I’m not going to knock Billy Bragg here. “Mr Love & Justice” is really as cool as they come. He’s got quite a far-reaching audience. He’s amassed much cred in his pockets over the years. No doubt about that.
But reading his opinion piece published in today’s New York Times concerning what he calls “the royalty scam” conducted by Internet music portals like MySpace and Bebo, I can’t help but say: wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Bragg says that social networking sites who’ve managed to grow to serve tens of millions of individuals, and subsequently attract large purchase prices (MySpace’s $580 million sale to News Corp, and AOL’s recent acquisition of Bebo for $850m), should offer some recompense to the independent music artists who’ve built themselves on those networks, and consequently built those networks into larger, more valuable entities.
Which I imagine is something a great number of musicians have enjoyed quite a lot so far. Considering the fact that, a few years ago, they were altogether unable to build any popular backing without selling plastic out of the back of a van or tossing their tracks onto file sharing sites that could not effectively facilitate lots of “new discoveries” of their recordings, the ability to launch a fairly significant presence on social networks is a huge win for indie acts.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in just payment to musicians on radio, whether over-the-air or over-the-Web, as well as through CD and download sales. I think that the record companies have provided the majority of working musicians with ridiculous contractual conditions and have not delivered what I would consider to be a fair percentage of retail income. I think a good portion of “signed” artists deserve more. A lot more. But as far as social networks like MySpace and Bebo are concerned, there’s really no basis to demand that they provide royalties. They didn’t start their businesses with the aim of directly sustaining musicians, financially speaking. They strove to become social networks. Big social networks. Full of tons of different people. Some musicians. Most not. Yes, musicians can build homes on such networks. And they can reap promotional benefits. But that’s about it. And musicians know this. They’re seem okay with the trade.
At the very least, they are more content than they would be if they had to continue submitting themselves, one demo at a time, to the critics at record labels for contractual consideration. Soul-sucking contractual consideration, at that.
So I say keep on keeping on, Billy. Your songwriting is superb. Without question. Only, your argument as stated in the Times piece doesn’t hold up. Though the Birches have reaped a $600m windfall from their social experiment, they really have no obligation to provide any portion of it to musicians.