Category Archives: Updates

Two new peer-reviewed, open-access research publications

Brianne Selman, Brian Fauteux, and Andrew deWaard. “From Copyright Cartels to Commons and Care: A Public Infrastructure Model for Canadian Music Communities.” Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 17.1 (2022). doi:10.21083/partnership.v17i1.6706. Open Access.

ABSTRACT: Using research on the political economy of the music industries, interviews with independent musicians about their lived experiences, and the authors’ experience participating in government copyright consultations in Canada, this article discusses how the market power of major music companies, and their capture of the policy-making process through lobbying, has made copyright reform an extremely limited avenue for remedying the variety of hardships facing musicians in the streaming media era. Against the continued consolidation and concentration of power within the music industries, we explore a case study of Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Records as an alternative model that may inspire further initiatives that advocate for artists and users. We conclude by discussing a commons-based, public infrastructure and governance model that could serve as a tool to circumvent uneven power dynamics in the music industries, facilitate stronger music communities, and provide sustainable livelihoods for working musicians in Canada.

Andrew deWaard, Brian Fauteux, and Brianne Selman. “Independent Canadian Music in the Streaming Age: The Sound from above (Critical Political Economy) and below (Ethnography of Musicians).” Popular Music and Society 45.3 (2022): 251-278. doi:10.1080/03007766.2021.2010028. Open Access.

ABSTRACT: This article illustrates the precarious position of Canadian independent musicians in the streaming era. In the first section, we articulate the sound of the Canadian music industry from above, providing a macro-level political economy, looking at multinational conglomerates, streaming technology, financialization, consolidation, and inequality. In sections two and three, we listen to the sound from below using ethnographic methods, relaying the experiences of independent musicians within an increasingly precarious industry. Based on feedback from the musicians we interviewed, we conclude by providing a series of recommendations and ideas to foster a more equitable, community-based music culture.

Conference Presentations: IASPM, 2021

Members of the Cultural Capital Project presented recent research at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music – Canada. The panel and paper abstracts are below, along with slides from each presentation.

“Independent Canadian Music: Obstacles and Opportunities for Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization”

Digital technologies and new listening practices have established innovative methods for circulating music, but because of corporate consolidation, independent and diverse voices are increasingly unable to support themselves making and performing music. For Canadian musicians, they are at the mercy of non-Canadian media and tech companies. In 2015, Billboard reported that Universal, Sony, and Warner control roughly 86% of the North American recording and publishing market. LiveNation and AEG monopolize the live concert and ticketing business and the digital streaming media sector has come to be dominated by Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify. Within this consolidated sector, inequality is rising: the top 1% of artists account for 77% of recorded music income and radio playlists and Billboard charts are dominated by just a handful of the record industry’s biggest superstars. This power dynamic increasingly marginalizes independent musicians, especially in Canada.

Our panel is designed to respond to this dire situation by presenting four perspectives that evaluate the state of Canadian independent music. Each scholar is presenting research from our SSHRC-funded research project entitled “The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Independent Canadian Musicians.” In the first paper, Andrew deWaard will contextualize Canadian music within the broader economic shift of financialization, in which private equity, institutional investment, and venture capital are harvesting profit from many segments of the economy, including the music industry, resulting in further consolidation. In the second paper, Brian Fauteux will draw on trade press research to evaluate the degree to which musician’s perspectives are incorporated into the discourse about the music industry, as well as research into the limited availability of independent and marginalized music on popular streaming platforms. In the third paper, Brianne Selman will talk about how we saw some of these industry interests play out in the recent review of Canada’s Copyright Act.

“Life After Death”

Brianne Selman (University of Winnipeg)

Abstract: In 2018, INDU launched the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act, followed by Heritage launching their study on Remuneration Models for Artists and the Creative Industries. Together, they heard 250+ briefs and 300+ witnesses on issues around copyright, compensation, and the role of copyright in cultural production. Meanwhile, UMSCA was signed on November 30, 2018, with its concomitant copyright term extension from 50 years after death to 70 years after death. Many of the industry witnesses and briefs encouraged this term extension, while individual creators – and the Cultural Capital Project, as witnesses at the Committee on Canadian Heritage meetings – talked about other, and perhaps more significant, ways that creativity can be supported. This preoccupation of the recording industry with term extensions comes at the expense of both considering the evidence from cultural economics that term extension does little to bolster creators, as well as at the expense of talking about copyright issues that do have impact on independent creators. Considering the increasing financialization and consolidation of the music industry, the process and the resulting reports of the Committee which seemed to greatly favour industry perspective over that of creators and evidence based scholarship are unsurprising but nonetheless concerning. This presentation will look at some of the briefs and testimony presented to both Committees, as well as critically examine its origins and results.

“Amplifying Canadian Artist Perspectives in the Streaming Music Era”

Brian Fauteux (University of Alberta)

Abstract: Corporate streaming music services have brought forth few benefits for independent musicians. Meagre payouts, limited catalogues, and predictable algorithms combine to reward a shrinking number of bestselling popstars. Despite these issues, streaming services are often characterized by narratives of progress and superiority. This is an issue that has garnered attention from writers, journalists, and artists who have raised claims about the marginalization and inequality in the digital music industries. As Liz Pelly writes for The Baffler (2017) “In its quest for total power and control, Spotify has prioritized its own content, and it has made it notably more difficult to find albums rather than playlists.” More recently, the Canadian songwriter Danny Michel publicly exposed inadequacies with the way that streaming services and big tech companies compensate artists. With this context in mind, this presentation will emphasize the perspectives of Canadian independent artists who are navigating the digital music industries and working to carve out a livelihood in the streaming music era. It will do so by sharing results from an analysis of trade publications and popular journalism to discover how often artists are quoted or featured in articles about the very issues shaping their careers. Further, it will highlight gaps in Spotify’s catalogue by comparison to artists that have been part of the Top 100 !earshot charts in Canada over the past 20 years (which measures Canadian campus radio station airplay). The number of albums that are played frequently by Canadian campus stations that are not on Spotify also exposes inadequacies in catalogue coverage and makes it clear that narratives of “discovery” and infinite music are misleading. Taken together, these findings indicate that Canadian independent artists and their positions within the global digital music industries are not prominently featured and industry consolidation has narrowed playlists and perspectives in the streaming music era. 

“Canada and the Financialization of the Music Industry”

Andrew deWaard (UC San Diego)

Abstract: Over the past two decades, the corporate consolidation of the music industry has been facilitated by a silent partner: Wall Street. This paper utilizes a political economy of media approach to contextualize the state of Canadian music within the era of financialization. Private equity firms, such as Bain Capital and Terra Firma, have used debt and financial engineering to extract capital from record labels (Warner, EMI) and terrestrial radio networks (Cumulus, iHeartMedia), while financing the consolidation of the live music market (Ticketmaster/LiveNation, AEG). Even the trade press that reports on these developments (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter) has been transformed by private equity. Institutional investors, such as Blackrock and Vanguard, have assembled dominant investment stakes in all major media companies, using this ‘common ownership’ to reduce competition and raise prices. Hedge funds are also targeting recording and publishing rights in an effort to harvest capital from streaming companies. In conjunction with this external financial pressure, the big three labels (Universal, Warner, Sony) have enacted internal strategies of financialization, monopolistically leveraging their back-catalogs for equity stakes in streaming music companies (Spotify, Soundcloud). Finding great success in this investment-based strategy that requires no sharing of royalties with its artists, the big three labels now operate their own venture capital funds, as do all major media companies. Premised upon massive debt, short-term interests, and profit extraction, this new era of financialization and consolidation represents a dangerous transformation for a music industry already hostile to independent and marginalized musicians. In the Canadian context, this means the livelihoods of Canadian musicians are subject to the predatory behaviours of Fortune 500 CEOs, Silicon Valley programmers, and hedge fund vultures. Considering the onslaught of financialization in the cultural industries, the diversity and vitality of Canadian music will require bold government action, such as financial reform, cultural protectionism, and antitrust enforcement.

