Who's Taking All That Money?

Following up on my earlier skepticism about the drive to add royalties to terrestrial radio, Mike Masnick over at techdirt has a story about musicians' changing relationships to streaming services.

He notes that streaming services such as Spotify appear to be paying more than any other source and that in between the person making the payments and the musicians is this giant Cartel of suck called the record labels and much of what they suck is the money that flows on those streams. Dollars you pay to subscribe to Spotify or Pandora turn into pennies by the time they reach the artist, often delayed by months or years.

Back when I wrote that piece (Nov 2012) I suggested we were still in the earliest infancy of streaming services and we should not be making judgments until we had more use, more time, and more data. If the writers Masnick is pointing to (independent musician Ron Pope and polyphonist Benn Jordan) are typical of where we are now then change and maturation are definitely underway.