The tide has shifted. Music streaming's prevalence has gone from formidable to dominating in recent years, and it shows no signs of slowing. Unfortunately, with the speed at which the streaming world moves, the waves of change on the copyright legislation side have been slow to follow — but there's hope. With streaming continuing to grow, now is the time to pass the Music Modernization Act to keep music creators' heads above water.
The numbers don't lie. Neilsen reports on-demand audio streaming is up 45 percent over last year so far in 2018, while on-demand video streaming has risen 35 percent year-over-year. In all, streaming now accounts for 75 percent of non-radio music consumption in the U.S. The MMA, which has introduced comprehensive music reform, is the only legislation on the table attempting to update copyright law for the streaming age.
As the biggest proposed update to music legislation in the past 40 years, the bill will go a long way to affect how music creators are compensated for their work. The widely supported MMA has earned unprecedented bipartisan backing on its way to unanimous passage in the House of Representatives and Senate Judiciary Committee. Its next stop on the road to real change is a full Senate vote.
The latest Nielson report also sheds light on the shocking reach of streaming platforms with a tally of 403 billion on-demand music streams so far in 2018, equating to 270 million albums sold by the standard scale of 1,500 streams to one album. These staggering numbers mean consumers have spoken via their listening habits, and that the appetite for music is as big as ever.
While streaming has its superstars, such as Drake and Post Malone, who have generated 3.3 billion and 3.1 billion streams so far this year respectively, music creators at all levels must adapt to earning a living in a streaming world. For the modern music maker, these ballooning streaming numbers are positioned as the income stream of the future to offset drastic declines in album and track sales, a trade-off that can't happen in earnest under outdated legislation.
The MMA will provide much-needed mutually beneficial policy reform to move our industry a giant step closer to fairly compensating the source of its product: the people who create music. With so much purpose and progress behind the Music Modernization Act, it’s time to push the bill across the finish line. Now is the time speak up on behalf of the MMA and its promise to build a more fair, transparent and relevant landscape for music creators.
Contact Your Senators: Tell Them To Support Comprehensive Music Reform
