Pink Floyd’s manager Paul Loasby has been explaining why the band’s catalogue isn’t available on Spotify, at a MusicTank streaming music event in London. “The music is so undervalued. The rightsholders, in my opinion, have sold it too cheaply. I would like to see the money paid to artists dramatically increase,” said Loasby, according to PaidContent. The data this decision is based on is fairly old though: Loasby said that in 2007/08 (i.e. pre-Spotify) Pink Floyd were on every ad-funded streaming service going. “We did 14 million streams. Of those, we earned just over five figures… When it came to renewing our deal with EMI, we decided we did not want to go with ad-funded but agreed to go on subscription ones (only). But, when we went to Spotify’s office in 2010, we were declined – it was all or nothing.” At the same event, EMI’s Cosmo Lush defended Spotify: “These very small numbers on streams do add up… Revenue we receive from streaming services is much more equitably split amongst artists because more of it is catalogue listening – not just folks who are lucky enough to be in the top 10 or 40.”
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