Billy Bragg tells musicians Spotify isn’t the problem

Singer-songwriter Billy Bragg has stepped into the Spotify debate with a Facebook post that’s getting picked up in the digital music news. Bragg joins Thom Yorke, David Byrne, Dave Allen, and others who critique artist-royalty system in spotify’s business model. In this diverse series of publicized opinion statements, Spotify is the proxy for streaming music platforms generally, and the main complaint is that musicians don’t get enough money from them.

Bragg spins from a different angle, saying that the record labels are to blame more than the music services which license albums and tracks from the labels. He likens arguing against Spotify to a complaint against the Sony Walkman in the 1980s. Bragg identifies label contracts as the problem. Many contractual terms were made for the analog era, he argues, and don’t carry over effectively to digital realities like music streaming. 

Bragg’s statement adds to an emerging aspect of the Spotify debate, which points the finger of complaint at how labels share streaming revenue with their artists. The argument hinges on whether Spotify streaming (and similar distribution deals) should be contractually accounted as royalty revenue, or licensing revenue. Generally in music contracts, royalties are much smaller percentages to the artist than licensing.

Last week, a union of Swedish musicians threatened to sue their labels over this issue. (RAIN coverage here.)