Comments on: PRS Endorses Spotify, Rickrolling Earned Pete Waterman Just £11

By: Andrew Aversa

Andrew Aversa — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:55:31 +0000

I support Pete on this one. He might already be rich, but demonizing him will impact everyone else and jeopardize proper royalties for content creators in general. Wrote a rebuttal piece on the topic;

http://soundtempest.net/industry-news/rickroll-exploitation-debate-a-rebuttal-to-mike-masnick/

By: Henry Harding

Henry Harding — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:04:34 +0000

But this is about the industry screwing the plucky artist Bob. If you think £11 is reasonable for 150 million plays then you need to do some basic maths. Most songwriters are not Pete Waterman and are not rich. Only 3% of PRS members actually earn enough to make a living, the rest of us are on subsitance, mainly because people simply don't want to pay for our work. Fine, if you don't want to pay, don't listen to it. It isn't your property, it belongs to the writer. I'm sure you'd be less than happy if I came round and just took your car and left a fiver on the drive with a message that you should stop complaining because it's my right to steal your property.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:19:36 +0000

This really makes me laugh – of course the PRS have signed a deal with Spotify, Spotify aren't interested in trying to build a sustainable profit generating business at the moment as they're in classic start-up mode: go for user growth while burning cash, look to sell at a high price based on large user numbers.

The simple truth is that the PRS just cannot get their head around the fact that collectively everyone involved (artists, the PRS, the media owners and service providers, the labels) has to build a profitable online music business, otherwise the whole music business is screwed. This isn't about big corporates trying to screw the plucky artists, its about simple economics for the music business: build something profitable or no-one will make any money and everyone loses