The Cultural Capital Project’s Response to “Shifting Paradigms,” the Report Provided by The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage: Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries

In response to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage “Shifting Paradigms” report, for which we were one of the few non-industry participants, we feel that our evidence and perspective is not well represented. The spirit of our submission is lost in a report that, instead, prioritizes the status quo recommendations that were collectively put forward by music industry representatives and lobbyists.

To briefly summarize our submitted brief, “Putting Users and Small-Scale Creators First in Canadian Copyright Law and Beyond,” our project made the following recommendations:

1. Recognize that increasing market consolidation is at odds with a vibrant and diverse music industry:

  • Antitrust regulation should be pursued to protect a diverse marketplace, not just to ensure competitive pricing.
  • Increase public funding and support dedicated to smaller creators who are more likely to be squeezed out by market consolidation.
  • Increase collaboration with other governments recognizing the importance of protecting diversity

2. Recognize that user rights and the creative commons have value for Canadian creativity and culture and that these should be protected:

  • Retain limits to statutory damages for non-commercial infringement, so that individuals aren’t faced with undue fear of exercising user’s rights.
  • Protect the current notice-and-notice system and strengthen it to protect against misuse/spurious claims.
  • Continue rejecting industry sponsored proposals for site blocking and de-indexing, which disproportionately harm small producers and the general public, for the gains of only a few large industry players.  

3. Consider automatic rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of term extensions:

  • Copyright Act Amendment that provides for automatic rights reversions to creators after 25 years.
  • Clear language in the Copyright Act that prevents contractual override of rights granted in the Act.

4. Support vibrant arts communities through direct funding and policies other than applying new limitations via the Copyright Act.

  • Any device or user taxes that are implemented to support culture should be progressive and not unduly impact lower income citizens.
  • Increased public funding of new and emerging artists and labels, with fewer restrictions on label size and distribution, and lifetime caps for larger labels.
  • Increased support for local initiatives that support musicians and communities.
  • Support provincial and municipal models of funding and support that recognize the shifting nature of artist income streams

In response to “Shifting Paradigms,” we acknowledge that the report aims to understand the everyday situation of Canadian creators but replicates many of the status quo suggestions and interests of the industry representatives.

There are recommendations that urge tech companies and streaming companies to support the work of Canadian creators, which is in line with our efforts to stress the problems with industry concentration, but there is very little in the way of tangible policy suggestions that provide an indication that these corporations will comply.

The report places much focus on already established modes of protectionism, like Canadian Content for broadcasting and an emphasis on combating piracy, which makes the recommendations feel already dated and against the interests of everyday users. We worry that these recommendations are not in line with actual everyday technological and cultural practices of users. Further, they serve to reproduce and enhance Copyright protections to the benefit of industry and to the detriment of small-scale creators as well as everyday users/listeners.

The report suggests that all witnesses were in favour of the term extension to life plus 70 years when, in fact, this is something we argued against: “A term extension risks preventing a vital public sphere to the benefit of major record labels.” We recognize that CUSMA had been drafted and would be extending the term regardless but we would like to acknowledge our stance as being against the term extension as a productive and progressive move forward for the Canadian music industry, particularly in consideration of small scale creators and users.

We acknowledge that there is an artist protection provision in Recommendation 14, and this is one area in which our submission and brief is represented. However, we recommended a Copyright Act amendment that would make a rights reversion automatic, so it will remain to be seen how this recommendation is applied. We are concerned that if the rights reversion is not properly enforced, the situation will be one in which artist contracts are restructured to avoid this protection provision.  

News Article on Project: “Canadian copyright laws a bad deal for musicians, says U of A expert”

The University of Alberta has published a story on The Cultural Capital Project and our recent submission to Parliament, based on an interview with Brian Fauteux.

Check it out here.

Brief submitted to Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage: Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries

Here is our second submission to the two committees currently looking at copyright and remuneration in Canada. This brief is to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage: Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries. A pdf of this submission, has been deposited here, at the University of Winnipeg Institutional Repository “WinnSpace.” This is the longer of our two submissions, with added examples, statistics, and details.

Putting Users and Small-Scale Creators First in Canadian Copyright Law and Beyond

A Brief Submitted By:

The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians

Presented to:

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries

December 10, 2018

Our submission comes from a research team that includes:

  • Dr. Brian Fauteux, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alberta
  • Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at the University of Winnipeg
  • Dr. Andrew deWaard, PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA

And research assistants:

  • Dan Colussi (University of Winnipeg)
  • William Northlich (University of Alberta)

Introduction

In an industry characterized by market consolidation, an imbalance of power between creators and big businesses is one of the largest factors that prevents fair remuneration for creators. Proposals for legislation that do not address this imbalance may worsen the conditions for working musicians. While legislation that supports users rights may offer some mitigation of the effects of this industry concentration, copyright is generally an inefficient tool for protecting artists and encouraging innovation. Artists are not always the rights holders for their creative works and thus legislation for rights holders does not inherently help artists. By encouraging creativity, user rights are more empowering for everyday creators and can help balance the concentration of power enjoyed by the large industry players.

Our submission comes from a research team that is working on a SSHRC Insight Grant funded project titled “The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians.” The project investigates issues of fair payment for creators, as well as ways to encourage new and creative artistic production.

The following recommendations aim to represent the interests of everyday users and smaller scale musical creators and hope to provide a diversity of position.

1. Recognize that increasing market consolidation is at odds with a vibrant and diverse music industry.

Increasingly, copyright as an exclusive right has been effective at building up assets for oligopolies, and the concentration of these assets provides a barrier to new and innovative players in the cultural industries. Canadian musicians and users are at the mercy of non-Canadian media and tech companies: Universal, Sony, and Warner control roughly 86% of the North American recording and publishing market.[1] LiveNation and AEG monopolizes the live concert and ticketing business;[2] iHeartMedia, Cumulus, and the private equity companies invested in them have amassed large terrestrial radio station groups and driven them into bankruptcy;[3] SiriusXM dictates the satellite radio market and has just purchased Pandora; and the digital streaming media sector has come to be dominated by Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify.

The stunning inequality among musicians is getting worse: the top 1% of artists account for 77% of all recorded music income,[4] while the 10 top-selling tracks command 82% more of the market and are played almost twice as much on Top 40 radio than they were a decade ago.[5] This consolidation of listening habits has the effect of reducing the diversity of music: a recent report on Spotify’s most-streamed artists in 2018 indicates that all of the top artists are men.[6] 

The Canadian Media Concentration Research Project notes that vertical integration within Canada  “is very high by historical standards and almost four times current levels in the United States.” In Canada, Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, and Quebecor accounted for 71.1% of the $80 billion network media economy in 2016.[7]  As President of Re:Sound Music Licensing, Ian MacKay, noted: in 1997, 50% of the Canadian radio sector was in the hands of 10 radio groups; it is now 82%, leading to homogenized playlists and limited exposure for new musicians.[8]

Massive profits are being made in the media landscape, little of which makes its way to artists and performers. A recent Citigroup report found that the U.S. music industry generated $43 billion last year, but artists received only 12%.[9] This market consolidation, combined with vertical integration (where tour promoters are owned by radio stations are owned by record labels) makes it harder for both creators and users to be exposed to diverse and remunerated cultural goods.

