UK record industry does 3-year online royalties deal
The UK record industry and music writers and publishers, the MCPS-PRS Alliance, have done a 3-year royalties deal with Apple’s iTunes and the four mobile networks O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone so that musicians receive 8% of gross revenue when tracks are sold online, and a lower 6.5% rate when music is streamed.
The UK’s online music sales represent the biggest market in Europe, with 34 million ‘units’ of music already sold this year, so it’s something the powers that be are obviously keen to get a fair stake of.
Apparently, though, this is only a partial settlement and a Copyright Tribunal is set to continue for other digital music issues.
I’m all for music creators getting a fair cut for their work (in fact, and it’s a long-running debate, they probably don’t get a fair cut) – and this is all well and good for these large legitimate services but isn’t going to do much for all the illegal downloads going on. It may mean more legitimate music becomes available to these services, though.
2 comments
Oh the same really important people that always get the large chunks of cash that the artist should get. I don’t know what the percentage is for traditional media, but it’s pitifully low.
Roll on self-promotion on social networking sites – cut out the fat cat middlemen altogether.
Hang on
So the musician get only 8% of the income? Who gets the other 92%?
Thats why people “illegally” download music. Id rather give me cash to the artist, than to the corporates.
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