A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Rapper Kendrick Lamar set a distinctly modern record this week. His new album “To Pimp A Butterfly” got 9.6 million album streams when it hit Spotify on Monday. That’s the most in a single day from any artist on Spotify.
But unlike album sales, these streaming numbers largely reflect who listened to the album for free. So how do artists get paid for content that often doesn’t cost the listener a single penny? And how much do they make off streaming platforms?
Paul Williams, the songwriter behind some classic songs including "We’ve Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters and "Rainbow Connection" sung by Kermit the Frog in “The Muppet Movie,” wants to change how songwriters are compensated for their work.
We've Only Just Begun by the Carpenters
Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog
Most recently, Williams co-wrote songs on Daft Punk’s grammy-winning album “Random Access Memories.” He’s also the president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, aka ASCAP. The organization is now asking the federal government to update the rules that govern how songwriters are paid.
Touch by Daft Punk (with Paul Williams)
When Paul joined The Frame, he talked about how streaming services changed how songwriters are compensated and the Songwriter Equity Act that was recently reintroduced in Congress.
How have streaming services changed how songwriters are compensated?
The way people listen to music has changed with the technology. People don't buy music and own music anymore. Everybody's streaming their music and we love that. You know, in 2013, we processed 250 billion streamed performances of music. So music is being listened to on the most amazing, wonderful devices. The fact is that the way we listen to music has changed, [and] the way we're compensated for it is totally out of proportion and out of date.
The Songwriter Equity Act has just been reintroduced to Congress. Why is this piece of legislation important to ASCAP?
Let's step back a little bit and talk about how we operate. We operate under a consent decree. The consent decree was an arrangement between the Justice Department and ASCAP back when ASCAP could have been called a monopoly. We were the one performing rights organization and the Justice Department came in and said, "These are the rules you're going to operate on: Number one, you're not allowed to say no. If anybody ever wants a license to play your music, you have to give it to them." You know, that consent decree that we operate under hasn't been updated since — well, before the iPod was created. So it's totally out of date.
Let's jump forward to copyrights. When you hear music on the radio, you're hearing two copyrights. There's a copyright for the song and there's a copyright for the recorded material — the sound recording. The money from that copyright goes to the recording artist and the record companies. We cannot —under the way that the laws are written right now — we can't go into court and say, "Judge! Those guys are getting 12 to 14 times more than we get — the songwriter." In the rest of the world, it's pretty much 50/50. In our world, 14 to 1 is unfair. The Songwriters Equity Act will us give one thing: The right to go into court and say, "Judge, it's unfair. These are the numbers."
Matt Pincus, SONGS Music Publishing founder and CEO, says that three of his company's songwriters wrote a hit by Jason Derulo. The song was streamed 124 million times on Pandora and the songwriters' 50 percent share of performance royalties was $3,158.05. Pincus stated,"This rate of money is not fair for my songwriters."
Not only that, but Pandora turned around and sued to pay less. What people need to remember is, first of all, why are we living in a country where songwriters are the most heavily regulated small businessmen in the world, just about? It makes no sense. The fact is the system's broken. I think that is a gift. I think it got so bad that finally the Justice Department is looking at the rules we operate under, and I'm hoping that we're gonna have some decent changes.
As a songwriter, when you're looking at your residual checks before streaming and look at them now, do you actually notice a decrease?
I had the great honor of writing a couple songs and singing on an album with a group called Daft Punk last year. We won the Grammy for Album of the Year for the album "Random Access Memories." There was a time in my life when having the Album of the Year, you could have bought a house. Now you can buy dinner at Michael's in New York, but the fact is that this system is broken. We're talking about small changes that are gonna make [a] huge difference. What I'm also seeing is a lot of studios for sale.
Guys that wrote a bunch of hits are selling their houses and moving into smaller places. It's not fair. Bill Withers is one of my all-time favorite people and a great songwriter. I went to D.C. with Bill and was sitting with a senator. He's trying to explain to the senator that, "Unless he change the rules we operate under, we're gonna have to do something else for a living, senator. We're gonna have to get day jobs." And he said, "Senator, you do not want Ozzy Osbourne as your plumber."