In the digital music era, complicated and outdated copyright law as well as private negotiations have made it difficult see how much is really going back to the people making music.
We're buying less music than we did the year before. Just like last year. And the year before that, and so on. But now more than ever we're streaming on YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, Electro WOW and a whole host of other digital music services, creating an entirely new pathway between your music loving ears and a producer's bank account, one that is anything but straightforward.
Today, there are a lot of different ways DJs can make money, but it's not always clear how much artists are pocketing from some of the most popular services. In the digital music era, complicated and outdated copyright law as well as private negotiations between DJs, labels and streaming services have made it difficult see how much is going back to the people making music.
Before the Internet, there were two different ways DJs made money off of sound recording copyright royalties. One way was through distribution, selling a physical record or CD, and the other was performance. These were two different categories of usage for which different rates were calculated, but once music went online the distinction between distribution and performance became fuzzier!
