German Publishers Association after larger cut of streaming income

The President of the German Music Publishers Association (DMV) has called out streaming services over the cut they pay to rights holders.

Speaking at DMV’s Annual General Meeting in Wiesbaden this week, Dr. Rolf Budde said (as quoted by Billboard): "The boom in streaming services such as Spotify, Napster and Deezer cannot hide the fact that the amounts which artists receive from them are far too small and a long way from being reasonable […]

“It is high time that streaming services with their ‘gold rush’ mentality stopped ignoring creative people and jeopardising their livelihoods. The streaming services do not pay adequate compensation to the authors and publishers via (German collection society) GEMA. The streaming services and the record companies must give authors and music publishers a fair share of the revenues once and for all”.

Germany has an internationally successful music industry; in 2014 GEMA reported worldwide revenues reached €893.6 million euros(around AU$1.24 bn) with €44.8 million (around AU$62.2 million) injected from the streaming sector. While GEMA was able to increase streaming revenues through new contracts with certain services it has voiced its disdain over payout splits. Budde, who is a member of GEMA’s advisory board, told Billboardthat holders of master rights receive more than 15 times the amount that authors and publishers receive.

This week Dr. Harald Heker, CEO of GEMA, said in a statement: "In the digital world, we are still a long way from ensuring fair remuneration for creative input. We therefore urgently need the economic and legal foundations for safeguarding and encouraging creativity."

Locally, Adelaide University Professor Melissa de Zwart has found that artists are unhappy with the digital distribution models that exist in Australia. de Zwart and researcher Beatrix van Dissel were commissioned by the Australian Copyright Council for the 53-page report ‘Australian Creators And Online Intermediary Liability’, released in February.

“What we were hearing from artists in particular is that they’re happy to move to a digital distribution model but the models that exist don’t translate into the equivalent of say being an album sale or even single sales,” de Zwart told TMN. “Because of the streaming options that are available, the money is not necessarily even going through to the artists anyway.”

Pictured:Dr. Rolf Budde, DMV