Executives from independent labels criticise Apple’s new spatial audio awards in a Financial Times piece.
According to a story from the Financial Times, some independent record labels have expressed their displeasure with Apple’s recent proposal to provide musicians who deliver spatial audio with a larger share of royalties. These labels say that the idea will result in a loss of potential earnings for them in favour of businesses who have superior resources at their disposal. Since the beginning of the month, Apple has been providing musicians who release spatial audio tracks on Apple Music with a ten percent increase in earnings. On the other hand, this is derived from the same fixed pool of money that is also used to compensate artists who do not offer the programme.
The Dolby Atmos technology is used to make spatial audio, and according to executives who spoke with FT, the cost of producing spatial audio is approximately $1,000 more money each song. To put it into perspective, a label might have hundreds or thousands of albums in its back catalogue, which would result in the cost of an entire album being approximately ten times higher than the current price. The Financial Times conducted interviews with executives from Beggars Group, Secretly, and Partisan Records, all of which are record labels that represent artists such as Vampire Weekend, Phoebe Bridgers, and others.
One executive expressed his concern to the Financial Times, saying, “We are definitely concerned if [this policy]takes between 5 and 10 percent off of your global revenues, and not even because the songs aren’t performing, but because you lose that money and it goes to Universal, the biggest player in the market.” Simply making money off of streaming is a challenge in and of itself. They intend to discuss the matter with Apple in the hopes of negotiating a more favourable agreement.