The Music Managers Forum (our favourite forum, well, of music managers anyway) has used this weekend's In The City Convention to highlight its growing concern over the royalties artists are receiving from digital music sales or, more to the point, the royalties they aren't receiving.
Billed as the Know More! campaign, several leading artist managers took part in an event at the Convention yesterday to state their case. Like much of the rest of the industry, they are bothered by the 79 pence one price fits all model put in place by iTunes and adopted by most of their competitors. But the MMF are most bothered by the impact this is having on the artists, and for that they blame the record labels.
Speaking to the Times before the event, MMF chairman Jazz Summers, manager of Snow Patrol, said: "Sale prices and royalties have gradually been eroded to the point where an artist needs to sell in excess of 1.5 million units before they can show a profit, after paying for recording time and tour support". Artists, Summers argues, are suffering because the record industry failed to take the initiative in the digital music space and has become dominated by the technology firms who run the download platforms. And they are making artists bear the brunt of the pricing demands of iTunes et al.
The MMF has also spoken out against the BPI (our favourite industry, well, of British phonography anyway). As previously reported, the BPI are taking the body who collect royalties for songwriters to a 'copyright tribunal' over their insistence they get a 12% royalty from digital sales instead of the 8.5% they get on a physical music sale. The BPI argue that is not viable, especially given the fact it is the record companies and not songwriters or publishers who have had to invest so heavily to make digital music available to the download platforms. But taking that stance puts the BPI on the same side as iTunes et al in the digital music debate, and the MMF think that is wrong. Summers added: "The BPI is jumping into bed with a group of digital music retailers, which are in the process of eating our lunch".