Music manager Nick Stern has published an op-ed piece on The Hollywood Reporter calling for greater transparency between labels and artists over streaming revenues. “I’m constantly disappointed when I hear artists and managers complain that they aren’t making anything from them. They do – they pay out 70% of what they take in, just like iTunes,” he wrote. “When people try to break this down into per-stream payouts, they’re trying to answer the wrong question. When these businesses scale, this is going to be a huge windfall for the recording industry. The real question is, where does that money go?” Stern, who manages Clap Your Hands Say Yeah among other artists, criticises the secrecy around advance payments and equity stakes in these services. “I’m not suggesting that transparency will solve all the problems of our business. But I do think it’s about time it happened,” he wrote. “There is just no reason labels can’t update their systems, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t be privy to the terms of their deals with the streaming services. This is now an all-digital world – there are no returns, no packaging deductions — it shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s the very definition of transparency.”
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