Rates Lowered For Streamed Music In the UK 94
An anonymous reader tips the news that the UK's music collection society, PRS, has announced a new pricing plan it hopes may entice YouTube and Pandora back to the UK market. Pandora pulled out at the start of 2008, and YouTube began removing content from the view of UK users last March. "From 1 July 2009, firms will have to pay 0.085p for each track streamed, down from the previous rate of 0.22p. [The] head of the music streaming service We7 told BBC News he welcomed the new charges. 'It's brilliant. Not so much the rates but the realization by the PRS that things have to change in the digital world. Till now it's felt like they were not listening,' he said. ... 'They [the PRS] are getting in touch with the reality of the digital world.' [The PRS's managing director said] 'We've laid our stall out and listened to everyone who would engage with us. We've consulted with the 25 firms that represent 97% of our revenue over the past six months and have been given opinions from many others. We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work, but we also wanted to make sure that the framework was in place to enable the digital market to grow.'"
How much do the Artists get? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet it's extremely low.
Re:How much do the Artists get? (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, artists get next to nothing. It's not a big difference. What they are facing is the realization that, especially in hard economic times, having a stranglehold on entertainment does not mean they can make people pay whatever they dictate. When faced with 0.22p being rejected and given 0.00p, they saw that people were more willing to go without than to pay too much. They CANNOT afford to let people realize that going without isn't such a bad option.
People are addicted to their lifestyles in that they are very reluctant to change. But when they see that some change might not be so bad, that endagers what the music industry has come to rely on.
We're coming closer to the real value (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me up when we're at 0.00.
Re:Dual Standards (Score:3, Insightful)
What I don't understand is that PRS asks for 3-5% of your Net Broadcasting Revenue [prsformusic.com] yet if you're an online radio they ask for 6-8% of your total revenue [prsformusic.com]. Why aren't these figures closer?
Simple. While most web-based "radio" services have revenue, the majority don't make a profit and if they do it's generally a fairly small profit, so taxing their net revenue wouldn't make the PRS much, if any, money.
Comparitively, most over the air radio services have to make a profit to keep operating if they're commercial and if they're non- or not-for-profit such as student or hospital radio then they tend to come under fixed-rate tarrifs that are independent of their revenues.
are they insane? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't be the only one to notice that 5% of comments on just about every single Youtube video ask the question "what song is this?"
This is free guerrilla marketing by a genuinely enthusiastic public, with real live potential customers clamouring, publicly, to know what they're hearing and where they can get it. You can't buy marketing like that. If the music industry was smart they'd provide a free Youtube service that identifies a video's soundtrack and includes a "buy now" link to iTunes or maybe a first-party store.
Re:Dual Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and when I read this story on TheReg / BBC, having read the previous stories covering the desired price increase, I nearly pissed myself. Well done to Google / Youtube for calling their bluff. This price *drop* (instead of their intended price increase) just goes to show that they can't afford to lose the exposure of being on YouTube (UK). So what does that tell you about their business model? It's not about "1 CD = 1 customer", it's about general brand, advertising, overall exposure and the majority of people wanting to just download and listen to music cheaply with restrictions.
They tried to profiteer, Google told them to get stuffed, they didn't listen, so Google pulled the plug (in the UK at least, you couldn't access YouTube music vids for certain songs), suddenly they're crawling back with a rate LOWER than they had started out from, because something's better than nothing. If they'd just kept their greed to themselves, they would have been on that original, higher rate.
Re:How much do the Artists get? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you can easily get the download for free (often much more easily than paying) what consumers are really interested in from the rights holders is a license. The consumers are willing to go without the license.
Re:are they insane? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How much do the Artists get? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jeez, I wish I hadn't picked Kanye West. I had a bit of a mental block for modern artists, especially with trying to reach an international readership.
How about, Colin Meloy writes his own songs. Emmy The Great writes her own songs. Radiohead write their own songs. Cold War Kids write their own songs.
Grace Jones did not write her own songs. Neither Peggy Lee nor Shirley Bassey wrote Hey Big Spender.
Ah, sod specifics. There are great performers of yesteryear who didn't write their own songs. There are plenty of artists today who do write their own songs.
Also: there was plenty of crappy music in whatever era you look back so fondly upon. History prefers to remember the good bits.
Writing your own material is a ridiculous metric of artistic quality. Burt Bacharach is a terrible performer.