Rewarding Full Plays Of Songs: A Fair Deal for Artists [Bobby Owsinski]

Artists get penalized if their songs are not played all the way through, so shouldn’t they also get rewarded for full plays of songs? Streaming services don’t agree.

Should Musicians Earn More for Full Plays of Songs?

by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Every artist and band should know the following statement by heart. Almost every streaming music service won’t pay you unless your song is played for at least 30 seconds. That’s why modern songs have changed they’re form so much. Hit the listener with your best hook and lyrics right in the beginning to keep them for 30 seconds.

But what happens if listeners continually move on before they hit that magic 30 second mark?

And a better question might be, should you get paid more if your song is played to the end?

You already are penalized when your song is skipped a lot before the 30 second mark. Songs are moved down or removed from playlists, and streaming service recommendation engines are less likely to serve your song up to prospective new listeners.

Completion

But what if that 30 second mark payed less than if a listener played the song to the end?

Think of it another way – what if you got payed more if a listener actually completed the song?

That’s what a new report by former Spotify chief economist Will Page suggests.

Or Not

This seems perfectly reasonable on the surface, but there’s been a lot of expected pushback from the streaming platforms. For instance, they claim that the revision of the mountain of contracts signed with the labels would cost too much and take too long. They also say that the accounting costs would skyrocket as a result since there is now another layer of royalties.

How about if a user frequently shuffles back 10 seconds to replay a favorite part? How does that get counted? Then there’s the perpetual contention that longer songs have a built-in propensity not to be played to completion, because they’re. . .long.

And how about songwriters, and fraudsters, who intentionally write short 1 minute songs that would be over before a listener realizes it? That would mean that a short 1 or 2 minute song that’s completed would be worth more than a 5 minutes song where someone listened to 4 minutes.

As with everything, each solution to a fairer royalty brings new questions and possible abuses.

Status Quo Upended

As much as the streaming services would love to keep things as they are, there’s a movement gathering momentum that will eventually cause a change.

For instance, one of the big contentions with the current royalty scheme is that user’s money goes towards songs that they never listened too. User-centric royalties can change that, but so far that hasn’t been widely adopted.

One thing for sure is that there’s a groundswell for more fairness in the ways streaming royalties are calculated, and it’s not going to stop. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s at least some movement towards any of the above royalty schemes in the next round of contract negotiations between the labels and the platforms.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.