Björn Ulvaeus: How music streaming transformed songwriting | TED

53,726 views ・ 2021-07-23

TED


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I'd like to start with a quote,
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but it's very embarrassing because I don't know where it comes from.
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But it's very well put, and it goes like this:
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"Copyright is designed not only to provide fairness for authors,
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but also to enhance the quality of life within a society
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by promoting the progress of science, art and culture."
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In other words,
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the concept of making it economically feasible for creators to create
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is now globally recognized as a social imperative.
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I have very few memories writing lyrics to songs.
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But there is a particular one from long ago that I do remember.
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I was lying on my stomach on a bed in a small guest room
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with a writing pad in front of me.
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In the master bedroom next door,
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my then wife, Agnetha, was sleeping undisturbed.
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The music was playing in my head,
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so no need for speakers, not even headphones.
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A melody that still lacks words is virgin territory
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upon which a lyricist must tread lightly.
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Some of the time, the final words on the page
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are the result of hard work, deep thought
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and the intuition that a songwriter must learn to trust.
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But sometimes, extraordinary things happen;
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closed curtains are suddenly drawn, and the melody speaks to you
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and starts to conjure up images and even sequences of events.
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All you have to do is write it down, write down what you witnessed.
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A song can come to its creator in bits and pieces.
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But when it once in a while appears out of thin air in its entirety,
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it seems to suggest it had already lingered there, God knows how long,
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perhaps impatiently waiting to be plucked down
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by someone with a keen and sensitive ear,
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as if it needed the right vessel to flow through
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from the realm of ideas all the way down to earth.
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I was deliriously happy when I had finished.
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At that moment, I was grateful for music itself,
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for the sheer existence of this elusive, undefinable phenomenon
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that seems to ignore our brains and go straight to our hearts.
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I wanted to sing it out loud, but it was two o'clock in the morning,
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and even in my euphoria,
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I had the good sense not to wake the woman who was to sing my words the next day.
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If Benny Andersson and I had written that song today,
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you might not have gotten to hear it.
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It could have been just another lost dream,
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[one of] about 80,000 new songs uploaded to streaming services
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every single day.
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The competition today is fierce,
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much fiercer than it was back in 1977.
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And even if our song had been clicked very often by Spotify subscribers,
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chances are slim that the royalties would have paid anyone's rent.
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So what I want to talk to you about today
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is how I see the changes in the song economy
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using my perspective of what it was like to be a songwriter
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when the music industry was simpler and perhaps more predictable.
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These days, everything is tracked by our data.
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And data from streaming tells us
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that listeners much more often click their favorite song
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than their favorite artist
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on a streaming service.
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Sometimes they're not even sure who it is they're listening to,
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if it's a playlist, for example.
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So if we're paying more attention to the song, though,
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what about the songwriter?
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Songwriters have been forced into the back seat,
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and I would even say, bungled into the trunk.
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My concern is that songwriters are at risk of becoming invisible victims
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of the change that is taking place.
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The music business is now a song economy.
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Yet the creators of the songs that fuel it get the smallest slice of the pie.
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How did that happen?
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I am not, for one moment, about to suggest that we should turn back the clock,
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which you may have suspected from an old pop star.
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But what's happened in the last decade
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has the potential to be incredibly positive for songwriters.
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Now, instead, I'm going to describe the unintended consequences
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of the streaming revolution,
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how they are reshaping the lives of songwriters.
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And then, I will present some proposals
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for how the impact of these unintended consequences can be addressed.
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It has never been a better time to be writing and making music.
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Anyone today has the potential to find a global audience,
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and if they so choose,
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they can even try to do that on their own, without a record label or music publisher.
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A whole music software industry is emerging,
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serving the needs of a new generation of artists and songwriters.
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Streaming has enabled this new music paradigm.
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Once the pandemic stopped live music in 2020,
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many artists realized that they couldn't pay their bills on streaming alone.
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Some have moved back in with their parents,
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and others are driving Ubers to make ends meet.
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Previously, streaming had more or less been promotion for their tours,
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and live appearances, by far providing most of their revenue.
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It's funny, but it was exactly the opposite for Abba in the 70s.
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We hardly toured at all, and when we did, we lost money.
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But, I mean, the touring was supposed to be promotion for the album
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so that didn't matter.
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And I can't recall that we ever complained about the size of our royalties,
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which the artists, during the pandemic, have done bitterly,
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when streaming and royalties suddenly were the only source of income.
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"If this is the impact on artists," I thought,
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"welcome to the world of songwriters."
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Most professional songwriters don't tour,
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they don't sell T-shirts or other merchandise ...
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They rely on the song itself.
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But even that seems to be changing,
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because the song has evolved in response to streaming,
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and it's increasingly common for record labels
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to get large teams of songwriters to work together,
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creating almost genetically modified hits.
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Songs are written and structured in ways
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that are optimized for the algorithms that streaming services use
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to decide what music you and I listen to.
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Some research has been done to suggest that these days,
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a Billboard Top 10 hit has, on average, five songwriters --
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not one or two, but five -- and sometimes even 10.
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And on top of this, they’re having to write more songs and more quickly,
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simply to keep up with the insatiable demand
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for new music that streaming creates.
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After ABBA had won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with "Waterloo,"
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royalties suddenly came pouring in,
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and Benny and I could afford to write songs full time,
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nine-to-five.
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That made such a huge difference.
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We could afford to throw away 95 percent of what we wrote
