The Culture, Media and Sport select committee has published a report on Creator Remuneration following meetings in parliament where Ivors Academy Board member VV Brown and Nile Rodgers gave evidence to MPs about the issues facing songwriters.
This report is published by the same committee that produced the ‘Economics of Streaming’ inquiry in 2021 that called for a “complete reset” of streaming to fairly reward music creators.
The Ivors Academy has been campaigning to Fix Streaming and working alongside other music maker organisations through the Council of Music Makers (CMM) to negotiate codes on metadata and transparency that we hope will improve issues that were identified by the committee in the original ‘Economics of Streaming’ report.
Ivors Academy board member, VV Brown gave evidence to the committee last December where she explained that the rise in streaming had impacted her,
“Streaming has impacted my income massively. Even with a recouped balance, I do not even look at my statements, because they make hardly any money. I speak on behalf of lots of artists in this position where we are not making the money that we should. I sold a lot of records and I don’t even see my musical career as a way for me to survive, to eat, to pay school fees or to put food on the table for my children. Music does not do that for me. Like I said earlier, I have other jobs.
“It is a very sad position. I would not say that I am Rihanna by any means, but I do represent a lot of the average artists on Spotify. If I, who have sold 2 million records, am not making any money, what about the younger artists? What about the independent artists? We have to change this; we have to reform.”
This new report calls for government to:
- Create a statutory private copying scheme, which, at minimum, safeguards reciprocal payments from abroad
- Ensure that creators have proper mechanisms to enforce their consent and receive fair compensation for use of their work by AI developers
- Appoint a Freelancers’ Commissioner, with appropriate powers and cross-departmental oversight, to advocate across Government in the interests of creative freelancers
- Drive fundamental reform of music streaming with a package of measures designed to make streaming work for all following the significant research that has taken place
- Give music makers a stronger and fairer voice over issues of remuneration on the upcoming Creator Remuneration Working Group that will discuss music streaming
- Bring forward measures for consultation with fans, music makers and other stakeholders to incentivise an optimal rate for publishing rights in order to fairly remunerate creators for their work, given the contribution of songwriters and composers to the success of music streaming
The Ivors Academy welcomes this report from the Culture, Media and Sport select committee which shows that despite all the hard work creators and their representatives have put in for the last three years, we still haven’t had a “full reset” and songwriters and composers still aren’t earning what they should.
We will be working alongside the CMM in the upcoming Creator Remuneration Working Group over the next six months to demand change from the industry and the government to ensure that music makers are paid fairly.
