As a songwriter, Justin Tranter has seen his songs recorded by some of the world’s biggest artists: Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Britney Spears and more. His latest project, a label called Facet Records, is aiming to give the next generation of songwriters a leg up.
How? By giving them a share of recordings royalties. The company says it will redistribute three points of its share of those revenues to songwriters who aren’t the artists or producers on recordings.
The company claims to be the first label to adopt such a policy, describing it as “an overdue shakeup that intends to inspire similar action across the industry”. The ‘first’ element is the kind of claim that risks other labels popping up to say they’ve been doing it for years, but Tranter’s profile will certainly give the idea a wide airing.
“For the last couple of years I have been trying to raise awareness through interviews and posts about how the middle class of songwriters is being completely destroyed,” said Tranter in a TikTok post.
“Basically we don’t make any money off of streaming. Now people have been fighting the good fight and we’re now making a little bit more, which is great. We’ll take it. But unless the song goes to radio, songwriters basically make nothing… There are songwriters who have billions of streams and cannot pay their rent.”
Tranter cited a recent interview with musician Raye in which she suggested that labels should give recordings points to songwriters as inspiration for the decision.
“Producers get points. Producers get publishing! Producers are making money from both sides. If the artist writes the song, they’re making money from the master side and the publishing side. And most importantly, labels and tech companies are making crazy amounts of money off of songwriters,” he said.
“I said to myself: ‘Girl, you have a label! You need to do this too!’ So I called my whole team, texted everybody and said figure this out… And I don’t want the money to come from our artists. It comes from the label side of the money.”
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