UK government must address lack of streaming royalties
Players of over 20 orchestras across the UK have joined forces with the Musicians Union to demand that the government addresses the lack of streaming royalties. While streaming services have made music more accessible than ever, most of the money that they earn never reaches the people who perform the music. This is a particularly harrowing issue with non-featured musicians, including session and orchestral players, as the viola player Rachel Bolt explains in this reel:
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The Musicians Union has assessed that the solution lies on updating the copyright law. As it currently stands, streaming services must give part of their revenue to copyright owners, who are mainly record labels and publishers. Changing it in a way that guarantees equitable remuneration for streaming income would give musicians their due revenue back, without making the State incur in additional expenses.
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Fix Streaming Now!
You may want to check this out where you are but in the UK we have a campaign called 'Fix Streaming Now!'. Basically what we have found is that independent music creators earn very little if not a fraction of a pence or cent in Royalties for the play of their music on streaming platforms where as Record Labels, in particular the larger labels, take a bigger slice of the pie because of the size of their catalogues and how the system works in their favour. This system needs to be fairer especially at a time like now where every bit helps.
Read more about the 'Fix Streaming Now' campaign on the Musicians Union site here and do what you can where you are to get this equitable for all music creator.
Links to have your say to the UK Government are here: here: https://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/Home/News/2020/Nov/Calling-all-songwriters-composers-and-performers-a