‘Black box’ streaming royalties remain a sensitive discussion for the music industry, but UK songwriting body The Ivors Academy wants to spark more of that debate. It has published a report claiming that at least £500m (around $689.9m) a year is being “delayed, unallocated and/or mis-allocated to songs that have already received payment”.
We’re talking publishing royalties here, with the body describing it as “the song streaming data gap” and criticising collecting societies for not reporting this figure themselves. The Ivors Academy also says that the £500m figure is “deliberately conservative”.
The report goes in to more details on the methodology behind the figure, which focuses on publishing royalties from streaming services and user-generated content platforms.
The study used Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as its basis, before sizing up the calculations for a global number. It sits alongside another big black-box number (albeit US-only) announced earlier this year: $424.4m of ‘historical unmatched royalties’ transferred to US body the Mechanical Licensing Collective by DSPs, which has been charged with paying them out.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: Wyng
Through Music Ally’s internal marketing campaign tracking, we’ve recently discovered an interesting website by the…