Busking sucks. Standing on cold streets, feeling exposed,
putting up with smart ass comments from passing strangers for hours, before
finally sifting through the lolly wrappers for the chump change to buy your
next burger. It’s not a great gig, but you would earn more from a day of that
than you would from a year on Spotify.
I’ve said before we aren’t in this for the money, and it’s
probably just as well, because earning a living from music these days is nigh
on impossible unless you are ‘lucky’ enough to become a puppet of some
multi-national entertainment corporation. The Covid pandemic has exposed this
more than ever. With musicians unable to work live they are relying on
streaming and vinyl/CD sales to get their chips. With CD sales evaporating and
vinyl still a bit of a luxury item, that leaves streaming as the main source of
‘income’.
Hands up all those who think musicians must be creaming it
in this brave new world of instant access music. Not so fast. Here’s some basic
facts to help you make your mind up. Spotify’s average payment per play on its
service is $.0038 USD. That’s 0.38 cents. That means an individual artist on
that pay would need to have around 3,000 plays to earn one hour’s worth of the
minimum wage in Britain.
So for a 40 hour week that would be 120,000 plays or 6,240,000 plays to earn
the minimum wage for a year. For one person. Building that kind of following
without live promotion is impossible.
At the same time, Spotify has tripled in value during the
Covid pandemic, and its founder is now a certified billionaire. The gap between
business owner and ‘employee’ has never been so stark since the days of cotton
production in the slavery days. Streaming services basically say take it or
leave it, since they hold all the aces. And it’s true. What else exists at the
moment?
If it continues this way real music (as opposed to corporate
product) is going to be another 21st century extinction.
The kind of absurd inequities highlighted in music are
playing out all over the world in almost every industry. The flip side of
globalisation is that it benefits the few on an international scale, while
leaving the vulnerable exposed to the shifting sands of local exploitation.
What do you mean you want a living wage? Get it from someone else – I need to
build a tennis court on one of my super yachts thanks and my private jet needs
upgrading. I can go to another country and find cheap labour if you want to
make a fuss.
Revolution is never pretty, but the appetite for it will
continue to grow as the 21
st century progresses. Then we’ll see how
much sway the mega corporations have over individual governments. Will
governments repress their own people to stay onside with the billionaires club?
Of course they will. You can bet your last wooden nickel on it. But the same
tools that make the mega corporations powerful can be used against them to
deflate their power. People have to organise themselves to create their own
global communities outside of governments to compete as a way of avoiding messy
and violent show downs with the powers that be. Access to technology hasn’t
been limited. Yet. And there are some vastly clever people out there that can
do it.
So where does all this leave your average musician right
now? There is a ground swell of protest from established artists who are sick
of being exploited, and there is an appeal to the parliament in Britain
to try and get some kind of regulation in place. That’s fine if it puts
pressure on the corporations, but it isn’t going to hit them where they live.
They are exploiting musicians, so if there are no musicians left, what are they
going to do? As I say, musicians need to start working together to claim some
kind of territory for themselves. Any kind of alternative streaming service
with a fairer payment system will do the trick, preferably owned by the people
who are benefiting from it. Sounds like communism? If you say so, but what the
fuck is wrong with people supporting each other to destroy a corrupt and
exploitative regime? It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees,
and you should never die wondering.
The only problem is that artists of any kind are
historically a selfish and bitchy crowd with no desire to help anyone except
themselves. So on top of a commercial shift we are also requiring a complete
cultural shift. And given how the covid pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in
human nature, you would need to be a massive optimist to see the light emerging
at the end of the tunnel. The times we are living through are tough, but tough
times lead to the strongest solutions and those who can adapt best will
eventually win out. It will be interesting to see what that looks like, and
that alone should be enough to keep you looking ahead.
If you feel like chucking us a fraction of a cent or two,
you can find our releases listed top right. I’m saving up for some new bass
strings in 2023.
