On-demand music streaming service might generally be viewed by record labels and music businesses as the industry’s great white hope, but artists are still generally unsatisfied (and underpaid) with the likes of Spotify, Rdio, iTunes Radio, Beats Music et al.

Last year, there was a growing chorus of high-profile musicians that were decrying the business models and poor royalty schemes of subscription-based services. Among the detractors like Grizzly BearThom Yorke and Atoms For Peace, and Amanda Palmer, was David Byrne.

The former Talking Heads leader caught a lot of attention for his rather fascinating, if extreme, op-ed for The Guardian, where he declared “the internet will suck all creative content out of the world.”

Byrne echoed some of the sentiments of his contemporaries in saying that streaming services were great for consumers but not so great for the “survival of emerging artists and those who have only a few records under their belts,” warning that the ultra-slim profits from digital platforms were not only non-sustainable but also discouraged musicians’ creativity altogether.

Where The Guardian piece telegraphed Bryne’s concerns, now the 61-year-old artisan has penned a spiritual sequel – as Consequence Of Sound points out – that discusses how to fix the broken parts of the streaming service boom. “What happens to musicians when these [music streaming] services become more ubiquitous – when streaming becomes the new download?”

The extended piece, entitled How Will The Wolf Survive: Can Musicians Make A Living In The Streaming Era?, finds a curious-minded Byrne exploring “what happens to musicians when these [music streaming] services become more ubiquitous – when streaming becomes the new download (just as the download took over physical CD sales) – which is what the owners, partners and investors in them intend,” he writes.

Especially when that future landscape potentially lessens music’s worth, with the majority of services (with the exclusion of Beats Music, as Byrne emphasises) allowing users to “play exactly what [they] want, when [they] want it – as if you own the record” and “reinforces the idea that music is something you can (and should) get for free,” Byrne states, “it’s like Napster, but legal!”

After his lengthy analysis, Byrne offers four potential ‘fixes’ to reconciling the issues that streaming services present.

1) “No free on-demand streaming”

“The free ad-supported Spotify version should go away,” writes Byrne, meaning all free models – including YouTube – should “transition to be a subscription-only service” where the privilege of accessing music still means paying a “monthly or small one-time fee – just like with Netflix.”

2) “Artists should get 50% of the [streaming] income”

Essentially, increasing the amount musicians get from licensing by nearly “quadruple” what they get now and helping to reduce the “kind of pittance that trickles down from streaming services after record labels and others have taken their pieces of the pie,” as Byrne describes it. “Though the amount of income still might not be sustainable—it goes part of the way there.” Byrne says that some labels are already setting this new 50/50 standard in this regard, including his old label Warner Bros.

3)”Artist approval”

The tick of approval for musicians’ content to appear on streaming services should come from the musicians – not the label, even though this is the custom for licensing. “This is actually controversial,” Byrne notes, as performing rights agencies (like ASCAP and BMI internationally or APRA AMCOS in Australia) tend to negotiate artist approval in “bulk deals as best they can,” and should continue to do so, “but the right to ope out would be nice,” he adds.

4) Transparency

Artists and their representatives should be abel to directly access “accounting and data sharing” so that musicians can “use some of that information to become better at reaching their fans and marketing their music,” Byrne details. Spotify attempted to do just that with the launch of their direct Spotify Artists service last year (albeit after five years and under much pressure).

It may be dense, but David Byrne’s full open letter is well worth your time, covering a whole lot more on the “thorny questions that get raised” when discussing streaming services. But not, unfortunately, the veteran musician’s thoughts on another unique money-making method hit upon by LA band Vulfpeck, who figured out a way to scam Spotify streaming dollars to aid in funding their touring costs.

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