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and just keep the very, very best.
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We learned how to recognize garbage,
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and that's essential if you want to get good at your craft.
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Royalties simply gave us time and creative freedom.
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Needless to say, you will have neither
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if you’re in a hurry and someone is breathing down your neck all the time.
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The industrial approach to songwriting is making it harder
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for many songwriters to build sustainable careers.
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Those that are successful are very successful,
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but those in the layers below,
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who used to be able to make a living from songwriting,
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are really suffering.
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They are becoming parts of a system that they serve more than it serves them.
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And here are three key pain points.
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Firstly, streaming services typically pay out about four times more
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for the recording than they do the composition,
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which means a streaming income is even smaller for songwriters
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than it is for artists.
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It's a legacy from the past,
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when recordings and the packaging of physical products were very expensive,
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so a larger share for the recording was justified.
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But that has changed.
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But the change has not yet been reflected in the division of royalties.
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Secondly,
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even the way that streaming services pay royalties is problematic.
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A listener’s monthly 9.99 subscription goes into a central pot,
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which then gets divided by the total number of streams that month.
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That decides the value of one stream, or listen.
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This means that you if you have streamed Arne Jansen's jazz trio,
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if you have done that 50 times in the past month,
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and the neighbor’s teenage daughter has streamed Justin Bieber 5,000 times,
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only a small fraction of your 9.99 will go to Arne Jansen.
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Nothing wrong with Justin Bieber,
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but how does that reward your favorite artist?
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And thirdly, bad metadata is a big problem,
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metadata being the relevant information about a song and its recording.
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Very often, recordings are injected into a streaming service
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without accurate data.
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The name of the writer is missing, for instance.
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That means that the streaming service doesn't know where to send the royalties,
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and the money is put in a so-called "black box."
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Just sits there.
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Recently,
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20 streaming services distributed 424 million dollars
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to a US nonprofit organization,
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which is supposed to try and find the rightful recipients of all that money.
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It will take years -- if they ever find them.
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The combination of all these issues and others
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are creating a perfect storm for songwriters.
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Over the last decade, I've watched this situation get progressively worse.
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And during the past five years,
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I've been engaged in projects that aim to do something about it.
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So how can I help?
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Well, first of all,
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I have you all here today listening to me,
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and that's, of course, what I want to do -- to raise awareness.
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But I want to do more than just raise awareness of the issues.
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I also want to help the industry identify solutions.
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And here are a few suggestions,
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out of many.
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One: fan-centric royalties.
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In order to ensure that all songwriters get paid fairly,
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I suggest that streaming services allocate their royalty payments
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based on the behavior of individual listeners.
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The individual description should be divided by the number of songs
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the individual listener has played during a month.
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That gives each song a value.
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If the subscription is 9.99,
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and the listener has played 10 Arne Jansen, again,
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songs that month,
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each song has the value of .99, almost a dollar,
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and that's the amount that will be paid to Arne Jansen.
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Under the current system,
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you can be sure that Arne would get
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the value of .00-something dollars.
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So this fan-centric approach to royalties will bring much-needed fairness
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and can build on the important starts made by Deezer and SoundCloud.
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But perhaps the simplest and most effective way
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to improve streaming royalties
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would be for streaming services to increase how much they charge.
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Streaming pricing has been stuck at ridiculous 9.99 for more than a decade.
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Meanwhile, Netflix seems to increase its pricing every week.
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Research shows that subscribers will pay more;
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9.99 could quite easily become 11.99,
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perhaps even 12.99.
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And thirdly: the tedious but absolutely necessary registration.
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Wherever the 80,000 new songs per day make their entry into the music industry,
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there should be user-friendly registration portals
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to make sure that relevant information about the work is captured early.
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This would diminish the problem with black boxes and conflicts.
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In my view, it is an obligation for collecting societies,
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who collect creators' royalties at source,
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to modernize and to adapt their technology to the digital age.
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I know it's easy for me to stand here in front of you
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and reel off a list of suggestions for the industry --
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much easier than making these changes happen.
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But change does need to happen,
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and soon.
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Crucially, this change needs to be brought about
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by the music industry as a whole,
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each part working together.
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The song and the songwriter fuel everything,
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from the recording through to live performances,
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even a T-shirt would not sell if the band hadn't good songs.
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I have created memories to some of those songs,
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from the Everly Brothers
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and then the Beatles,
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Elton John and many more,
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songs that sometimes would surprise me with a stab of ending,
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quickly washed away by their sheer beauty
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and the inspiration that they gave me.
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I know what they mean
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and what they meant to me.
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I've often wondered: What would we be without music?
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Less human, I'm convinced of that.
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If we couldn't hear music, then what else would we be deaf to?
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But we never seem to think about that,
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even though music is all around us all of the time.
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This is the moment for the entire music industry to invest in supporting
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what is, without a doubt, its most valuable asset.
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Far too many songwriters out there are suffering in this creaking system.
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Solutions like those that I have outlined could help rebalance the song economy
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so that more songwriters and their listeners
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will be able to lean back and say, in all honesty,
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exactly what I said in the song that I was talking about in the beginning:
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"Thank you for the music."
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