James Blake has taken to Twitter to voice his concerns over the challenges many musicians face in getting paid fairly for their work in the TikTok era. The musician posted a string of comments, expressing his thoughts on the current financial state of the music industry and what he perceives as the unreasonable obstacles facing musicians. “If we want quality music, somebody is going to have to pay for it,” he wrote, adding that streaming services do not pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists. Blake went on to speculate about the possible threat of AI, too.
This biting financial reality is affecting countless new musicians and bands, The changing industry model, coupled with factors including the cost of living crisis and Brexit, are making it increasingly hard to get by. Many in the industry, including the Featured Artist Coalition and the Music Venue Trust, are calling for a levy on tickets for gigs at arena size and above, and for major labels to pay back into the grassroots scene amidst a “disaster” facing live music.
David Martin, who represents the Featured Artist Coalition, a trade union body representing musicians and artists in the UK, recently wrote to NME to outline the issues and to highlight potential improvements to the current system. Most obviously the unjustifiable way in which ‘unallocated’ recorded and songwriting revenues are redistributed – such as the unclaimed pots of money residing in the black boxes of collecting societies, which are eventually divided up according to ‘market share’, he wrote
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