Apple Music has issued a memo to artists, labels, and other rights holders regarding royalties and practices, in which the streaming service announces that it pays an average of one cent per stream, the Wall Street Journal reports and Pitchfork can confirm.
“While the license fees for streaming services are calculated on the basis of stream shares, a game still has a value,” says the memo considered by Pitchfork. “This value varies by subscription and country, but averages $ 0.01 for custom-paid Apple Music plans in 2020. This includes license fees for labels and publishers.”
Much of the memo appears to be indirectly addressed to its main competitor, Spotify. At one point, Apple reiterates its commitment to pay all labels the same 52% headline rate. “While other services pay a much lower rate to some independent labels than the big labels, we pay all labels the same headline rate,” the memo says. “This means that artists can distribute music however they want, knowing that Apple Music pays the same price. Sign with a label or be independent; We believe in the value of all music. “
The memo appears to be referring to Spotify’s Discovery Mode, which gives artists the option to opt for a lower advertising fee in order to enhance the personalized algorithmic playlist.
The memo states, “We believe that every creator gets the same price, that a piece has value, and that the creators never have to pay for the feature.” It later says, “The Apple Music Global Flavorers team curates 30,000 hand-edited playlists. These tastemakers select music based on merit and we are not asking anyone to accept a lower royalty in exchange for the presentation. The same goes for Apple Music’s personalized playlists and algorithmic recommendations. “
It should be noted that streaming companies like Apple Music and Spotify don’t pay artists directly, but instead pay to record labels, distributors, and organizations for performing rights like ASCAP and BMI, who then pay artists. Towards the end, Apple also shared its findings from research into “alternative license fee models”.
“Our analysis showed that it would lead to a limited redistribution of royalties with varying effects on artists,” the memo says. “The rate per game would no longer be the same for every game of a song. More importantly, the changes don’t increase what all developers make from streaming. Instead, these changes would shift royalties to a small number of labels and provide less transparency for developers everywhere. “
Apple’s announcement comes at a time when music industry artists are demanding a shift in streaming services to fairer license fees. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) campaigned for Spotify, which has a far larger user base than Apple Music with 155 million paid subscribers, compared to Apple Music’s 60 million subscribers as of June 2019, to pay off a dime a month of power . In March, Spotify launched the Loud & Clear transparency initiative to facilitate more communication with the artist community.
Read on the square “Meet the experimental musicians who have built their own streaming service”.
