Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney has waded into the YouTube/royalties/Spotify/underpaid musicians debate.
Trent Reznor addressed the paltry amount musicians get paid for their online streams this week, singling out YouTube as an entity ‘built off the back of stolen content’. Carney agrees, saying on Twitter that ‘a song should cost as much as an avocado’.
“Give me five minutes on YouTube and I probably can find 250 songs that are available which the artist isn’t getting paid for,” he wrote. “At least. A sell out in my book in 2016 is anyone that takes a share in a streaming company who also is an artist and doesn’t advocate for fair pay.”
“A song should cost as much as an avocado. They should be traded similarly at least until people discover a similarly thick and savory fruit.”
Earlier this month, the Independent Music Publishers Forum (IMPF) urged YouTube to change its business model in order to address what they called the ‘meagre royalty payments’ its artists receive.