Ahh yes, weve heard it all before, right here, by me, actually.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/abbas-bjorn-ulvaeus-urges-reforms-061748099.html

Pre-pandemic, performing artists could count on income sources like concerts and merchandise, but "most professional songwriters are just that" -- songwriters, he said.

Now everyone is relying on streaming, which accounts for 83 percent of US music industry revenue, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

But many artists have long said they aren't reaping the benefits, and the pandemic is exacerbating the issue.

Streaming giants pool subscription money and divvy it up based on aggregate play counts to rights-holders or management organizations, who distribute it according to their agreements.

Artists have long disparaged that dominant model, holding it favors the globe's biggest stars at the expense of music's middle class.

Right now, "80 percent goes to the Drakes, the Swifts. The niche jazz artist gets almost nothing, if anything," Ulvaeus told AFP.

"But the niche jazz artist might have 10,000 people out there who love him or her -- and if all that money went to him, he could make a living out of that."

YUP!

Streaming "has hugely impacted the kind of songs and their structure," he said. "When (ABBA's) Benny Andersson and I wrote albums, we wrote albums."

"You can't do that now because... it takes 30 seconds, 15 seconds before people click another song."

- Money is time -

Ulvaeus laments that today's songwriters must navigate a system that forces their focus towards charts and entrepreneurialism: "I have a feeling that many songwriters have to part with their song too early."

In winning the Eurovision song contest with "Waterloo" in 1974, the musician says he and Andersson also won "artistic freedom."

"We learned to recognize garbage, and we learned to recognize when we had something really good," he said. "That takes time and hard work and patience. And how can you have patience if you have people breathing down your neck?"

"Money gives you that time."

UH-HUH!

"People are going to write songs. But why not treat them fairly?" he said.

Peachin to the choir, preachin to the choir!.


Last edited by Fdemetrio; 04/17/21 11:06 AM.