As previously reported, Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour) recently took to social media to discuss the issues with streaming services and the low payouts artists receive from them. Now, the singer has discussed things further in the below interview with Rock Feed:
Taylor said the following when asked what musicians can do to get better royalties from streaming services:
“I’ll tell you what they can do; they can start by all of them banding together and pushing the streaming services to stop appealing the legislation that’s already been put in place to pay us better. There’s a reason that Tool waited as long as they did to put their stuff up on streaming services, ’cause they knew they weren’t gonna be compensated for something that they worked their asses off for.
To me, it smells of two things, with Tool: a) it’s perfect timing, because they have a new album coming out; and b) they probably worked out a deal with their label to make sure that they got a piece of the money that the label’s automatically going to get because of the money that’s being generated from streaming.”
He continued:
“That’s what people don’t understand. The difference between streaming and radio is you make money off radio because of the publishing that’s involved. With streaming, there really is no publishing that is promised. That money goes directly to — and technically it’s mechanicals — goes directly to the label. So the label is making huge amounts of money.
And they are not contractually bound to pay us for that, because of what they call ‘new technology.’ And unless you have been able to renegotiate your contracts in a way that makes it viable for you — which we haven’t; which a lot of people haven’t, because you can’t keep up with the technology. Unless you are able to adapt with that — and legally, a lot of labels won’t let you do that — you get screwed.
So from a publishing standpoint, the only way for us to make money, like that, off of the streaming is for that legislation to actually be signed into law. Which the fact that they are appealing it — most of them are, anyway — is just a smack in the face.”
He later added:
“We don’t have a problem with streaming. We don’t have a problem with people listening to our music. What we have a problem with is these streaming services basically treating it like we owe them, which is not the way it should be.”
[via Blabbermouth]
Metal Anarchy 