This is not to say that Canada does not enjoy a diversity of artists and musical styles that have been supported, in some cases, by Canadian industries and intermediaries. The Polaris Prize, as an example, has support from a range of sponsors including the CBC, the Government of Canada, FACTOR, and Slaight Communications, and over the past five years has been awarded to artists with an exceptional range of sounds and styles: Jeremy Dutcher (2018), Lido Pimienta (2017), Kaytranada (2016), Buffy Sainte-Marie (2015), and Tanya Tagaq (2014).

One further issue heightened by market consolidation is the collection and monopolization of user/listener data. Platforms are increasingly able to collect and monetize citizens’ private usage data, usually in a way that is not transparent to listeners themselves. Listening data has value, similar to the data and knowledge generated by academic research and in cases where public funds have gone into programs/projects, this data should have the same requirements of openness as research data. In both the Heritage and INDU committees, the lack of market data to inform decisions is evident.

Market Consolidation Recommendations:

  1. Antitrust regulation should be pursued to protect a diverse marketplace, not just to ensure competitive pricing.
  2. Increase public funding and support dedicated to smaller creators who are more likely to be squeezed out by market consolidation.
  3. Increase collaboration with other governments  recognizing the importance of protecting diversity, like the Joint Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Digital Space with France,[10] the “international grand committee” of Canadian and British parliamentarians that are investigating American tech companies,[11] and the EU’s actions against Amazon, Facebook, and Google for anticompetitive practices.[12]

2. Recognize that user rights and the creative commons have value for Canadian creativity and culture and that these should be protected.

Cultural works in the public domain/creative commons encourage access to information and culture, which inspires further creative work and lessens boundaries between users and creators. We encourage a consideration of the value of having musical works in the creative commons and advocate for legislation that is in line with contemporary cultural practices and technological realities (including online activities such as music sharing, fandom, and remix culture).

Protecting the rights of people to use and create culture in noncommercial ways is crucial to protecting the public domain. We caution against the technological optimism shown in the recent EU copyright changes, which encourages the enforcement of copyright law by technological algorithm.[13] Suggestions made by Canadian industry to protect against piracy, like site blocking and deindexing without court oversight in the “FairPlay” proposal, would involve undue intrusion and preemptive control over spaces where cultural appreciation and production occur. This ‘chill’ – the fear of every day citizens and creators to engage in cultural sharing, appreciation, and innovation – has a direct effect on reducing creativity and participation in cultural production.

There are compelling initiatives in spaces that are not entirely restricted by copyright. Capital City Records at the Edmonton Public Library is one example of a digital public space that has local creators make their music available for anyone with a library card. The library provides artists with an honorarium and makes content available for permanent download and streaming, with artists retaining rights to their content which can still be shared and sold anywhere else.[14] Such an example highlights ways that listeners, artists, and cities can be connected through non-commercial, public spaces. Moreover, such a space is able to make use of the internet and digital technology in a way that circumvents unfair power dynamics and concentration in the media industries.

Treating the general public like pirates is unfair, especially after opening the space for legal options like Netflix and Spotify (as well as the myriad of independent options that exist). There are now affordable and accessible options for everyday users to watch and listen to cultural texts. The additional costs of aggressive regimes of copyright enforcement provide barriers and costs for new entrants into the market. Small creators would disproportionately feel the burden of this style of regulation. Instead, we encourage efforts to provide artists with higher payout rates via streaming and online music services

Public Rights Recommendations

  1. Retain limits to statutory damages for non-commercial infringement, so that individuals aren’t faced with undue fear of exercising user’s rights.
  2. Protect the current notice-and-notice system and strengthen it to protect against misuse/spurious claims.[15]
  3. Continue rejecting industry sponsored proposals for site blocking and de-indexing, which disproportionately harm small producers and the general public, for the gains of only a few large industry players. [16]

3. Consider automatic rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of term extensions.

In the music industries many artists are deriving revenue from copyright adjacent activity. Much artist revenue has to be sustained by aggressive touring,[17] an option that is not accessible to everyone and one that is difficult given Canada’s vast geographical area. A Future of Music study[18] found that the income derived from sound recordings is a small part of a musician’s overall revenue pie and is decreasing, although sound recordings are “valuable for other reasons, serving as an artifact of creativity that can [be] used to leverage other income sources” including live performance. From 5,371 survey respondents, “the aggregated percent of income derived from sound recordings [over] 12 months was 6%.” Specific genres with noted decreases in income from sound recordings included rock and jazz.[19] Further, two-thirds, or 66%, of respondents “reported that 0% of their income was derived from sound recordings.”

Another study[20] found that, “on average, just 14% of sound recordings published between 1890 and 1964 had been re-released by right holders on compact disc. Non-right holders re-released twenty-two percent of those recordings without the benefit of any monopoly rights—over fifty percent more than those that did.” It is worthwhile to consider how works in the public domain enjoy greater commercialization and dissemination than titles with restricted rights. A term extension risks preventing a vital public sphere to the benefit of major record labels, who would further exploit an artist’s work after their death.

Term extensions do not hold up to scrutiny in cultural economic theory.[21] Most of the commercial value of a sound recording is extracted in the first 10 years, so a 70 years after death term provides no real additional incentive.[22] A group of economists demonstrated how the time value of money affects investment incentives, explaining that by assuming “a real interest rate (net of inflation) of seven percent, they showed that a dollar today is worth $0.93 if received in a year, just $0.0045 if received in eighty years and a mere $0.0012 if it’s going to take a century to end up in one’s pocket.”[23] 

The future value of a dollar bears a striking resemblance to the current per-stream rates paid out by major music streaming services, rates that are decried by numerous artists (recent statistics[24] indicate a per-stream rate of $0.0038 on Spotify and $0.0007 on YouTube). As Liberal MP Randy Boissonault expressed in a question to SiriusXM Canada, “to make $2,400 a month, which is the minimum wage here—an Alberta wage is $15 an hour—it would take 16.5 million hits on one streaming site and it would take 9.8 million hits on another streaming site for one artist to make $2,400 in one month. That’s 180 million hits just to make a living wage for the year.”[25] By considering cultural depreciation and by discounting the value of future earnings, “it becomes clear that the period of exclusivity necessary to incentivize initial creation of even the most expensive works is far shorter than current copyright terms.”[26] 

Copyright term extension is now reality in Canada. To mitigate the ill effects of the term extension we strongly encourage a careful consideration of automatic rights reversions, with rights reverting back to authors after a period of no greater than 25 years. This echoes other arguments that have been put forth in favour of reversions, including Bryan Adams advocating for rights reversions with the ability of creators to reclaim ownership of creations 25 years after they have been given away.  This recommendation offers some balance to the historically imbalanced relationship between artists and record labels, where creators are often pressured to sign away their rights for life.[27] 

With rights reverting back to creators, they would have the ability to dedicate works to the creative commons or engage in direct licensing. Additionally, it would enable creators to enter into renewed or revised contracts, which would be beneficial if a work was to be adapted or re-released.

Key to creators being able to exercise these rights is clarification that these rights cannot be contracted away. Record labels, publishers, and platforms should not be able to add contractual stipulations that override creators’ moral rights, or a hypothetical reversion right. Rights reversions could be used to further fund the production of music through direct selling to listeners or serve as a retirement fund for musicians, lessening the precarity of artists’ futures.

Rights Reversions Recommendations

  1. Copyright Act Amendment that provides for automatic rights reversions to creators after 25 years.
  2. Clear language in the Copyright Act that prevents contractual override of rights granted in the Act.[28]

4. Support vibrant arts communities through direct funding and policies other than applying new limitations via the Copyright Act.

