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David Byrne—author, Talking Heads original member, invaluable advocate for fairness in the always evolving music streaming business. The singer/multi-instrumentalist penned a new long read in the New York Times. The piece, pressed for Friday’s paper and titled “Open the Music Industry’s Black Box,” campaigns for revenue transparency from Apple Music and Spotify. He also says platforms that allow free consumption do nothing but damage to the artists and need to be fixed or ridded of.
Byrne recounts a mildly unsettling series of interactions to unsuccessfully try and discover how Apple Music allocates royalties for his own music:
“I asked Apple Music to explain the calculation of royalties for the trial period. They said they disclosed that only to copyright owners (that is, the labels). I have my own label and own the copyright on some of my albums, but when I turned to my distributor, the response was, ‘You can’t see the deal, but you could have your lawyer call our lawyer and we might answer some questions.'”
Read the entire article here.
