Digital, Culture, Media and Sport CommitteeVerified account

Chair @JulianKnight15 made a statement pertaining to our inquiry last week. You can watch it below:https://twitter.com/CommonsDCMS/status/1333754775729557505?s=20 …

Streaming services are competing with YouTube, which is free, so need to set prices accordingly Maria Forte tells our #MusicStreamingInquiry. She thinks fans would be willing to pay more if they knew money was benefiting artists fairly.

Where is the motivation for the record industry to fix streaming? @KwameKwaten says that tech has a very good way of bypassing the industry. Piracy was an example of this. So if concerns aren't addressed now, people will find another way to access music.

Jose Luis Sevillano tells us that the Spanish government saw the need for fairer distribution of streaming revenue and implemented a form of equitable remuneration. A society collects revenue then distributes it quarterly to performers as well as session musicians.

Maria Forte says it can be hard to know if composers are being paid correctly because inconsistent data means copyright societies struggle to identify who should be paid for what. Reliable metadata is vital, but until recently labels and publishers haven’t worked together on it.

The streaming system is unauditable and incalculable says @FionaBevan. Songwriters don't know their rates and how their income is calculated because of the NDAs between streaming platforms and publishers/labels.

The lack of transparency is by design @SowetoKinch tells @BrineMP. If you keep the system opaque and unintelligible, people don’t know what to ask for and don’t know what they’re entitled to. It is not difficult; it has never been easier to collect data.

We’d never have a Kate Bush or a David Bowie in today’s music ecology, says @sowetokinch

.@nilerodgers says we should be able to calculate the value of our intellectual property and understand how the industry sets prices. The best way to have that understanding is by sitting at the table. Artists + songwriters need to be represented. #MusicStreamingInquiry

.@nilerodgers we believe we're in a good business, of giving love and sharing art. We also believe the executives love music + artists. We're just asking them to see it from our side and bring more balance. They're still gonna make a hell of a lot of money! #MusicStreamingInquiry

Artists need to update terms in their contracts to reflect fact that songs are being consumed via a licence not a sale says @nilerodgers #MusicStreamingInquiry

Artists and songwriters are not fairly remunerated for their streams, it is unfair says @nilerodgers. We need transparency and if you can help us make this happen things will change, because we are facing explosive growth he tells us. #MusicStreamingInquiry

We used to expect a small but not negligible sum from royalties says @sowetokinch When incomes dropped, we thought we could make money from record sales on the road, but the labels decided they wanted a finger in that pie with 360 deals. #MusicStreamingInquiry

.@sowetokinch goes on to say that not touring and not selling merchandise reveals the inequity of the streaming set up. £4.2 billion to the top labels when 8/10 artists aren’t earning £200 – that can’t be right. #MusicStreamingInquiry

.@fionabevan says that Brexit means musicians won’t be protected by the EU copyright directive. The Gov deciding not to uphold it in UK law is terrifying for creators. But this is a chance to offer more protection to creatives and their IP. #MusicStreamingInquiry

.@fionabevan continues that music is one of the UK’s biggest exports. Extraordinary things come out of the UK. We don’t want that devastated. We want that cultural richness and diversity. #MusicStreamingInquiry