Jimmy Page joins growing list of artists calling for fairer streaming payouts

Jimmy Page has joined an increasing number of artists calling for fairer royalty payments from streaming services.

A UK parliamentary inquiry is currently underway, hearing the perspectives of “industry experts, artists and record labels, as well as streaming platforms themselves”. It will continue into 2021.

The Led Zeppelin guitar icon, like many other artists, is demanding fairness in how streaming services – including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music – pay artists.

Taking to Instagram, the guitarist wrote: “I fully appreciate the dilemma surrounding streaming royalties that should be rightfully paid to all musicians and writers who made the music.

“The sooner the streaming companies can make fair payments to all musicians whose music is played on or viewed via the internet, and to pay fair royalties to those who give us great pleasure from those who are exploiting it, the better.⁣”

Speaking to MPs on Tuesday (December 8), Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers took aim at record labels, saying, “It’s not the streaming services that we have the problem with. It’s the labels that are perpetrating this.”

According to the veteran guitarist (via BBC), some record labels keep up to 82% of royalties received from streaming services.

In the same parliamentary session, songwriter Fiona Bevan revealed that she only received £100 for composing and singing on Disco, a Number 1 album by Kylie Minogue.

“One of the stats that the [Ivors Academy] have just published, is that eight out of 10 songwriters earn less than £200 a year from streaming,” she said. “So we have a big problem here and people don’t know why they’re getting so little.”