Musicians’ attempts to win a bigger cut of digital music royalties were scuppered, like so many other things in London this morning, by snowfall. The Featured Artists Coalition, founded last year to lobby labels collectively, was due to meet for the first time today, but their digital music revolution will have to wait – the inaugural meeting was postponed.
The coalition counts as members the likes of Radiohead, Gang Of Four, Robbie Williams and Billy Bragg, who spoke at our EconMusic conference in September, telling us about social media: “Everybody’s making a shitload of money except us.”
From FAC’s manifesto: “Digital technology has transformed how we buy and listen to music – in doing so it has radically altered the economic relationship between artists and consumers, and the business world that operates between the two. Record and technology companies are signing agreements to deliver music to fans in new ways – artists should receive fair compensation as part of these new deals.”
And FT.com, whose story on the topic last night was published before the snow forced postponement, quotes Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, a coalition board member: “There are new digital rights and revenue streams which have to be carved up and we have to get together and do it ourselves. Nobody is going to do it for us.