Public funding is crucial for independent Canadian creators. One example[29] of this is the additional $2.5 million in funding that has been committed to FACTOR by the Department of Canadian Heritage for funding the export of independent Canadian music. However, sometimes the requirements for grants can unfairly restrict against smaller artists/labels.[30]

Copyright related revenue for independent musicians is generally quite low. The Future of Music study[31] indicates that musicians are making less money on recorded music sales for multiple reasons. Royalty payments are becoming based more on sales of singles than albums, and now that streaming has overtaken the sale of digital downloads, dismal per-stream rates are a dwindling source of revenue. There is a drop in record label support as artists now pay for things that labels used to, and musicians must perform branding and marketing roles themselves. One example involves Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, who made “viral, entertaining covers of popular hits” to then make sales from both covers and originals to compensate for making “less than tens of dollars” from streaming services.[32]  The majority of artists, instead, “rely on an ever-shifting composite of income sources based on their compositions, sound recordings, performances, brand, and their knowledge of their craft.”[33] Public funding can fill these gaps and promote access to diverse and exciting Canadian content.

However, we are extremely wary of cultural funding falling on users in the form of a smartphone tax. The variety of uses for these devices are numerous and the vast majority of these uses are going to be for necessary connectivity, not piracy related activities.

To help Canadian independent artists, the Government should prioritize strong connections and relationships with provincial and municipal governments, particularly when it comes to policies and initiatives that fund and support live music venues, small record labels, do-it-yourself and artist-run spaces, and campus and community radio stations. Living in a “music city” has its benefits with respect to financial opportunities that are open to artists, enabling one to more readily make a living for oneself, but these locations often have a higher cost of living.[34] 

In Canada, we have seen issues with balancing “music city” initiatives with increased costs of living, especially in large cities like Toronto. One 2018 article[35] highlights a “venue crisis” in the city as live music venues, namely smaller venues, struggle to sustain themselves and remain open. This points to two challenges: 1) Ensuring that larger urban centres do not only cater to superstars and megatours; and, 2) Enabling smaller and mid-sized Canadian cities to also provide resources and support for live music initiatives. It is imperative that live music can be programmed and promoted by a variety of organizations and that live music events are affordable and easy to attend. 

Public Arts Funding Recommendations

  1. Any device or user taxes that are implemented to support culture should be progressive and not unduly impact lower income citizens.
  2. Increased public funding of new and emerging artists and labels, with fewer restrictions on label size and distribution, and lifetime caps for larger labels.
  3. Increased support for local initiatives that support musicians and communities.
  4. Support provincial and municipal models of funding and support that recognize the shifting nature of artist income streams.

Conclusion

Waterloo-born musician Danny Michel has recorded 13 albums in the last 25 years, building a career and a comfortable living from his music without having written a ‘hit song.’ In a confessional social media post,[36] he revealed that his album sales revenues dropped by an astounding 95% in 2018 due to the transition to streaming services. Michel is now wondering how long he can remain a musician. He is not alone. Based on conversations with many other lifelong musicians, Michel notes a deep, shared anxiety among working musicians about the ability to continue making ends meet in the digital music industry. “Bands/musicians are downsizing, recording at home, cutting corners where ever they can,” Michel laments. “Studios are losing business. Session musicians, techs, administration, grant writers are all losing work. And with every band in the world back on the road, venues are clogged and ticket prices have tripled. For me it means being away from home and taking on more work than I ever have.” Sadly, Michel’s story is not uncommon in today’s cultural industries, which are becoming an increasingly unequal playing field with downward pressure on labour. Michel ponders whether “the expiration date on music” is coming. Government action can prevent that dismal day from ever arriving.

The main principles we would like to see applied by both the Heritage and INDU Committees, when it comes to legislating and regulating the music industry in Canada, are:

1. Recognize that increasing market consolidation is at odds with a vibrant and diverse music industry.

2. Recognize that user rights and the creative commons have value for Canadian creativity and culture and that these should be protected.

3. Consider automatic rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of term extensions.

4. Support vibrant arts communities through direct funding and policies other than applying new limitations via the Copyright Act.

We think that the specific recommendations given in each section may help to protect a vibrant and diverse Canadian artistic community, while providing more opportunities for independent creators to share in the profits from the industry.


[1] Ed Christman, “Q3 SoundScan Report: Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars Dominate, Streaming Surges,” Billboard, October 8, 2015. https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6722597/q3-soundscan-2015-taylor-swift-bruno-mars-streaming-surge

[2] Richard Smirke, “Live Nation’s Growing Market Share Putting ‘Stranglehold’ On Live Music, Warns U.K. Indie Festivals,” Billboard, August 28, 2018. https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8472591/live-nation-growing-market-share-indie-festivals-aif-research

[3] Hugh McIntyre, “Bankruptcy Has Come To Both Of America’s Largest Radio Companies,” Forbes, March 8, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2018/03/08/bankruptcy-has-come-to-both-of-americas-largest-radio-companies/

[4] Mark Mulligan, “The Death of the Long Tail: The Superstar Music Economy,” MIDiA Consulting, March 2014. https://www.midiaresearch.com/downloads/the-death-of-the-long-tail-the-superstar-music-economy/

[5] Derek Thompson, “The Shazam Effect,” The Atlantic, December 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/ 

[6] Laura Byager. “Spotify Just Released this Year’s Most-Streamed Artists and They’re All Male,” Mashable, December 4, 2018. https://mashable.com/article/spotify-most-streamed-artists-male/#XblLvh233qO3 

[7] Dwayne Winseck, “Media and Internet Consolidation in Canada, 1984-2016,” Canadian Media Concentration Research Project, November 2017. http://www.cmcrp.org/media-and-internet-concentration-in-canada-results/

[8] Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee On Canadian Heritage. Minutes of Proceedings. 1st sess., 42nd Parliament, Meeting No. 114, 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/CHPC/meeting-114/evidence#Int-10193878

[9] Daniel Sanchez, “The Music Industry Generated $43 Billion in Sales Last Year. Artists Only Received 12% of That,” Digital Music News, August 7, 2018. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/08/07/citigroup-music-industry-sales/

[10] “Joint Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Digital Public Space,” Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, April 16, 2018. https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2018/04/16/joint-declaration-cultural-diversity-and-digital-space 

[11] “Facebook’s Zuckerberg summoned to appear before session of U.K., Canadian politicians,” CBC News, October 31, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-britain-zuckerberg-summons-1.4885397

[12] Adam Satariano and Jack Nicas, “E.U. Fines Google $5.1 Billion in Android Antitrust Case,” New York Times, July 18, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-android-fine.html

[13] We agree with the analysis of copyright as a crude mechanism found in Public Interest Advocacy Centre, “Brief of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s Review of the Copyright Act”, June 1, 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR9947628/br-external/PublicInterestAdvocacyCentre-e.pdf 

[14] “About Capital City Records,” Edmonton Public Libraryhttps://capitalcityrecords.ca/about 

[15] Public Interest Advocacy Centre, “Brief of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s Review of the Copyright Act,” Our Commons, June 1, 2018.https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR9947628/br-external/PublicInterestAdvocacyCentre-e.pdf

[16] Myra Tawfik, et al., “Brief – Statutory Review of the Copyright Act submitted by Myra Tawfik on behalf of Canadian intellectual property law scholars”, Our Commons, October 22 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR10167017/br-external/TawfikMyra02-e.pdf 

[17] “Artist Revenue Streams,” The Future of Music Coalitionhttp://money.futureofmusic.org

[18] “Mythbusting: Data Driven Answers to Four Common Assumptions About How Musicians Make Money,” The Future of Music Coalitionhttp://money.futureofmusic.org/mythbusting/4/ 

[19] “Mythbusting: Data Driven Answers to Four Common Assumptions About How Musicians Make Money,” The Future of Music Coalitionhttp://money.futureofmusic.org/mythbusting/4/ 

[20] “One consideration by Congress in extending copyright protection to owners for such a long period was to give those owners an incentive to reissue, and thereby preserve, older recordings.” Tim Brooks, Library of Congress, Survey Of Reissues Of U.S. Recordings V, 2005. https://perma.cc/4ZX2-SSW8

[21] Rebecca Giblin, “A New Copyright Bargain? Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid,” Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 41 (2018): 369-411. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3252838 

[22] “Gowers Review of Intellectual Property,” December 2006. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/228849/0118404830.pdf 

[23] Brief of George A. Akerlof et al. as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, at 4, Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618) [hereinafter Economists’ Brief].

