How Did Big Tech & US Policy Crush The Recorded Music Industry?
and are there any solutions for recovery beyond contemporary streaming crumbs for artists?
From the 78 RPM record to digital streaming. Platforms, products, formats and means of distribution come and go. Music and great songs last forever.
Growing up, my music idols held an identity and a sense of expression I related to strongly. I was captivated by their refusal to conform. My bands were cool people I looked up to in my teenage years. Robert Smith and his like, torchbearers for outsider-hood.
As I grew up in the middle of nowhere, isolated, surrounded by fields in the English countryside, music was my connection to places and people beyond. The popular kids at school were too loud and too boring. Their music did not connect with me. When the popular kids began listening to Nirvana, I soon realised that you cannot keep everything to yourself and your schoolmates. Whether it was Nirvana, Suede, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, the music was far too good. All these artists were outsiders that garnered acceptance from mainstream culture. By doing so, they pushed boundaries across the cosmos. Like Bowie did. Kraftwerk and Can. The Pistols and The Clash. Acid House. I now yearned for connection and escape, to find my people in the big city. I would find my tribe through music.
Music artistry is pure magic. Creative self-expression can light a flame, igniting a whole generational action of progressive change, from punk to acid house in the UK, into art, fashion, politics, a progression of societal norms and freedoms.
With a connection to artistry, a life’s purpose is awoken for any creative soul. With this calling, there is simply no other way forward. Any other way is false. A Faustian pact driven in exchange for the soul, forced for mere economic reasons – dull and oppressive. Creative people thrive in life when given the opportunity to create art. Fuelling culture and society - while maintaining a livelihood. In a contemporary setting, more and more artists are being driven the wrong way.
From the 1950s, the recorded music industry gave the best musical artists a home to develop and prosper. It holds documented flaws, like any industry, but the upside was that it provided a huge ecosystem of dedicated people working to drive the livelihoods and build the careers of musicians, artists, writers, and performers around the globe for fifty years. For many people involved, from artists to A&R to marketeers, there existed opportunity for livelihoods and careers. This was the golden era.
At the turn of the millennium, something changed that turned it all upside down. The recorded music industry, if it was honest with itself, has never really recovered from this.
1999 remains the biggest year for global recorded music revenue - well into the 21st century. When the numbers are examined (*), recorded music annual global revenue has still not fully recovered, despite streaming growing at pace since 2015.
So, what happened exactly?
US legislation, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, opened the floodgates for online piracy on a scale previously thought unimaginable. This US policy housed a section that gave safe harbour from copyright liability for internet technology and internet service providers. Qualifying websites included those hosting user generated content, as long as these businesses heeded any specific proactive take down requests from a copyright owner. Take down soon became a farce with the scale of infringement. The RIAA was not effective at this time in forecasting the DMCA’s full impact and any resulting successful lobbying of government. As content availability soared and connection speeds improved, the internet became the mainstream medium we have come to rely upon.
The DMCA legislation set a new precedence that exists to this day.
Audiences in their millions and soon billions flocked online. Multi-billion-dollar ad revenue was soon created from advertising placed next to content. Site and platform owners held no obligation to compensation creators and copyright holders. US policy soon set a global precedence for online activity, as copyright infringement was unmanageable. US tech enterprise benefited hugely, global technology empires arising as the dominant infrastructure in our daily lives.
Some two decades later, broad agreement for music use was finally struck between Silicon Valley and recorded music rights holders, but the damage had been done. There was no question who held the upper hand of power now. Terms remain one-sided, and especially so for artists. Streaming revenue for artists is a hotly contested issue illustrated by campaigns such as #BrokenRecord in the U.K.
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I have witnessed this revolution in the name of innovation from a unique position. I have been employed at key companies driving the change and those reeling from it in both the music industry and the tech industry.
I worked making records at major record labels, witnessing the downfall of a major global music company (EMI). Six major labels became three. I then saw print media nosedive first hand. Later, I would contribute to making Silicon Valley tech companies globally relevant. “Making the world open and connected” seemed a good idea, in the theory of digital equality. What could possibly go wrong with such good intentions?
21st century technological innovation continues to be enhanced to support humankind’s needs and requirements. Its scale has a dark side too, tides of disinformation, threats to democracy, mental health, and society at large. This before we even consider the lack of contemporary foresight and regulation for future advances in AI and new technology formats.
