US songwriters challenge ruling on licensing
Music industry has long been unsatisfied by the rates paid by online companies
Add BT as a preferred source
New York
WHEN Michelle Lewis, a Los Angeles songwriter, gets her quarterly royalty statements from ASCAP, she receives a stark reminder of how songs are valued in the digital age. The tunes she writes for TV shows such as Disney's Doc McStuffins bring in thousands of dollars, but streaming outlets such as Pandora and Spotify yield less than US$100 combined.
"The honest truth is that if it weren't for the TV stuff, I'd be working at Starbucks," said Ms Lewis, who has writing credits on pop hits by Cher, Little Mix and Katharine McPhee. "There is no way I could afford to be a songwriter just on streaming and digital radio."
TRENDING NOW
Think twice about rebuilding that old landed property into a super-big house to max out GFA
SpaceX’s US$1.75 trillion IPO: How retail investors, including those in Singapore, can buy shares
Yeo’s, Tiger Beer and now Gardenia – flight of food manufacturing from Singapore might be just as planned
Battle for Asia’s ultra-rich: ‘Singapore can’t afford to keep losing clients to Dubai, Hong Kong’
