UK’s AIM publishes study on alternative streaming model

The study was presented by Spotify’s former chief economist Will Page and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers former vice-president of international David Safir during AIM's How to Fix Streaming debate last week.

The panel, which was moderated by Deviate Digital CEO and Music Week tech columnist Sammy Andrews, also included AIM CEO Paul Pacifico, with 500 professionals from sectors including leading digital music services, trade organisations and government bodies.

The research was first submitted to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry on the economics of streaming, which concluded earlier this year. It examines different proposals to improve the streaming market, exploring the current pro-rata system, the Artist Growth Model, user-centric payments and equitable remuneration. With 80% of streaming revenues going to just the top 1% under current ‘pro-rata' streaming distribution models, the Artist Growth model seeks to counter this ‘winner takes all’ situation, distributing earnings more evenly in the market and enabling an increased number of credible niche and emerging artists to make a sustainable living from streaming. Page compared the system to a tax model, summarising the allocation of wealth as "Tax the very rich to help the less rich, and leave everyone else unchanged”, he said.

The Artist Growth model is the first alternative streaming proposal to have been modelled across the whole market, rather than a single platform or dataset.

“This is holistic research, looking at the whole market, not just some, regardless of what you think of it, is a huge win for the inquiry. We've actually done holistic research... This is all the streams for one country, not a portion of the streams from one service. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, that’s a giant step,” Page added.

However, Musician’s Union general secretary Horace Trubridge disagreed with Page: “This model is just a case of rearranging deck chairs. It doesn’t make more of the revenue that the labels receive available to performers and it completely ignores non-featured,” Trubridge said.

Pacifico said in response to Trubridge: “I think that’s a criticism that could be levelled at all of the solutions that are being tabled, in the sense that they all look at how to divide money from a fixed pot, so you are de-facto, moving deck chairs around... The problem we’re trying to look at is the massive concentration of wealth in the head of the snake, and how we’re trying to push that to the middle market to support more emerging and niche artists.”

View the session and presentation here.