In 2023, many musical artists have never had it so tough. Latest global recorded music revenue figures are still below the 1999 figure. Scaled artist development investment has gone the way of the dodo. Streaming revenue is not a viable income for 99.9% of professional artists. Multiple artists going on the record on this topic exemplified this. The recorded music industry, broader creative industries, and the arts have shrunk. Access to creative and artistic careers, year after year, is increasingly the preserve for the most privileged in society who can afford to fully commit to their calling. With the increasing context of deprecated artist development funding from record labels and associated organisations, the responsibility is now on the artist to build their own profile before getting a record deal or any success. Those that can afford the valuable time to focus on their art will have the best chances to prosper; fund tours, rent rehearsal space, hire studio time, pay mixing and mastering fees, hire a PR, buy social media ads to reach the people that already follow them. Those who must for economic reasons endure holding down a day job to make ends meet, will struggle to commit the necessary time to build a profile, even before necessary cash injections are considered. Those with privilege and talent will have a significant advantage over others of fewer means.
Consider the backgrounds of your favourite music artists from the 1950’s onward, as the record business prospered. Under contemporary conditions many of those artists would never have been given the opportunity and investment to thrive, they would be lost in time, their records never to exist. Empty voids in the soundtrack of your life.
Now let that sink in.
Culture suffers as careers are built through the eye of a needle with a return to the dark ages of economic privilege as gatekeeper. Sure, you’ll be able to throw several contemporary token names as examples of less privileged artists who headlined a festival or had a number one album. Of those such contemporaries who came from humble beginnings in more recent years, the number of artists from working and lower middle-class backgrounds will fall far shorter compared to prior decades, such as the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. A golden era for music, expression, and access to the arts. The number of acts from less privileged backgrounds signed every year and given artist development funding and opportunity from the late 1950s to the early part of the 21st century will outweigh contemporary data.
We live in an age of well-established heritage acts who built global and regional profiles decades ago prior to these challenges. Any act working now relies on touring and merchandise income, not recorded music sales or streaming revenue. There are also the lucky few newer wave contemporaries who prosper on any remaining label budgets as big bets. Far less acts now get major label deals or deals at large well-funded independent labels. Of the remaining artists who would have been great enough for a deal under healthier conditions, many are self-sufficient and just about hanging on in there, many more are giving up, because bills need paying by other means.
The ambassadors of technology empires are either delusional or deceitful if they think the world is a better place today for talented aspiring artists seeking sustainable music careers, compared to two decades or more ago. Access is open but substantial support is lacking. Releasing music digitally is easier than ever, the marketplace has become overwhelmed and saturated with more releases than ever. Most releases have little impact and get lost in the tide, not even recouping costs.
Over two decades on from the commencement of online connection in our daily lives, there is still a vital need to get the balance right between major tech platforms and artists.
The artistic ecosystem is vital to society and culture. If it thrives, it represents, reflects, and defines our times, giving opportunity for the most talented artists to blossom into mainstream consciousness, pushing the envelope, forging new frontiers, enriching society, and culture, influencing both contemporaries and the next generation. Thus, making life exciting and inspiring for each generation. Year on year, fewer artists are thriving, let alone making ends meet through their art. For technological platforms, now is the time to show some respect to the creators and artists you used to build your empires upon.
Firstly, it’s time for the DMCA to be reconfigured for the 21st century, so it is fit for purpose for artists and creators.
Secondly and more immediately, time is overdue for respectable revenue shares for artists and creators on all advertising and subscription revenue when copyrighted creative works are placed on a platform, service, or site. This should be so for any creative work. The creator’s economy needs respect and income to survive, let alone thrive.
‘But we provide the platform technology and front the costs of its upkeep and product innovation’ has often been the response from big tech ambassadors protecting their right to keep all attributed revenue.
‘But we provide the content experience which pulls the audience, we front all the costs of its production,’ is a simple reply by any artist or label.
For big tech enterprise it’s been a one-way street for too long. On the take, building empire, it is now about time for giving back. Will big tech’s contribution to art and culture flourish or continue to falter in this regard? If the current trend continues, entire generations of talented artists will be lost, never to be heard.
History teaches us all empires fade. Music lasts forever.
Give the current and next generations of artists in the 21st century an opportunity to thrive, as previous generations of artists in the late 20th century did.
Big tech, what will your legacy be?
(*) 2021 IFPI figures state $25.9bn specifically for global recorded music revenue in 2021 and $24.1bn for 1999. However, 2021 figures include performing rights and synchronisation revenues, whereas 1999 IFPI figures omit them. These revenue streams were active in 1999. When such revenue streams are taken from 2021 figures, with like for like comparative data, 1999 remains the largest revenue year for global recorded music revenue.