Today, the United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) union and U.S. Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman have introduced a new bill to Congress aimed at reforming streaming royalty rates for musicians.
If passed, the “Living Wage For Musicians Act” would establish new royalty compensation paid directly to artists to ensure that they earn at least one penny per stream, a figure calculated by UMAW to constitute a working-class living wage. Streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music currently pay artists between $0.003 and $0.007 per stream.
This royalty payment would be funded by imposing a 10 percent tax on streaming platforms’ non-subscription revenues and slightly raising streaming platform subscription fees paid by customers.
The bill would also set a maximum payout limit of one million streams per track per month, in an effort to “generate more sustainable income for a broader and more diverse set of artists beyond the world’s most popular performers.”
In October 2023, Spotify unveiled a new plan that would pay less popular artists even less than their current rate of $0.003 per stream. The company argued that the new rates would put money back into the hands of “working artists” by devaluing tracks that don’t reach 1,000 plays.
There is a lot of talk in the industry about how to ‘fix’ streaming – but the streaming platforms and major labels have already had their say for more than a decade, and they have failed musicians,” said UMAW organizer Damon Krukowski said in a statement. “The Living Wage for Musicians Act presents a new, artist-centered solution to make streaming work for the many and not just the few.
“We need to return value to recordings by injecting more money into the system, and we need to pay artists and musicians directly for streaming their work,” he continued.
UMAW also led a campaign supporting fair pay for performers at South by Southwest (SXSW) in early 2023. SXSW responded by raising fees by $50 for solo acts and $100 for bands.
Music fans can sign UMAW’s petition in support of the “Living Wage For Musicians Act” here.
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