Why are artists so angry about their royalties from streaming music services like Spotify? Is there really no money or is there money but a crazy math formula that calculates who gets what is, well, just wrong.
Could the problem really be a bad math equation?
Meet Sharky Laguana. Front man and founder of the band Creeper Lagoon and founder of a band van rental service Bandago.
Now construct a venn diagram of the music industry and rental services, Sharky sits right in the sweet spot.
As the founder and lead singer of the seminal 1990s alternative rock band, “Creeper Lagoon” Sharky knows the music industry. As the founder and CEO of the van rental company Bandago, Sharky understands the economics of rentals.
With the launch of Apple Music and Spotify, the emerging trend of renting music, as opposed to buying or downloading a track, is hitting the mainstream. So when Sharky sat down, took a look at how the current music services - Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Apple Music… etc, calculated how artists are paid, he quickly realized the numbers just don’t add up.
None of it made sense.
Where does your monthly fee go? Who gets the most? Who gets the least? Why were bands like the Rolling Stone, and other monsters of rock still raking in millions, while new artists are left with pennies? Is the system even rigged?
And why the heck does Liza Minnelli get paid when someone listens to a Sex Pistols song?
What’s an artist to do?
Sharky is a passionate voice for new and emerging artist, and with just one small change to the current system, he argues, everyone can be paid fairly.
Heads up, lots of swears in this episode....