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.'"
Re:How much do the Artists get? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're a lowly hobbyist/free internet radio station, with 100 listeners on average, playing 10 songs an hour, then each day you would stream 24000 songs, which would have costed you £52.80 before, but now costs you £20.40 - a significant saving.
If you're streaming to an average of 10,000 listeners, this turns you from having to have income (adverts, subscriptions, etc) of £5280 a day just to cover music costs, to income of £2040 a day - which is far more attainable.
If 1,000,000 people a day listen to internet radio for an average of 2 hours each, with 10 songs an hour, then the previous income for the group was £44,000 a day - not bad going, but I expect with this new pricing they hope that more streams are made, so that eventually 2m people listen for 4 hours a day to get them £68,000 a day income.
Pandora back in the UK? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've bought a couple of CDs of bands that I'd only discovered through Pandora in the past - I'll bet that the PRS don't factor those new sales into their bleeding heart stories about how streaming music is forcing songwriters to live in cardboard boxes. Hyperbole I know, but they took my Pandora away dammit!
Re:We're coming closer to the real value (Score:1, Interesting)
Not so funny. We are talking about Radio here. Radio has always been free in America, why? Because it HELPS the song writers AND performers simultaneously, so much more so than any fee on Radio could possibly bring. Please see the fight against the current movement in American politics [noperformancetax.org] to introduce radio fees like they have in the UK and Europe. It's simply a plee by the FOREIGN artists to get paid here like they do at home, nothing more because the artists here want radio (and especially internet radio) to be free. The government has no business telling private industry how they should be run! "Oh, you HAVE to charge for YOUR service!" Shenanigans I say!
Spotify (Score:4, Interesting)
Spotify works well for me in the UK. I was sceptical until I tried it.
I have used Pandora a while back, and it was kind-of impressive, but didn't rock my world, and had many limitations.
With Spotify, you have to know what you want to listen to, but that's not so difficult really.
I'm assuming Spotify has direct licensing deals with the labels and shows a middle finger to the PRS!
Re:are they insane? (Score:3, Interesting)
These are the same people who claim that playing TV or radio in public requires a license [prsformusic.com], even when there is no charge to view or listen, despite that section 72 of the copyright, designs and patents act [opsi.gov.uk] says otherwise. They then attempt to sue police stations among others for breaking their fictitious interpretation of the law.
Next up, cheaper bacon? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I go into my local butchers, sometimes the radio is on. The butchers have to buy a license from the PRS - there's a letter on the wall certifying that they have, in fact, paid for the license to play radio in public. If people were going "Oh, I don't really want any bacon today ... hmmm, I do really dig the music at the butchers, though! Lets go anyhow ..." then perhaps it would be a *little* understandable (though not necessarily reasonable) that PRS wanted a share of the profits. But I really really don't think people are going to the butcher to listen to music and party amongst the cold meats. In any case I can already listen to the same stuff on my own radio!
Perhaps whilst they're reducing their rates the PRS could relax some of their more ridiculous rules about public listening and then I can afford (marginally) more bacon. Om nom nom nom.
Artists DO get paid for their work (Score:3, Interesting)
"We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work..."
A little clarification: Musicians, even the ones with recording contracts, get paid to Perform, like they have for thousands of years. Very few musicians ever get actual money from record sales, because in a standard recording contract all the expenses of producing a record -- from recording to manufacturing to advertising and distribution -- are deducted from the musician's royalties, which in practice means musicians almost never receive a dime no matter how many records they sell. If the companies really wanted to "ensure the music artists are paid for their work," they could try actually paying royalties instead of making them disappear through bookkeeping.
What musicians do get out of recording is publicity and exposure, which gets them bigger gigs and higher ticket prices, which is where they make a living. Exposure is exposure, whether it comes from people buying a record, listening to it on the radio or at a friends house, downloading an mp3 for free or shoplifting a copy from WalMart. In no way does the method of acquiring the copy hurt the musician.
This endless "protecting the artists" refrain on the part of record companies is complete nonsense. Music "piracy" hurts them and them alone. If record companies suddenly ceased to exist, most musicians would be completely unaffected because they don't have recording contracts. The other .01% (a number I pulled out of my ass, but let's just say a tiny fraction) would have to get exposure in a different way, say for example by posting their songs for downloading, or by having wardrobe malfunctions onstage, hanging out with Paris Hilton, or going in and out of rehab a lot.