BUS-340 Week 8 DQ 2

BUS-340 Week 8 DQ 2

BUS-340 Week 8 DQ 2

How do licensing agreements help artists earn money from their music? What are the various licensing arrangements? With the advent of technology and applications such as Spotify and Pandora, many songwriters and recording artists are questioning the loss of royalties and profits from their music because of the way monies paid by such music providers are siphoned through the music companies. Conduct research and discuss the legal and ethical issues faced by such entities. Address questions such as should artists and songwriters be entitled to a greater share of the monies paid by Spotify and Pandora, or are these entities compensating artists and songwriters fairly through promoting their music, which ultimately leads to profits generated by tour ticket and merchandise sales?

Licensing agreements help artists earn money for their music by generating royalties. Royalties can be generated through many types of license agreements such as performance rights, reproduction rights, and sync rights (Wang, 2018). With the advent of technology and applications such as Spotify, many artists have lost some of their royalties due to the way the money is siphoned. When royalties are paid, it is split between the artist and whoever is involved, such as record labels, songwriters, and publishers, which depends on the type of copyright being exploited (Wang, 2018). Services, such as Spotify, pay depending on the market and agreements they have with licensors (Mulroy, 2023). This could be an average of $0.0033 per stream (Mulroy, 2023). The way the royalties are paid out could leave an artist not making little to no money at all. Artists should be paid more by these streaming services as it is their work and livelihood. In 2019, Spotify was profitable and one way they were able to achieve that was to pay artists, songwriters, labels, and publishers a smaller percentage than before (Ingham, 2019). To be able to pay artists more it comes down to streaming services charging more for a subscription to pay them more and the listeners willing to pay more for the subscription.

References

Ingham, T. (2019, November 12). Spotify is profitable. how did that happen? Rolling Stone.

Retrieved February 2, 2023, from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music- features/spotify-profitable-how-happen-910456/

Mulroy, C. (2023, January 20). Spotify pays artists (sort of), but not per stream. here’s how it breaks down. USA Today. Retrieved February 2, 2023, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2022/10/22/how-much-per-spotify- stream/8094437001/

Wang, A. X. (2018, August 8). How musicians make money — or don’t at all — in 2018. Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 2, 2023, from https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/how- musicians-make-money-or-dont-at-all-in-2018-706745/