In a recent interview with Rock 108 (Wacth Below) Dorothy vocalist Dorothy Martin has proposed the unionization of artists to counter the streaming services and the low pay for royalties.
It is well known that streaming services often do not offer the best compensation rates to artists, with Spotify frequently facing criticism for this issue.
Spotify’s Streaming Policy
In November 2023, Spotify announced a new policy stating that they would not pay royalties for any song that did not receive at least 1,000 streams annually. This move has been viewed as a way for the company to benefit from some artists’ work without compensation. Subsequently, in December 2023, Spotify laid off 17% of its staff. During this period, CEO Daniel Ek made controversial comments, suggesting that “the cost of creating content being close to zero.”
Dorothy expressed a clear stance on the matter, stating…
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I think artists need to unionize and streaming services need to pay us a lot more for the songs. Streaming services have the pros of a much broader reach. You reach a lot of people. You can get a billion streams, reaching people all over the world.
But we need to get paid more because artists are forced to tour. Not that we don’t love to tour and see our fans, but we deserve to get paid for our art and it should be fair. The United States government needs to legislate on our behalf and get artists paid a fair amount for the streaming numbers.
Then we can come on tour. You can buy physical merch, vinyl, CDs, cassettes. We’ll sign it for you. We love it. We’ll kiss you on the forehead and sign your boobies. But touring is a grind. While it’s fun, it has its ups and downs. It’s just fair at the end of the day.
Artists should pull together and unionize, not be so competitive with one another, but have each other’s backs. ‘Cause when artists start talking, all the business folks in the industry are like, ‘Uh-oh. They banded together and they’re rebelling.’
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