8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

Beatport Freezes Payments To Labels – And Gives Artists Just 5% Of Streaming Money

August 5, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Music Business Worldwide:

In a letter to music rights-holders sent last night and obtained by MBW, Beatport told labels that SFX’s ‘going private’ procedure had “trapped certain earned label payments”. Beatport believes the process will be “coming to an end in the next few weeks, at which time all payments will be able to be made”.



The big problem for the small labels we’ve spoken to is one of cash flow: this blocked payment covers three months of income, from April-June, and was due to be paid last Thursday (July 30). With Beatport accounting for 90% of digital income for some dance labels, such a delay in a primary revenue source risks badly damaging their stability.



This is pretty bad news for the labels concerned, and I’m sure Beatport’s actions here are not as villianous as some in the online world are making it out to be. They are a corporation, and this is the kind of thing corporations do. However, any label deriving 90% of its digital income from one source — and one that’s outside of its control — should be prepared in advance for situations such as this. (And — broken record time — that also applies when labels depend on something like Facebook for their entire fan outreach strategy.)

Meanwhile, Beatport is now taking on SoundCloud by permitting anyone to upload and monetize their own original tracks onto the platform. But there’s a big catch for artists: according to the terms and conditions of Beatport, it will only pay a measly 5% of income for plays of these user-generated streams. That’s for all rights, too.



I was hopeful when Beatport was just setting this up … I spoke to someone there about how they were aiming for this service to be seen as a monetizable alternative to SoundCloud. Using embeddable players that might pay some royalty would be a game-changer, as long as including advertising on our content wasn’t the trade-off. This 5% figure is disappointing, but I don’t understand where it’s coming from. This implies there’s another 95% that is going elsewhere. Their agreement speaks of the payment coming from a ‘pro rata share of funds made available for the payment of streams.’ So, there’s a pool of funds for this royalty (as I understand it), and then a set share of that pool designated for each play, but the label / artist only gets 5% of that. Hmm? Anyway, I look forward to someone explaining this further.

Update: Sources Tell Music Week Beatport Has Paid ‘Trapped’ Royalties To Majors

According to Music Week sources Beatport has already released those “trapped” royalty payments to major labels, but neglected to do the same for indies. Music Week understands that the UK’s indie trade body AIM hasn’t taken kindly to the treatment and has contacted Beatport demanding to see its members paid within 24 hours.

Whoa, if true, but not surprising. The three majors presently have a hold on the ‘new music economy’ via their consistent threats of litigation and non-participation. The Louis CK model more and more seems like a great idea for indies and self-released musicians who want to avoid getting involved in the mess.

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Why Streaming is the Future of DJ’ing
  2. We Now Return To The SoundCloud Soap Opera …
  3. This Space For Rent: Showing Up on Spotify’s Endcap

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Beatport, Download Sales, Streaming

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."
 
  Learn More →

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll

A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Hissy Tapes
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
Parenthetical Recluse
Poke In The Ear
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

Newsroll

Dada Drummer
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Garbage Day
Kneeling Bus
Lorem Ipsum
Midrange
MusicREDEF
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Climate Action Resources
+
Carbon Dots
+
LGBTQ+ Education Resources
+
Roe v. Wade: What You Can Do
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers

Copyright © 2023 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in