[24] Daniel Sanchez, “What Streaming Music Services Pay (Updated for 2018),” Digital Music News, January 2018. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music-services-pay-2018/

[25]Canada. Parliament. House Of Commons. Standing Committee On Canadian Heritage. Meeting Of Proceedings. 1st sess., 42nd Parliament. Meeting no. 124, 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/CHPC/meeting-124/minutes

[26] Rebecca Giblin, “A New Copyright Bargain? Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid,” Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 41 (2018): 369-411. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3252838 

[27] Rebecca Giblin, “Everything he does, he does it for us. Why Bryan Adams is on to something important about copyright,” The Conversation, September 24, 2018. http://theconversation.com/everything-he-does-he-does-it-for-us-why-bryan-adams-is-on-to-something-important-about-copyright-103674 

[28] Pascale Chapdelaine, et al., “Brief – Statutory Review of the Copyright Act submitted by Pascale Chapdelaine, on behalf of Canadian intellectual property law scholars”, October 22 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR10166923/br-external/ChapdelainePascale01-e.pdf 

[29] FACTOR, Annual Report 2017-2018https://factorportalprod.blob.core.windows.net/portal/Documents/Annual_Reports/FACTOR_Annual_Report_2017-2018.pdf

[30] Paul Lawton, “The Trouble With FACTOR,” The Annotated Everything, April 2, 2013. https://qmass.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-trouble-with-factor/ 

[31] “Are Musicians Making More or Less Money?” The Future of Music Coalition, 2012. http://money.futureofmusic.org/are-musicians-making-more-or-less-money/

[32] Andrew Leonard, “The Music Industry is Still Screwed,” Salon, June 20, 2014. https://www.salon.com/2014/06/20/the_music_industry_is_still_screwed_why_spotify_amazon_and_itunes_cant_save_musical_artists/ 

[33] “Are Musicians Making More or Less Money?” The Future of Music Coalition, 2012. http://money.futureofmusic.org/are-musicians-making-more-or-less-money/

[34] “Money from Music: Where We Live,” The Future of Music Coalition, 2013. http://money.futureofmusic.org/location/4/

[35] Michael Rancic, “Vanishing Music Venues: A Progress Report,” NOW Toronto, January 2018. https://nowtoronto.com/music/features/vanishing-music-venues-a-progress-report/

[36] Danny Michel, “A Peek Behind the Curtain,” Facebook, November 20, 2018.

Brief submitted to INDU Parliamentary Review of the Copyright Act

Here is our first submission to the two committees currently looking at copyright and remuneration in Canada. This brief is to the INDU Parliamentary Review of the Copyright Act. A pdf of this submission, has been deposited here, at the University of Winnipeg Institutional Repository “WinnSpace.” A longer submission for the Heritage Study on Remuneration, with added examples, statistics, and details, is available here

Putting Users and Small-Scale Creators First in Canadian Copyright Law and Beyond

A Brief Submitted By:

The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians

Presented to:

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology

Statutory Review of The Copyright Act

December 10, 2018

Our submission comes from a research team that includes:

  • Dr. Brian Fauteux, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alberta
  • Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at the University of Winnipeg
  • Dr. Andrew deWaard, PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA

And research assistants:

  • Dan Colussi (University of Winnipeg)
  • William Northlich (University of Alberta)

Introduction

In an industry characterized by market consolidation, an imbalance of power between creators and big businesses is one of the largest factors that prevents fair remuneration for creators. Proposals for legislation that do not address this imbalance may worsen the conditions for working musicians. While legislation that supports users rights may offer some mitigation of the effects of this industry concentration, copyright is generally an inefficient tool for protecting artists and encouraging innovation. Artists are not always the rights holders for their creative works, and thus legislation for rights holders does not inherently help artists. By encouraging creativity, user rights are more empowering for everyday creators and can help balance the concentration of power enjoyed by the large industry players.

Our submission comes from a research team that is working on a SSHRC Insight Grant funded project titled “The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians.” The project investigates issues of fair payment for creators, as well as ways to encourage new and creative artistic production.

The following recommendations aim to represent the interests of everyday users and smaller scale musical creators and hope to provide a diversity of position.

1. Recognize that increasing market consolidation is at odds with a vibrant and diverse music industry.

Increasingly, copyright as an exclusive right has been effective at building up assets for oligopolies, and the concentration of these assets provides a barrier to new and innovative players in the cultural industries. Canadian musicians and users are at the mercy of non-Canadian media and tech companies: Universal, Sony, and Warner control roughly 86% of the North American recording and publishing market.[1] The stunning inequality among musicians is getting worse: the top 1% of artists account for 77% of all recorded music income,[2] while the 10 top-selling tracks command 82% more of the market and are played almost twice as much on Top 40 radio than they were a decade ago.[3] 

The Canadian Media Concentration Research Project notes that vertical integration within Canada  “is very high by historical standards and almost four times current levels in the United States.” In Canada, Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, and Quebecor accounted for 71.1% of the $80 billion network media economy in 2016.[4]  As President of Re:Sound Music Licensing, Ian MacKay, noted: in 1997, 50% of the Canadian radio sector was in the hands of 10 radio groups; it is now 82%, leading to homogenized playlists and limited exposure for new musicians.[5]

Massive profits are being made in the media landscape, little of which makes its way to artists and performers. A recent Citigroup report found that the U.S. music industry generated $43 billion last year, but artists received only 12%.[6] This market consolidation, combined with vertical integration (where tour promoters are owned by radio stations are owned by record labels) makes it harder for both creators and users to be exposed to diverse and remunerated cultural goods.

Market Consolidation Recommendations

  1. Antitrust regulation should be pursued to protect a diverse marketplace, not just to ensure competitive pricing.
  2. Increase public funding and support dedicated to smaller creators who are more likely to be squeezed out by market consolidation.
  3. Increase collaboration with other governments  recognizing the importance of protecting diversity, like the Joint Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Digital Space with France,[7] the “international grand committee” of Canadian and British parliamentarians that are investigating American tech companies,[8] and the EU’s actions against Amazon, Facebook, and Google for anticompetitive practices.[9]

2. Recognize that user rights and the creative commons have value for Canadian creativity and culture and that these should be protected.

Cultural works in the public domain/creative commons encourage access to information and culture, which inspires further creative work and lessens boundaries between users and creators. We encourage a consideration of the value of having musical works in the creative commons and advocate for legislation that is in line with contemporary cultural practices and technological realities (including online activities such as music sharing, fandom, and remix culture).

Protecting the rights of people to use and create culture in noncommercial ways is crucial to protecting the public domain.[10] We caution against the technological optimism shown in the recent EU copyright changes, which encourages the enforcement of copyright law by technological algorithm.[11] Suggestions made by Canadian industry to protect against piracy, like site blocking and deindexing without court oversight in the “FairPlay” proposal, would involve undue intrusion and preemptive control over spaces where cultural appreciation and production occur. This ‘chill’ – the fear of every day citizens and creators to engage in cultural sharing, appreciation, and innovation – has a direct effect on reducing creativity and participation in cultural production.

