the times | Thursday November 26 2020 1GM 3
News
British musicians have complained that
record label executives are making mil-
lions from streaming services while art-
ists struggle to pay their rent.
The top five executives from Warner
Music Group received $120 million
(£90 million) in the past three years
“while the rest of us are applying for
emergency relief funds”, Crispin Hunt,
a successful songwriter, claimed.
Hunt, chairman of the Ivors Aca-
demy, which supports musicians, calcu-
lated that the figure amounted to the
same earnings as “the top 27 tracks”
produced by the label.
The biggest stars in the industry are
not said to be affected. Kanye West
house last year, she struggled to pay the
rent.
Gray began the campaign for a fairer
streaming deal in April with the Broken
Record initiative. “Most of the artists
you listen to aren’t getting anything
from streaming,” he said.
“When the pandemic started we real-
ised we had to deal with that. Streaming
works by dividing all the money in the
system by all the streams in the system,
which means most of the money ismares did I imagine the buyer would be
Scooter,” she said. He went on to sell
them this year for $300 million to a
private equity firm.
It means that Lover and Folklore are
effectively the only albums that Swift
owns the rights to. She is re-recording
the rest and told fans this month that
she had “plenty of surprises in store”.Closet collaborators
Jay Z and Michael Jackson
For eight years it remained a secret
that Michael Jackson contributed to
Jay Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint.
After Jackson died in 2009 the
rapper revealed that the king of pop
had provided backing vocals on the
song Girls Girls Girls.Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran
The song Love Yourself became one
of Justin Bieber’s most successful
songs after it topped charts in 2015.
It emerged two years later that the
British singer Ed Sheeran had
written it for his album Divide and
given it to the Canadian superstar,
who adapted it to his style.Cher and Pink
Cher confirmed that she enlisted the
help of the pop singer Pink when
creating her album Closer To The
Truth in 2013.Cheryl Cole and Sia
Hidden in the deluxe version of
Cheryl Cole’s 2015 album Only
Human is a secret collaboration with
Sia. The Australian pop singer gave
the former Girls Aloud member the
song Firecracker and her vocals can
be heard throughout.Alwyn, who was
born in north London
and has appeared in
The Favourite and
Mary Queen of Scots,
told The Times last
year that, like Styles,
he was flattered to
have become Swift’s sub-ject matter. She decided to out him as a
collaborator on the songs Exile and
Betty this week during Folklore: The
Long Pond Studio Sessions on Disney+.
During the film she performs songs
from the album, which she recorded
during quarantine.
She said she had realised that Alwyn
had more than one string to his bow.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about
William Bowery and his identity
because it’s not a real person... That
would have gone on for ever,” she said.
“William Bowery is Joe as we know
and Joe plays piano beautifully and he’s
always just playing and making things
up and kind of creating things and [the
song] Exile was crazy because Joe had
written that entire piano part and it
was, singing the Bon Iver part, ‘I can see
you standing honey.. .’
“He was just singing it the way that
the whole first verse is and so I was
entranced and asked
if we could
keep writing
that one.”
Exile was
performed
with Justin
Vernon of the
indie band Bon
Iver and has
been nominat-
ed for a Gram-
my for pop duo/
group perform-
ance. Before you
ask, it is about a
break-up.Taylor Swift had already sung an ode to her partner, the actor
Joe Alwyn, before he helped with songs on the album FolkloreSTEPHEN LOVEKIN/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKubk t p w V i I b e m g a a bMusicians struggle to pay the rent as millions stream their hits
spent a million dollars on gold-plated
lavatories. Shakira liked the Bahamian
island of Bonds Cay so much that she
bought it. Yet for the average musician,
in a year when touring is off the menu,
making a living is difficult because
streaming has replaced album sales.
“Streaming is nearly a miracle. It just
needs to pay fairly,” Guy Garvey, singer
for the band Elbow, said after his ap-
pearance before the digital, culture,
media and sport committee. He gave
evidence on the economic impact of
streaming on the music industry.
