Peter Frampton "For 55 million streams of, ‘Baby I Love Your Way’, I got $1,700,"

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Tone, Aug 8, 2018.

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  1. RichC

    RichC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Charlotte, NC
    If that company fired you 35 years ago, but sent you a check for $1700 last week, I'd say that's pretty good.

    (Yes I'm being flippant....)
     
  2. RhodyDave125

    RhodyDave125 Streetwalkin' Cheetah

    We don't know that he DIDN't get paid for it. What were the terms of the contract back in 1976? He probably received quite a large amount of money back then. Does this get extrapolated going forward that the original contract stipulates payments on all future use of said music? We don't know. My opinion is that he was paid very well, had a contract, and that subsequently expired. Any future use/sales would require some form of contract to pay royalties.

    Let's suppose (hypothetical of course) that in the original contract he signed away his rights to ownership of the "Comes Alive" album. Or that said ownership of that IP was for a period of 20 years. Anything beyond that would leave him high and dry (not the Def Leppard album).
     
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  3. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Different people use it different ways. If everybody used it the same way and liked the same things, it would probably be impossible to make money offering it. I'm probably bad news for the accountants at Spotify and Tidal. I hardly ever randomize/shuffle, and I hardly ever listen to pre-programmed "playlists" or "radio". My use is almost entirely "on demand", which means a higher payout for my pleasure.

    By ephemeral, I mean to say that I don't have to grab it and have it available for the rest of my life. (When I was much younger, I'd go out dancing, maybe hear something once in a while that was life-changing, but leave at the end of the night....)

    And as I age, I now count three plays of something as constituting fanatical attention.
     
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  4. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    You error in thinking that there is some sort of adversarial relationship between the record companies and the streaming services. Again, the Big Three record companies invested heavily in the various streaming services, and as major shareholders, they are making sure their point of view prevails. It's as fixed as professional wrestling.
     
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  5. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Sounds like somebody didn't watch The Producers.
     
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  6. kozy814

    kozy814 Forum Resident

    [​IMG]
    This is how Peter Framptom's career would look like if he began in the era of Spodify.
     
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  7. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    If there was fair compensation for artists, I doubt they would be holding on to an outdated mindset related to physical product. The issue is that time and time again, major legacy artists reveal their tiny royalty statements from streaming platforms, and while in the past there were certainly struggles with fair compensation from the sale of physical product, it was a medium that often paid when artists delivered a successful body of work.

    Furthermore, the "real value" of single on-demand streaming is still quite high and generates hundreds of millions and/or billions of dollars in revenue for record labels and streaming services, but the artist is generally only seeing a small fraction of it.
     
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  8. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    No, a modern-day Peter Frampton would resist the efforts of the record companies, post videos on YouTube and songs on Bandcamp, press his own CDs to sell at concerts and build his career on what he was best at - performing. Snark aside, Frampton Comes Alive was a great document of a great live act, and he could record those live tracks and, since he wouldn't have a pimp, sorry a record company taking the lion's share he could release his own Frampton Comes Alive and make most of the money. That is how it's done today, and their are plenty of people who are making a very good living either without a big label, or with a much more advantageous distribution-only deal.

    I have friends who are doing exactly that. They just got one of the biggest checks of their career from Sirius XM because one of their songs is being played on the Bluesville channel. Meanwhile, they got ripped off on their digital sales because iTunes refused to deal with a band, that they had to have an existing label put it up - and that label stole tens of thousands of dollars from them.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
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  9. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    Frampton wasn't "fired" 35 years ago. His deal with the A&M, as far as receiving royalties from his recorded body of work at the label, has been active dating back to the 1970's.
     
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  10. Hardy Melville

    Hardy Melville Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Streaming is theft. I am a lawyer, and I know conversion.
     
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  11. ElevatorSkyMovie

    ElevatorSkyMovie Senior Member

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    Why is Izzy not part of the GNR reunion?

    The same reason Frampton isn't getting money. "They wouldn't share the loot....".
     
  12. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    While publishing is generally more lucrative than performance, there are certainly some bad publishing deals in the world. And the publishing company - not the streamer - cuts the last check to the songwriters.
     
  13. Meyer

    Meyer Heavy Metal Parking Lot Resident

    And, in totally unrelated news, Apple just became a $trillion company
     
  14. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    The irony is that while the record label arguably took the lion's share of money generated from "Frampton Comes Alive," the label still paid Frampton millions in royalties. The labels and streaming service providers make millions/billions from their music deals, yet only pay a guy like Frampton $1,700 for a hit song that has been streamed 55,000,000 times. Huge money is being generated by the corporations, while the artists who have created the actual commodity that generates all of the value, receive very little in comparison. It is a very twisted, corrupt system. Was the old-model corrupt? Certainly, but for the most part, if artists sold millions of records, some form of a lucrative royalty was often there.