The additional costs of aggressive regimes of copyright enforcement provide barriers and costs for new entrants into the market. Small creators would disproportionately feel the burden of this style of regulation. Treating the general public like pirates is unfair, especially after opening the space for legal options like Netflix and Spotify. There are now affordable, accessible, and ad-supported options for everyday users to watch and listen to cultural texts. Instead, we encourage efforts to provide artists with higher payout rates via streaming and online music services

Public Rights Recommendations

  1. Retain limits to statutory damages for non-commercial infringement, so that individuals aren’t faced with undue fear of exercising user’s rights.
  2. Protect the current notice-and-notice system and strengthen it to protect against misuse/spurious claims.[12]
  3. Continue rejecting industry sponsored proposals for site blocking and de-indexing, which disproportionately harm small producers and the general public, for the gains of only a few large industry players. [13]

3. Consider automatic rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of term extensions.

In the music industries many artists are deriving revenue from copyright adjacent activity. Much artist revenue has to be sustained by aggressive touring,[14] an option only open to a few and one that is difficult given Canada’s vast geographical area. A Future of Music study[15] found that the income derived from sound recordings is a small part of a musician’s overall revenue pie and is decreasing, although sound recordings are “valuable for other reasons, serving as an artifact of creativity that can [be] used to leverage other income sources” including live performance. From 5,371 survey respondents, “the aggregated percent of income derived from sound recordings [over] 12 months was 6%.”[16] 

Another study[17] found that, “on average, just 14% of sound recordings published between 1890 and 1964 had been re-released by right holders on compact disc. Non-right holders re-released twenty-two percent of those recordings without the benefit of any monopoly rights—over fifty percent more than those that did.” It is worthwhile to consider how works in the public domain enjoy greater commercialization and dissemination than titles with restricted rights. A term extension risks preventing a vital public sphere to the benefit of major record labels, who would further exploit an artist’s work after their death.

Term extensions do not hold up to scrutiny in cultural economic theory.[18] Most of the commercial value of a sound recording is extracted in the first 10 years, so a 70 years after death term provides no real additional incentive.[19] By considering cultural depreciation and by discounting the value of future earnings, “it becomes clear that the period of exclusivity necessary to incentivize initial creation of even the most expensive works is far shorter than current copyright terms.”[20] 

Copyright term extension is now reality in Canada. To mitigate the ill effects of the term extension we strongly encourage a careful consideration of automatic rights reversions, with rights reverting back to authors after a period of no greater than 25 years.[21] This recommendation offers some balance to the historically imbalanced relationship between artists and record labels, where creators are often pressured to sign away their rights for life.[22] 

With rights reverting back to creators, they would have the ability to dedicate works to the creative commons or engage in direct licensing. Additionally, it would enable creators to enter into renewed or revised contracts, which would be beneficial if a work was to be adapted or re-released.

Key to creators being able to exercise these rights is clarification that these rights cannot be contracted away. Record labels, publishers, and platforms should not be able to add contractual stipulations that override creators’ moral rights, or a hypothetical reversion right. Rights reversions could be used to further fund the production of music through direct selling to listeners or serve as a retirement fund for musicians, lessening the precarity of artists’ futures.

Rights Reversions Recommendations

  1. Copyright Act Amendment that provides for automatic rights reversions to creators after 25 years.
  2. Clear language in the Copyright Act that prevents contractual override of rights granted in the Act.[23]

4. Support vibrant arts communities through direct funding and policies other than applying new limitations via the Copyright Act.

Public funding is crucial for independent Canadian creators. One example[24] of this is the additional $2.5 million in funding that has been committed to FACTOR by the Department of Canadian Heritage for funding the export of independent Canadian music.

Copyright related revenue for independent musicians is generally quite low. The Future of Music study[25] indicates that musicians are making less money on recorded music sales for multiple reasons. Royalty payments are becoming based more on sales of singles than albums, and now that streaming has overtaken the sale of digital downloads, dismal per-stream rates are a dwindling source of revenue. There is a drop in record label support as artists now pay for things that labels used to, and musicians must perform branding and marketing roles themselves. Public funding can fill these gaps and promote access to diverse and exciting Canadian content.

However, we are extremely wary of cultural funding falling on users in the form of a smartphone tax. The variety of uses for these devices are numerous and the vast majority of these uses are going to be for necessary connectivity, not piracy related activities.

To help Canadian independent artists, the Government should prioritize strong connections and relationships with provincial and municipal governments, particularly when it comes to policies and initiatives that fund and support live music venues, small record labels, do-it-yourself and artist-run spaces, and campus and community radio stations. Living in a “music city” has its benefits with respect to financial opportunities that are open to artists, enabling one to more readily make a living for oneself, but these locations often have a higher cost of living.[26] In Canada, we have seen issues with balancing “music city” initiatives with increased costs of living, especially in large cities like Toronto.[27] 

Public Arts Funding Recommendations

  1. Any device or user taxes that are implemented to support culture should be progressive and not unduly impact lower income citizens.
  2. Increased public funding of new and emerging artists and labels, with fewer restrictions on label size and distribution, and lifetime caps for larger labels.
  3. Increased support for local initiatives that support musicians and communities.
  4. Support provincial and municipal models of funding and support that recognize the shifting nature of artist income streams.

Conclusion

The main principles we would like to see applied by both the INDU and Heritage Committees, when it comes to legislating and regulating the music industry in Canada, are:

1. Recognize that increasing market consolidation is at odds with a vibrant and diverse music industry.

2. Recognize that user rights and the creative commons have value for Canadian creativity and culture and that these should be protected.

3. Consider automatic rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of term extensions.

4. Support vibrant arts communities through direct funding and policies other than applying new limitations via the Copyright Act.

We think that the specific recommendations given in each section may help to protect a vibrant and diverse Canadian artistic community, while providing more opportunities for independent creators to share in the profits from the industry.


[1] Ed Christman, “Q3 SoundScan Report: Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars Dominate, Streaming Surges,” Billboard, October 8, 2015. https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6722597/q3-soundscan-2015-taylor-swift-bruno-mars-streaming-surge

[2] Mark Mulligan, “The Death of the Long Tail: The Superstar Music Economy,” MIDiA Consulting, March 2014. https://www.midiaresearch.com/downloads/the-death-of-the-long-tail-the-superstar-music-economy/

[3] Derek Thompson, “The Shazam Effect,” The Atlantic, December 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/ 

[4] Dwayne Winseck, “Media and Internet Consolidation in Canada, 1984-2016,” Canadian Media Concentration Research Project, November 2017. http://www.cmcrp.org/media-and-internet-concentration-in-canada-results/

[5] Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee On Canadian Heritage. Minutes of Proceedings. 1st sess., 42nd Parliament, Meeting No. 114, 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/CHPC/meeting-114/evidence#Int-10193878

[6] Daniel Sanchez, “The Music Industry Generated $43 Billion in Sales Last Year. Artists Only Received 12% of That,” Digital Music News, August 7, 2018. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/08/07/citigroup-music-industry-sales/ 

[7] “Joint Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Digital Public Space,” Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, April 16, 2018. https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2018/04/16/joint-declaration-cultural-diversity-and-digital-space 

[8] “Facebook’s Zuckerberg summoned to appear before session of U.K., Canadian politicians,” CBC News, October 31, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-britain-zuckerberg-summons-1.4885397

[9] Adam Satariano and Jack Nicas, “E.U. Fines Google $5.1 Billion in Android Antitrust Case,” New York Times, July 18, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-android-fine.html

[10] There are compelling initiatives in spaces that recognize the value of a commons for the creative industries. Capital City Records at the Edmonton Public Library is one example of a digital public space that has local creators make their music available for anyone with a library card. The library provides artists with an honorarium and makes content available for permanent download and streaming, with artists retaining rights to their content which can still be shared and sold anywhere else (https://capitalcityrecords.ca/about). Such an example highlights ways that listeners, artists, and cities can be connected through non-commercial, public spaces.

