The UK inquiry into the economics of music streaming continued this week with MPs hearing more testimony from songwriters.
Fiona Bevan has released a number of her own albums and also co-written songs such as “Little Things” which became a number-one single in 13 countries for One Direction. In her evidence she described earning just £100 (around US $140) for co-writing a track on Kylie Minogue’s number one album, Disco.
“The most successful songwriters in the world can’t pay their rent,” said Bevan. “Right now, hit songwriters are driving Ubers. It’s quite shameful.”
Also giving evidence was Chic’s Nile Rodgers who admitted that he had not looked deeply into his streaming revenue prior to the COVID pandemic because tour revenue was able to support his organisation. Upon looking at the earnings from streaming however, he described himself as “completely shocked”.
Referencing the issue of non-disclosure agreements in contracts he said “we don’t even know what a stream is worth [and] there’s no way you can find out. We must have transparency.”
Streaming now accounts for more than three-quarters of music industry income in the UK. Read more at BBC Online.
(Fiona Bevan photo: Lacey.batiste, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