    As far as Frampton participating in the present-day landscape as a new artist, one suspects he would not become the highly successful artist he became. For generations, there was terrestrial radio (later MTV), record stores, limited television exposure, and touring. Often it was all tied-in together and if an artist received proper promotional support, they could break in a big way. Today, there numerous outlets and the public is lucky to come across something that catches their ear, if they can find it. The current model may theoretically keep more money in pockets of independent artists, but it is hard to make money on the road (especially if an independent artist is playing clubs/small theaters with no label or management financial support), sell CDs on the road (that younger generations do not buy), make money from YouTube streams and other streaming service providers (the public, especially younger generations have little-to-no interest in paying for recorded music, and the streaming services pay very little). In many instances, being a working musician is as hard as ever, and the possibilities of breaking and becoming highly successful are just as challenging as in the past, perhaps even more challenging.

    Frampton was a small theater act with a great live show during the mid-1970's -- it was A&M's massive promotion of "Frampton Comes Alive" that exposed Frampton to the masses, not Frampton's reputation, word-of-mouth, and internet streams. He never would have become the superstar and multi-million seller he became without the work and format of his record label.

    Please note this is not a cheerleading session for record labels, labels screwed plenty of artists with terrible royalty rates and other indiscretions over the decades. Labels have played a key role in these terrible royalty rates from streaming service providers. Artists are being screwed over as bad as ever from streaming service providers -- and the labels, service providers and public have all played a part.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
  15. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    You mean like this? Or this?
     
  16. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Uh-Oh. Just went looking for a pic of "Comes Alive" vinyl. All selections published by Almo/Fram-Dee Music.

    I'm gonna take a wild guess that the "Dee" in "Fram-Dee" is Peter's manager at the time, Dee Anthony, from whom he split after the "Sgt. Pepper" movie.

    I'm gonna take a 2nd wild guess: Never a good idea to go halfsies on your publishing with your manager.
     
  17. ElevatorSkyMovie

    ElevatorSkyMovie Senior Member

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    The labels ARE making money from streaming. They have rigged it so they don't have to pay the artists.

    Maybe artists should start a class action law suit.
     
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  18. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    It was common for managers to fleece their clients during the 1970's.
     
  19. ClassicalCD

    ClassicalCD Make audio great again

    Location:
    Bogotá, Colombia
    Streaming per se and pay per stream are irrelevant to the argument. Total revenue has increased for the last couple of years and is at the highest it has been in a decade:

    https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

    People are paying more every year for their music. The issue reduces to one simple fact (if one is to believe people like Frampton): even though the money is coming in, labels are keeping almost all of it. That the format is streaming, CDs, or LPs, or how many times people listen to each, has no bearing whatever on the matter.
     
  20. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    Just a couple of data points here:

    * Spotify shows that the cover version by Big Mountain is the one that was streamed 53+million times.

    * Frampton's own live performance of that song is quickly closing in on 21 million.

    So Frampton's talking about publishing, not performance royalties.

    In all likelihood, a big chunk of Big Mountain's 55-mil streaming success is from fed/radio/playlist plays, not somebody deciding that they wanted to hunt down that song and play it on demand. That can be deduced from the song's presence on two Spotify playlists with a total number of close to 5 million followers. (Artist "Peter Frampton", by contrast, has 300K followers, and his ten-most streamed performances COMBINED don't hit 55 million.)


    Now, granted - publishers are currently extremely unhappy with the terms they are working under in the streaming regime, just as labels are. It is also likely that Frampton enjoys only a portion of the publishing proceeds, unless his split with his former manager was extremely amicable.

    But it is not helpful to act like people are bootlegging "Frampton Comes Alive!"
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
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  21. painted8

    painted8 Forum Resident

    No matter how unfair a financial arrangement might be, yes there’s always worse things. But what difference does it make how old the song is? Is $1700 reflective of its value right now?
     
  22. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    The data is certainly helpful. And it shows another huge problem. Publishing revenues for songwriters have taken a huge hit with streaming. Again, who is being paid? Hundreds of millions of dollars are changing hands, labels are generating record revenues, Spotify's stock price is high and its executives are making huge money.

    Songwriters are having a very hard time making a living. And music fans should care -- great art will not continue to be created if the people creating it have to treat it like a hobby because they cannot make a living doing it. Will the Music Modernization Act help if passed? Time will tell.
     
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  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My point is that the very same people are ripping him off, they're just wearing a "Spotify" mask this time.

    But it happens. Look at Lindsey Stirling - she built her entire career on YouTube and adept use of social media. My current favorite pop songwriters are the Gregory Brothers, who have built their entire careers on YouTube with hundreds of millions of views.

    In this world? If he was doing the same shows, people would be sharing phone clips of those performances, his "talkbox" solos would become a meme, etc. There are more ways to get the attention of the public than ever, and record labels don't need to be involved.

    Have a drink - you're starting to sound like Don Kirshner.
     
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  24. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    ha good one!
     
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  25. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    IMO, he should have kept his mouth shut and cash the check...
     
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