Opinion: raising the price of audio streaming to increase royalties will lead to an increase in piracy
Horacio Gutierrez, general counsel for music streaming service Spotify, said any price hike, which has been unchanged at Spotify for a decade, would make music “unaffordable”. This happened at a meeting of the English Parliament’s Committee on Digital Technology, Culture, Media and Sport (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee).
Since the end of last year, parliamentarians have been investigating the situation of musicians and production structures in the context of a pandemic, because income from concerts has dropped dramatically. But music streaming services have grown by 20 percent. And by the way, music streaming is generating more than £ 1 billion in revenue for the UK economy.
As an option, you can increase payments to artists by raising the subscription price. Now artists are paid only 13 percent of the income received. The fairness of the distribution of these payments has been repeatedly criticized, and their value, which is alarming, may differ from service to service by a factor of 10. Of the online platforms in the comparison, YouTube pays artists the least at around £ 0.05 per stream. At the same time, Apple gives the author 0.6 pence, and Spotify – 0.2-0.4 pence.
The subscription price remains at £ 10 for the UK or $ 10 for the US. And exceeding this psychological barrier, according to analysts, in particular from Spotify, will lead to a massive overflow of listeners to the area of free (the same YouTube) or completely illegal content. The British Parliamentary Committee on Digital Culture, Media and Sports continues to seek solutions to the problem.
