Non-featured musicians (session or backing musicians) currently receive no royalties from music streaming at all. Photo: Shutterstock.
The MU has been campaigning to achieve better royalties for musicians from music streaming since it became a significant way that people access music. A lot of this work took place behind the scenes, and it wasn’t until the first Covid-19 lockdown that the Fix Streaming campaign was born.
Pandemic lockdowns shone a light on how little musicians were making from recorded music when the live sector closed down, and what impact this was having on their lives. That’s when the Union joined forces with the Ivors Academy and started campaigning publicly for a better deal for musicians and music creators.
More recently, the Council of Music Makers joined the fight and we are now collectively representing music creator and performer views to the Government.
The issues with music streaming affect musicians globally, and musicians' unions around the world are campaigning for a fairer share of revenue for their members.
So, how are session players paid?
In 2013, session musicians received £120 for a 3-hour non-classical BPI recording session. Today it is just £130! Negotiations have been completed on an increase to £180, which is welcome but still considerably below a doubling in value in line with the rest of the industry. It also doesn’t benefit musicians on existing tracks.
It is also important to remember that this upfront fee paid to session musicians currently covers their labour at the session, provision of their instrument(s), and the package of rights acquired by the label.
Even if you consider it fair payment for the initial labour, it certainly isn’t proportionate to the revenue generated by popular tracks on streaming platforms, which is where royalties should come in.
And how is streaming revenue shared out?
When it comes to streaming, platforms retain around 30% of revenue and pay out the remaining 70% to rights holders, of which the lion's share goes to the major record labels.
Roughly speaking:
- 30% goes to the streaming platform
- 55% goes to the record label (the label will then pay the featured artist a royalty from this percentage, as per the contract)
- 15% is split between the music publisher and songwriter(s).
Yet the non-featured musicians (session or backing musicians) get no royalties from music streaming at all.
This differs from radio play, where an unwaivable royalty is payable to non-featured musicians by law. It also differs from music videos, backing track use and sync, which are covered by the Union’s commercial audio session agreement with the BPI (the trade body for major labels).
It's worth noting that if an artist owns their own recording, they will receive the full 55% from streaming revenue.
Negotiating a fair deal for session musicians
The MU is campaigning to ensure that all performers on streamed music, featured and non-featured, receive a fair and guaranteed royalty.
For non-featured artists, this means:
- Performer remuneration in the form of a new performer fund or extension of the existing session fund, managed by PPL, that receives a percentage of streaming revenue to be distributed to featured and non-featured performers.
- A commitment to standardise support for those who work speculatively on sessions that are commissioned by record labels, which might include per diems, points on recordings and holding fees on works where publication is restricted by labels - not to be recoupable from artist income.
We are also making specific asks for featured artists, and campaigning as part of the Council of Music Makers for a better deal for songwriters.
Some independent labels offer better terms than the majors
For featured artists, the independent label Beggars already offers a minimum, modern digital royalty rate to artists and writes off unrecouped balances after 20 years. We want this good practice to apply to record deals across the board.
We are in a process with the Government and music industry representatives negotiating for a better deal for both non featured and featured artists now.
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