The Price of Music Morrissey, Mazzy Star, and, erm, Bonnie Tyler: selling The Smiths’ songs, and the truth on music streaming royalties – do artists REALLY get such a bad deal?
Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s The Price of Music: an urgent-ish delve into the news that Morrissey has announced he wants to sell his ownership of The Smiths’ songs… including a suggestion from Steve and Stu about how Johnny Marr might buy the songs off Morrissey via a gmail address that Morrissey put online.
And then Steve and Stu take a deep dive into a fantastic question from listener Simon who asked: artists often say that they are not making enough money from music streaming but are artists REALLY worse off today in the music streaming age?
To answer this, Steve and Stu wander down some... interesting pathways. They:
- talk to their Top Secret Sources in the artist and label world, and found out the answer… (which may surprise you);
- hypothesise about both Mazzy Star AND Bonnie Tyler’s record contracts;
- chat to Spotify, which reveals to our dynamic duo about how much they paid Mazzy Star and Bonnie Tyler(!);
- wonder how being a ‘radio artist’ pays compared to a ‘streaming artist’;
- dig into artist deals: because the money paid from streaming doesn’t go to the artist first;
- ask why the artists who ARE doing well from streaming platforms aren’t talking about it?
- …and tangentially… is TPOM better to listen to on a treadmill than Hi-NRG house music? A brief discussion.
And in the special post-show lock-in section just for our Patreon Superfans, Steve and Stuart prop themselves at the bar to chat about:
- The time Steve worked in a record shop for a day; and he immediately faced a quandary: which letter should he file PJ Harvey under?
- Steve gently chides Stu over his love of a Songs Of The Summer Stats List from TikTok, which includes a load of old nostalgia songs
- Radiohead are back – and how do you sell tickets to shows that will be massively-oversubscribed and make sure those tickets get to real fans?
- After Covid’s impact, money spent on live music is up - and more popular than ever. But what were Steve and Stu’s first gigs after Covid?
- A call for your suggestions of hard-to-file records!
As ever, we welcome your feedback, emails and – in particular – any questions you might have about how the music biz works!
Email us: thepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com
See you next week!
Steve and Stuart
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