[11] We agree with the analysis of copyright as a crude mechanism found in Public Interest Advocacy Centre, “Brief of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s Review of the Copyright Act”, June 1, 2018, https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR9947628/br-external/PublicInterestAdvocacyCentre-e.pdf 

[12] Public Interest Advocacy Centre, “Brief of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s Review of the Copyright Act,” Our Commons, June 1, 2018,https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR9947628/br-external/PublicInterestAdvocacyCentre-e.pdf

[13] Myra Tawfik, et al., “Brief – Statutory Review of the Copyright Act submitted by Myra Tawfik on behalf of Canadian intellectual property law scholars”, October 22 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR10167017/br-external/TawfikMyra02-e.pdf 

[14] “Artist Revenue Streams,” The Future of Music Coalitionhttp://money.futureofmusic.org

[15] “Mythbusting: Data Driven Answers to Four Common Assumptions About How Musicians Make Money,” The Future of Music Coalitionhttp://money.futureofmusic.org/mythbusting/4/ 

[16] Specific genres with noted decreases in income from sound recordings included rock and jazz. Further, two-thirds, or 66%, of respondents “reported that 0% of their income was derived from sound recordings.”

[17] “One consideration by Congress in extending copyright protection to owners for such a long period was to give those owners an incentive to reissue, and thereby preserve, older recordings.” Tim Brooks, Library of Congress, Survey Of Reissues Of U.S. Recordings V (2005), https://perma.cc/4ZX2-SSW8

[18] Rebecca Giblin, “A New Copyright Bargain? Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid,” Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 41 (2018): 369-411. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3252838 

[19] “Gowers Review of Intellectual Property,” December 2006. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/228849/0118404830.pdf 

[20] Rebecca Giblin, “A New Copyright Bargain? Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid,” Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 41 (2018): 369-411. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3252838 

[21] This echoes other arguments that have been put forth in favour of reversions, including Bryan Adams advocating for rights reversions with the ability of creators to reclaim ownership of creations 25 years after they have been given away. 

[22] Rebecca Giblin, “Everything he does, he does it for us. Why Bryan Adams is on to something important about copyright,” The Conversation, September 24, 2018. http://theconversation.com/everything-he-does-he-does-it-for-us-why-bryan-adams-is-on-to-something-important-about-copyright-103674 

[23] Pascale Chapdelaine, et al., “Brief – Statutory Review of the Copyright Act submitted by Pascale Chapdelaine, on behalf of Canadian intellectual property law scholars”, October 22 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Brief/BR10166923/br-external/ChapdelainePascale01-e.pdf 

[24] FACTOR, Annual Report 2017-2018https://factorportalprod.blob.core.windows.net/portal/Documents/Annual_Reports/FACTOR_Annual_Report_2017-2018.pdf

[25] “Are Musicians Making More or Less Money?” The Future of Music Coalition, 2012. http://money.futureofmusic.org/are-musicians-making-more-or-less-money/

[26] “Money from Music: Where We Live,” The Future of Music Coalition, 2013. http://money.futureofmusic.org/location/4/

[27] A 2018 article in NOW Magazine article highlights a “venue crisis” in the city as live music venues, namely smaller venues, struggle to sustain themselves and remain open. This points to two challenges: 1) Ensuring that larger urban centres do not only cater to superstars and megatours; and, 2) Enabling smaller and mid-sized Canadian cities to also provide resources and support for live music initiatives. It is imperative that live music can be programmed and promoted by a variety of organizations and that live music events are affordable and easy to attend. See: Michael Rancic, “Vanishing Music Venues: A Progress Report,” NOW Toronto, January 2018. https://nowtoronto.com/music/features/vanishing-music-venues-a-progress-report/

Text and Video of Presentation to Canadian Parliament

Project members Brian Fauteux and Brianne Selman recently spoke on behalf of the Cultural Capital Project to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage during the hearing “Remuneration Models for Artists in Creative Industries.” The video of the presentation is available here. Brian speaks at the 11:18 mark and questions to Brianne follow. The text of our brief is below:

 

Good afternoon,

We know that the Committee has a genuine interest in providing livelihoods to Canadian creators. The spirit of our submission is to caution that, in an industry characterized by market consolidation and an imbalance of power between artists and the big business of labels, proposals for legislation that do not address this imbalance may, in the long term, worsen the conditions for those at the bottom. Artists are not always the rights holders and legislation for rights holders does not inherently help artists.

Our submission comes from a research team that includes Dr. Brian Fauteux, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alberta; Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at the University of Winnipeg; Dr. Andrew deWaard, PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA; and research assistants Dan Colussi and William Northlich.

This team is working on a SSHRC Insight Grant funded project titled “The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians” that is looking at issues of fair payment for creators, as well as ways to encourage new and creative artistic production. We aim to represent everyday users and smaller scale creators and hope to provide a diversity of position.

Everyone, of course, comes before this Committee to argue in what they perceive to be their own self interest. As great as the achievements are of any of these media industries you have heard from, their success is based on the creativity of artists who are themselves users of creative goods. Copyright creates and maintains monopolies, by creating exclusive rights that can only be exploited by the rightsholder. But from its inception, copyright law has always also included limits to those monopolies, in order to achieve a balance with the interests of the general public, and to provide access to the public good of culture and knowledge.

Copyright has been effective at building assets for powerful oligopolies. Canadian musicians and users are at the mercy of non-Canadian media and tech companies: Universal, Sony, and Warner control roughly 86% of the North American recording and publishing market; LiveNation and AEG monopolizes the live concert and ticketing business; iHeartMedia and Cumulus have acquired the majority of terrestrial radio stations; SiriusXM dictates the satellite radio market and has just purchased Pandora; and Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify have come to dominate the digital streaming media sector. There is stunning inequality among musicians and it is getting worse: the top 1% of artists account for 77% of all recorded music income, while the 10 top-selling tracks command 82% more of the market and are played almost twice as much on Top 40 radio than they were a decade ago. It is more winner-take-all in the music industries than ever before and we need to ensure that the middle class of creators have the means to earn a living.

Massive profits are being made in the media landscape, little of which makes its way to artists and performers – a recent Citigroup report found that the U.S. music industry generated $43 billion last year, but artists received only 12%. Much artist revenue has to be sustained by aggressive touring, an option only open to a few and one that is difficult given Canada’s vast geographical area. This market consolidation, combined with vertical integration (where tour promoters are owned by radio stations are owned by record labels) makes it harder for both creators and users to be exposed to diverse, vibrant, and remunerated cultural goods. We wonder, then, what other artist protection provisions might exist and be of benefit to Canadian creators? Like the EU, which is pushing back against the American tech oligopoly with fines and legislation, it is worth considering antitrust solutions that challenge this market domination, or at the very least, maintains space for new entrants into the market. We support recommendations that aim to enable creators to have more control over their creations and their profits.

We recognize that the many industry representatives are in favour of a copyright term extension from author’s life plus-50 to 70 years. We support efforts to make the lives of working musicians more financially viable. However, we caution against having this term extension dominate the narrative of this review and we would encourage a careful consideration of rights reversions as a way to mitigate the ill effects of extension. Recently, Bryan Adams argued for rights reversions with the ability of creators to reclaim ownership of creations 25 years after they have been given away. This suggestion is one that does offer some balance to the historically imbalanced relationship between artists and record labels, where creators are often pressured to sign away their rights for life. Term extensions, however, do not hold up to scrutiny in cultural economic theory – most of the commercial value of a sound recording is extracted in the first 10 years, so a 70 years after death term provides no real additional incentive. Furthermore, it prevents a more vital public sphere to the benefit of major record labels, who get to further exploit an artist’s work after their death. Indeed, studies show that older works in the public domain enjoy greater commercialization than similar titles with restricted rights. Key to creators being able to exercise these rights – and others already granted by the Copyright Act – is clarification that these rights cannot be contracted away. Record labels, publishers, and platforms should not be able to add contractual stipulations that override things like creators’ moral rights, or a hypothetical reversion right.

