This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Digital Top Stories
MMF issues statement on Spotify
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 18 July 2013
The Music Managers Forum, which is chaired by Radiohead manager Brian Message, has issued a statement in support of streaming services. This, of course, follows Thom Yorke and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich announcing that they were pulling their side projects off streaming services in protest over the royalties artists earn from streaming.
The managers’ trade body said: “The Music Managers Forum embraces streaming as a technological development that adds to the ways that consumers can pay to access music. Any music creation is now potentially ubiquitous, for free, as soon as it is made available digitally. Streaming is in its infancy but growing fast and providing meaningful rewards for many. Income from radio, compact discs, downloads and even resurgent cassettes grows as the fruits of artists labour are discovered and become more popular. That popularity is a measure of the success of the artist fan relationship which is at the core of the modern music ecosystem”.
It continued: “A new music business is being built that encompasses publishers, labels, technology, financiers, producers etc, but that has the artist and fan firmly at the centre. Everyone, including artists and fans, in the new business needs to adapt to the new world”.
Finally, the statement concluded: “Streaming is not a download. Nor is it radio. It is streaming. It’s different and a part of the future”.
As previously reported, Message already came out in support of Spotify in a personal capacity following Godrich and Yorke’s announcement. On the fact that doing so put him at odds with his own clients, he told the BBC: “Obviously when Thom speaks out, I take note and listen. It’s a good healthy debate to be having. And he’s right to ask, what’s in this for new artists and new music”.
Nigel Godrich was not quite so forgiving, tweeting in response to Pitchfork’s report on that quote: “He has shares in the company. Maybe that has something to do with it”. Though he added: “Actually… he may not. But it wouldn’t surprise me”.
