Just over two years ago, European indies body Impala published a 10-point plan for reforming the streaming economy. Now it’s revisited and reworked those ideas for a new plan.
The lead now is a call to “grow overall streaming revenues and end dilution” which includes raising the prices of music subscriptions in line with inflation, as well as tackling ‘value gaps’.
Impala has also come out strongly against initiatives like Spotify’s Discovery Mode. “No royalty reduction. No pay for play or other initiatives recreating elements of payola,” is how that’s explained.
Impala also calls for “revenue enhancement mechanisms” in countries where streaming services are struggling to convert free listeners into paid subscribers.
As for the ever-argued-over shares of the streaming pie, Impala is still against the idea of applying ‘equitable remuneration’ to streaming royalties.
However, it has renewed its call for labels to “pay artists a fair contemporary digital royalty rate” while backing other ways to shake up streaming payouts – from France-style industry agreements to models including rates based on “active engagement, artist growth, fan participation, pro-rata temporis” (the latter relating to time/length of listening).
Its aim to “revise recording share upwards” could ruffle some feathers though, given the debate about whether recordings already get too big a share of streaming royalties compared to compositions. You can read the full new plan here.
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