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Digital
Streaming pays better than radio, says Beggars’ Martin Mills
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 2 August 2012
Martin Mills has said that some Beggars Group artists are now receiving significantly higher revenues from streaming services than traditional radio, reports Music Week.
Speaking at UKTI’s Global Business Summit On Creative Content, where Spotify’s Ken Parks also revealed that the company now has four million paying subscribers, Beggars chief Mills said: “I’m finding that some of our artists, particularly the more catalogue artists, are opening their royalty statements and earning more [from streaming] than from any other source on some individual tracks. [For Beggars] it pays many, many more times than radio play. We’re big supporters”.
Sony Music UK chief Nick Gatfield added: “It’s a hot debate for a number of artists and I think it’s largely down to ignorance – and I have to say, ignorance from some of the rights holders and major record companies as well. We’re all familiar with headlines about Lady Gaga getting streamed x million times and getting a cheque for £3.60, but the reality is that, when you look at the model, the life-span of a piece of music tends to be much more on Spotify – you can monetise it over a longer period of time and ultimately that will benefit us”.
Meanwhile, Parks said: “To date we’ve paid back over a quarter of a billion dollars to rights holders – 180 million dollars in the last year alone. We’re probably pacing about twice that in the next twelve months. We’ve paid a lot of money back to the industry and in some cases we’re paying half a million dollars a quarter to rights holders, so the money is real. As we scale the business, it’s only going to get better”.
