via NYTimes:
Everyone should be celebrating — but many of us who create, perform and record music are not. Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like “Happy”) on Pandora or Spotify are common. Obviously, the situation for less-well-known artists is much more dire. For them, making a living in this new musical landscape seems impossible. I myself am doing O.K., but my concern is for the artists coming up: How will they make a life in music?
I blame the artists.
Artists decided about 50 years ago that record companies were the best thing for them and hey, the Internet wasn’t a thing maybe distribution and the package deal worked for artists back then. That deal is changed.
I think back to Taylor Swifts open letter. She shouldn’t have been fussy with Apple. She should have raised the issue with the label that owns the rights to her music. Record labels agreed to the original 3 months unpaid artists deal. They all signed up on behalf of the people they represent because artists gave labels that power.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the artists because without them, the label infrastructure we have today will crumble.