We agree that public funding is and always has been crucial for independent Canadian creators, but we are extremely wary of this burden falling on users in the form of a smartphone tax. The variety of uses for these devices are numerous, and the vast majority of these uses are going to be for necessary connectivity, not piracy related activities at all.

Copyright reform should not place unnecessary limits on user and artist freedom in an effort to remedy the financial issues that have come from an imbalance of power in the media industries. Instead, we encourage efforts to provide artists with higher payout rates via streaming and online music services. We caution against the technological optimism shown in the recent EU copyright changes, which encourages the enforcement of copyright law by technological algorithm, which is an incredibly blunt instrument to apply to the general public. The additional costs of overly aggressive regimes of copyright enforcement provide ever greater barriers and costs for new entrants into the market. The recent example of Sony trying to require takedown of all recordings of Bach is a good one for showing how expanding notice-and-notice into a regime where companies can unilaterally request takedown of content could have a significant harmful effect on the public. Small creators would unfairly feel the burden of this blunt style of regulation. When it comes to designing a balanced copyright system, there is no need to use a hammer, when we can cut like a knife.

We wish to end by restating that a concentration of power creates power imbalances that require solutions that extend beyond those that benefit the rightsholder. We sincerely thank the Committee for taking the time to hear us today.

SSHRC Insight Grant 2018

“The Cultural Capital Project: Digital Stewardship and Sustainable Monetization for Canadian Independent Musicians” has been awarded an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a two-year research study. The current team is Brian Fauteux (University of Alberta), Brianne Selman (University of Winnipeg), Ian Dahlman (Canadian Heritage) and Andrew deWaard (University of California, Los Angeles).

Future of Music Summit 2013 in Washington, DC

CultCap was pleased to attend the Future of Music Coalition’s annual summit in Washington, DC this past week. A non-profit formed to advocate, educate and research on behalf of musicians in the digital age, the FMC “works to ensure a diverse musical culture where artists flourish.” They certainly lived up to their mandate this week; FMC did a superb job of organizing two days of enlightened presentations and vibrant discussions among a diverse group of industry professionals, advocates, politicians, musicians, and students.

The summit kicked off with a presentation by Jean Cook, the Director of Programs at FMC, summarizing the findings of a detailed survey on the many different avenues of artist compensation in the digital age. It was particularly noteworthy how much non-musical revenue streams (i.e. teaching, selling merchandise) account for an artist’s overall income. This statistic raises an important question about labour: What are the additional tasks or skill sets enable an artist to be financially sound in the contemporary music industries and should we require this additional labour from artists?

FMC-revenues

Revenue streams were a recurring theme throughout the conference, particularly the controversy over the negligible amounts of compensation artists receive for streaming music. Spotify has received a lot of negative press lately, with popular musicians like Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich, David Byrne, and the Foals all bemoaning the lack of adequate compensation. Spotify (and similar streaming services such as Rdio and MOG) received a lot of criticism at FMC as well. Eddie Schwartz, President of the Songwriters Association of Canada, relayed the per stream rate he was seeing for the artists he represents: $ 0.000035, a number so negligible it was often just rounded down to zero for his smaller, independent artists. Schwartz advocated for his association’s concept of Fair Trade Music, an initiative that strives to achieve fair and transparent compensation for musicians, similar to the broader Fair Trade movement.

FMC2013-piracyvsspotify

Melvin Gibbs – bass guitarist, composer and producer – also advocated passionately on behalf of the artist and fair compensation. “Musicians do not exist to justify a business model,” commented Gibbs, challenging the implicit commodity logic that often accompanies discussion of musician compensation. Peter Jenner – producer and manager of Sincere Management, whose clients have included Pink Floyd – provided a historical perspective, reminding the audience that intermediaries have been problematic in the music industry for at least 40 years, and this wasn’t necessarily an issue of old or new industries. The desire and need to shift power and agency to artists is an ongoing concern. Adding a bit of levity to the proceedings, Jenner also recommended that the audience stop being so “precious”: not all musicians will be successful and get paid. Music won’t move beyond a hobby for many artists and that is the historical norm.

While concerns over the uncertainty of new musical platforms were common, an alternative perspective on the newfound possibilities and opportunities in the digital age were another recurrent theme throughout the conference. David Macias – president of Thirty Tigers, a music label that works to return the vast majority of royalties back to its clients – talked about the success their business strategy was achieving for their musicians. His stance on the streaming services debate was more conciliatory, and claimed a much higher rate per stream than Eddie Schwartz had reported earlier, raising an important distinction in the streaming music service royalty debate: there are huge discrepancies among the negotiated rights for artists. Retaining your own publishing rights as an artist is a key strategy in the digital realm, one shared by Emily White, the co-founder of Whitesmith Entertainment, Readymade Records & Dreamfuel.Me. White stressed the importance of Brendan Benson (co-founder of Readymade) retaining the rights to his most recent music, which has resulted in a much more significant percentage of the royalties compared to his earlier work with a big label. The labour and difficulty involved in running your own label and controlling your own rights can be high, but so too are the possible returns.

Connecting more directly with fans and forming a more intimate community with one’s fanbase was another recurrent theme at FMC, an opportunity amplified for smaller musicians by new technologies. Crista Kende, the performing arts specialist for Indiegogo, spoke about crowdfunding platforms not just as interfaces to raise money, but rich opportunities to build a community and engage with your fans in a less commercial manner. Crowdfunded artists are not just selling a product, but participating in a more personal relationship built on direct communication. The final panel of the conference featuring a variety of musicians also reflected on this opportunity for technology-facilitated community, with the advantages (and some disadvantages) of social media being touted as a significant development for new and smaller artists. Simply connecting with fans across the merch table while on tour is something that the musicians also touted.

Here at the Cultural Capital Project, we believe that the artist-fan connection must be a key part of the equation for monetizing digital music. This relationship should not be controlled by intermediaries; rather, artists are the ones who must wield power in the digital music economy, determining their own relationships with intermediaries. There are exciting opportunities for establishing and sustaining a more direct artist-fan connection, in how fans share their favourite artists’ music, but more importantly, in how they compensate artists for their creativity. As a dynamic community of musicians, labels, producers, writers, and fans advances the discourses and debates surrounding how digital music industries might operate, we will continue to advocate for artists’ rights, equitable compensation, and a fan’s capacity to share culture and music. We’re glad that the conference provided us with the opportunity to hear so many bright, innovative ideas, and to have made some new allies and colleagues to help us move forward.

Publication in IASMP@Journal – “The Cultural Capital Project: Radical Monetization of the Music Industry”

Dahlman, Ian, Andrew deWaard, and Brian Fauteux. “The Cultural Capital Project: Radical Monetization of the Music Industry.” IASPM@Journal 3.1 (2013).

Abstract: The fundamental flaw of previous attempts to monetize digital music has been the industry’s insistence on treating music solely as a commodity. The digital revolution demands music be shared culture, and successful monetization will require music be treated as such. This article outlines the ideas behind Cultural Capital, a collaborative research project that explores the theoretical trajectories, legal ramifications and technical components involved in creating a non-profit patronage system uniting musicians and fans. Cultural Capital operates on three fronts: first, a social network of user-generated listening and sharing habits; second, opt-in tracking software that harvests the musical consumption of users, then facilitates equitable compensation to creators; third, a legal intervention aiming to provide a legitimate space for the digital consumption of music. Incorporating the multitude of individuals who propel the cultural industries, this essay argues for establishing a ‘radical monetization’ of the music industry based on connectivity and sharing.