Garvey was joined by Ed O’Brien of
Radiohead, Tom Gray of Gomez and
Nadine Shah, the singer from Newcas-
tle who said that despite being nomi-
nated for the Mercury prize and selling
out London’s 1,700-capacity Round-going to the major labels, especially the
biggest artists. The algorithm drives
people back to the biggest artists.”
Garvey said: “Musicians don’t want
to admit they’re skint, but if more
tweeted, ‘I can no longer make the rent,’
their listeners would support them.
“I’m not asking for Robert Plant’s
third limousine. I just want the system
to be fixed.”
It has also become increasingly hard
for classical and jazz players, touring
rock bands and independent artists to
make a living. Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of
Yo u, the most streamed track of the
decade at 2.3 billion plays, is estimated
to have earned him $14.6 million. By
contrast Tasmin Little, the classical
violinist, reported that for more than
five million Spotify streams fromalbums she recorded in the 1990s, she
earned £12.34.
Hunt said: “There’s plenty of money
being made from music. It’s just not
going to musicians. You can see that
from the profit margins of the major la-
bels, who are passing those profits on to
the shareholders when they should be
passed on to the creators.”
In a statement responding to the
hearing, a spokesman for the British
Phonographic Industry said: “Music’s
recent return to growth — after 15 years
of severe decline — has been fuelled by
years of label reinvention, innovation
and investment.”
The streaming companies and
record labels have yet to appear before
the committee.
Guy Garvey interview, TimesWill Hodgkinson Chief Rock Critic
Charlie Parker
He was already the London Boy who
had introduced Taylor Swift to the de-
lights of Camden Market and high tea.
Now Joe Alwyn has emerged as more
than just the singer’s muse and com-
panion for cucumber sandwiches —
the British actor has also helped her to
write songs.
In the summer Swift perplexed fans
and industry insiders when
she credited a hitherto un-
known songwriter, William
Bowery, with helping her to
write two songs on her new
album, Folklore.
Was it a pseudonym
for her brother, Aus-
tin? Was it a talented
young buck being
given a hefty help-
ing hand with their
career?
Although some
in her fanbase had
deduced that Bow-
ery was Alwyn,
Swift said yester-
day that the specu-
lation could have
“gone on for ever”.
“It’s not a real person,”
she confessed. “William
Bowery is Joe.”
Swift, 30, whose latest
album is her eighth, has a
history of not only collabo-
rating with lovers, but also
inspiring them in their own
art. She worked with one
former boyfriend, the Scot-
tish producer Calvin Harris, on a track
in 2016. The singer John Mayer
memorialised their brief affair on a
2009 track, Half of My Heart, on which
Swift appears.
She has also channelled her feelings
on ex-lovers into her tunes. After split-
ting with Harry Styles, a member of the
boyband One Direction, Swift is
alleged to have written several songs
about him, including Out of the Woods
and Style. Styles said it was “flattering,
even if the song isn’t that flattering...
she’s a great songwriter so at least
they’re good songs.”
Swift, who is thought to have been
dating Alywn, 29, for about three years,
wrote about him on her 2019 track
London Boy.
In the song the pop star, who was
born in Pennsylvania and moved to
Nashville as a teenager, enthuses about
being “like a Tennessee
Stella McCartney on the
Heath” before imploring
her London boy: “Please
show me Hackney/
Doesn’t have to be
Louis V up on Bond
Street.”
The track ap-
peared on Swift’s
seventh album,
Lover, which
marked the start of a
new chapter in her
career after a row
over the sale of her
back catalogue.
Earlier in 2019 the
master recordings of
her first six studio
albums had been sold
to the American
record executive
Scooter Braun, to-
wards whom Swift
has long-standing
animus. “Never in
my worst night-Taylor Swift’s
London boy
is her secret
songwriter
LThe star says that her
British boyfriend has
done more than show
her around Hackney,
David Sanderson writes
Guy Garvey said
artists should be
open about their
financial struggles