Streaming royalties

Michael Price is a composer of television and film music and the chair of the New Media Executive Committee of the British Academy of Songwriters. He is unhappy about the changes made by media companies in the way that composers are being paid for their music.

(The Independent)

Price said he was a supporter of licensed streaming services, but called for a new era of “transparency” in which tech giants and record companies disclose explicit details of the deals which set the rates on how much artists and songwriters receive. His comments follow the recent launches of the Amazon Prime Music and Apple Music streaming services, and come in the wake of claims by US musician David Byrne that record companies are siphoning off revenues from streaming and not paying royalties to artists and writers.
Price claimed that many of their employees didn’t recognise the value of music. “People working in these tech companies are often of a generation that has never paid for music in a conventional sense. They cannot understand that the value of their service is only because people want to listen to the music on it.”
Price pointed out that, unlike successful pop and rock artists, composers were usually not able to supplement their music royalties by selling tickets for live performances. “There was a concept that free exposure for artists was good for our career – that ship sailed quite a long time ago.”
He is chair of the media executive committee of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, which is campaigning for a 50-50 split of streaming royalties between the creator of a piece of music and the record companies. Songwriters currently receive only 10.5 per cent.
Price is looking forward to the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in London next weekend, featuring the score he wrote with fellow composer David Arnold, alongside other music connected to the detective.
But he fears quality music from less high-profile shows is being denied the chance to be recorded as an album because of low streaming rates.

What is Stockhausen's legacy?

Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most important composers of the post war era. He is partially responsible for the creation of the post war modernist music. But what is his true legacy? Was he the leading composer in his field? Did he invent the 'timbralist' idea of generating music from a single sound? Well, he did accomplish that concept with "Stimmung'' (Voice) which is completely designed around the single chord of a B flat ninth . But he wasn't the first. Giacinto Scelsi wrote "Quatro pezzi per orchestre" which is based a single note per movement and that work was written in 1959. Quatro pezzi per orchestre - Scelsi I seriously doubt whether Stockhausen knew about Scelsi's achievement when he wrote Stimmung in 1977. Perhaps one of his greatest works is " Gruppen'' (Groups) composed for three orchestras. Did it change the way we use the orchestra? He was a pioneer, especially in the early stages of hi...

In the shadow of a genius.

Recently, I have discovered a fascinating revelation about the composers we admire so much. That behind many geniuses, there usually is a predecessor lurking in the background. It reminds of that often quoted phrase by Picasso A good artist borrows and great artist steals Now, I am not suggesting that the composers who I mention are stealing peoples' ideas - there is no evidence to support that fact. However, I am suggesting that the idea of a genius who came from nowhere may not be accurate. Let's take the case of Ernest Fanelli. Who? You might ask. He is a significant but unknown person in the development of impressionism. He is an Italian born composer living in Paris. He composed a good deal of 'new' music at the end of the nineteenth century. His ideas were quite radical; his instrumentation included harmonics, sul pont., he used wordless choruses. Unfortunately, he wasn't as talen...

Helmut Lachenmann

H elmut Lachen mann is relatively unknown outside of Germany. Nevertheless , h e is a figure wh o is growing in significan ce in modern music circles. Despite his wide experience, h is lack of broad appeal is, in my opinion, largely d ue to the individuality o f his music. He is not easy to categori se in an era which is dominated by trends and cliches. A simple way of describing his music is... *"musique concrète instrumentale". The notion is the creation of a subtlety of transformation of timbre, a manipulation of a continuum from sound to noise, from pitched notes to pitchless textural exploration, and all that in the sphere of (mostly) purely instrumental music. That means that in Lachenmann's music, there's a world of sound that rivals and even surpasses what electronic and electro-acoustic composers can achieve. -Guardian. Essentially , he is a acoustic composer writing electronic sounding music. He is somewhere...

Modern Music

Search This Blog