“That seemed significant enough to pay through to the artist, but not significant enough to worry about it making much of a dent in a half-million-pound debt.” “What inspired it was seeing what catalogs were earning £500 or £5,000 every six months because of streaming,” says Beggars founder/chairman Martin Mills. In 2015, Beggars Group instituted a similar policy, partly because many older artists were seeing an uptick in royalties from streaming, but, in some cases, not one that would be significant enough to pay off their unrecouped balances, and that the balances had long since been off the label’s books anyway.īill Ackman Makes Case for Universal Music Investment, The Future of Music “I don’t know how this can be viewed as anything but positive for artists…they didn’t have to do this so I applaud them.”Īnd Sony isn’t the only company to have done this. “I think they did it because they thought it was a fair thing to do they are planting the flag as being an artist friendly label,” Branca says. While not all artists may get tens of thousands of dollars a year, from the point of view of Sony when you consider collectively all the artists that could benefit from this move, its probably a significant amount, says John Branca, partner and head of the music department at Ziffren Brittenham LLP, who works with many legacy acts and/or their estates. (How much this costs Sony will ultimately depend on sales and streaming activities of music by the artists involved the company declined to say how many artists would be affected.)Īs Royalties Sales Ramp Up, Labels Are Overwhelmed by New Accounting Requests Many artists affected by the policy will care quite a bit, though, and the sheer number of acts involved means the money will add up: A source familiar with the program says some could receive thousands of dollars - and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars - a year. “If you have been unrecouped for that long, the truth is Sony probably doesn’t care about your royalties,” says one artist lawyer, characterizing the move as “a nice gesture, but a small one.” The amount of money involved will almost certainly be dwarfed by the $4.87 billion in recorded-music revenue Sony made last year.
The cynical take is that the company isn’t leaving as much money on the table as it might seem: Most acts that dominate the charts in the streaming era were signed more recently, and the more popular ones have either recouped or received another advance in the last two decades. It’s hard to find anyone in the industry who doesn’t like Sony’s idea. Sony Music Will Start Paying Royalties to Legacy Acts That Still Owe the Label Money