We look forward to working together over the next twelve months to assess how this package benefits music-makers and ensuring that all creators share in the success of streaming remuneration”.
The second initiative sees labels providing stronger guidance on how artists who are stuck in old record deals, that they feel are now unfair, should go about seeking to renegotiate said deals. The three major record companies are also going to offer legacy artists what are described as “bespoke marketing tools and support to drive increased streaming engagement”.
The Council Of Music Makers, which brings together the Featured Artists Coalition, Musicians’ Union, Music Producers Guild and Music Managers Forum – as well as the Ivors Academy – says it will “support music-makers to test these initiatives and whether they can deliver meaningful change”.
However, it adds, “The major labels have made bold estimates about the value and impact of these initiatives – but we are not convinced they can be substantiated. Nevertheless, we will work in good faith with the government to measure the actual impact of these provisions over the course of the next twelve months”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, record label trade group BPI is more confident about the potential of these measures, with Chief Strategy Officer Sophie Jones stating, “we are confident that these targeted measures will lead to positive and sustainable outcomes and support” for music creators, including legacy artists and songwriters, “ensuring that our members’ significant ongoing investment into the development of British talent and the growth of our world leading UK music industry will be to the benefit of all”.
Bryant presented these initiatives in Parliament earlier today, and ran through a set of wider principles that he has agreed with the record companies regarding creator remuneration, and which are being recommended to UK labels by trade groups BPI and AIM.
Both the per diems and the support for legacy artists stem from these principles. They also cover the existing commitment by labels to pay through royalties to legacy artists who have not yet recouped past advances, and an increase in the minimum rate for session musicians, which was agreed between the BPI and the Musicians’ Union last year and will now go into effect.
All of this is the outcome of the Creator Remuneration Working Group that was set up by the last government following Parliament’s 2021 Economics Of Music Streaming inquiry, which called for a “complete reset” of streaming. Bryant has overseen that process as Creative Industries Minister since Labour won last year’s General Election.
A total of three working groups were instigated on the back of Parliament’s big streaming review, one focused on metadata, another on transparency and the third on remuneration.
Questions around remuneration were always going to be the most contentious, with music creators arguing that the streaming business model was set up to benefit record labels, and especially major record labels. Which isn’t entirely surprising, given streaming companies desperately needed the content controlled by the majors to launch their services in the 2000s, meaning the majors had significant power when negotiating the original licensing deals that put in place the model.
Many indie labels already have policies in place that deal with some of the creator remuneration issues, and which go further than the measures announced by the government today. One call from the CMM organisations has been for the majors to follow the lead of the indies in that domain.
While majors and indies both pay through royalties to unrecouped artists who are on older deals, the indies do that on a rolling basis, so the policy applies to any deals that are older than 15-20 years, meaning every year more artists benefit.
Sony Music follows that ‘rolling’ policy already, but Universal Music and Warner Music have fixed their commitment only to unrecouped artists for deals done before 2000.
Many indies also pay a minimal digital royalty rate across their entire catalogues, which means artists that negotiated their record deals in the physical era – when artist royalty rates were generally lower – are paid the same royalty rates from streaming as artists signing new deals.
That means legacy artists don’t have to go through the cost and hassle of trying to renegotiate old deals to get a better rate on old recordings, and is seen by music creators as the most artist-friendly approach. However, the majors have always rejected calls that they should also adopt that policy.
And then there are session musicians, who currently earn nothing from streaming. The agreement between BPI and MU to increase the minimum session rate means the fees session musicians earn when working on new recordings keep up with inflation, more or less, However, the new measures don’t provide any remuneration for these musicians from the streams of recordings they played on in the past.
The Musicians’ Union – and the other organisations in the Council Of Music Markers – argue that a portion of streaming money should flow directly to all performers, including session musicians, via the collective licensing system.
That could be achieved on either on a voluntary basis within the industry or by adding a new performer right into copyright law. But neither approach is included in these measures, though Bryant has pledged to meet with label and performer groups in September to continue talks on that particular issue.
Although Bryant was bullish in Parliament today about what these measures can deliver, he also stressed that the actual impact will be measured.
A government statement adds, “the impact of the measures will be monitored and reviewed in a year’s time, working closely with members of the group to understand the extent to which they are improving creator earnings as intended. The government will then assess the need for further intervention, to ensure this package delivers on its objective to bring about real change for creators”.
Although the CMM says it will work with the government on that monitoring, it also says “much more still needs to be done”, arguing that many of the “fundamental issues” raised in Parliament’s streaming inquiry “remain largely unresolved”.
That’s because, says the CMM, “major labels say they will not address systemic inequities in the way streaming works voluntarily”. As a result, they add, UK copyright law “is currently failing to empower and protect human creators” because of “the inequitable policies of major rightsholders”.
To that end, the CMM says “we will now collectively pursue other legislative measures to achieve positive change for those that create the work our industry is built on”. Which means a campaign for copyright law reform. The Musicians’ Union is set to launch a petition calling for such reform, a move that will be backed by the wider CMM.
