“It is estimated that anywhere from 20-50 percent of music payments don’t make it to their rightful owners.”
But that’s only the amount that’s supposed to be paid. The report, Fair Music: Transparency and Money Flows in the Music Industry, pointed to a giant pile of money that is intentionally squirreled away in private deals, all of which are legal. That would explain why Sony Music pressured The Verge to pulldown its contract with Spotify, that is, before it went completely viral. “As a result of the many unique, and often legally private, financial relationships that exist between artists, authors, record labels, and publishers, our window into the revenue earned by musicians from their compositions, performances, and recordings is obscured,” the report continues.
“While that portion of the global recorded music sales, subscriptions, and synchronization fees that might be initially attributable as recording artist “revenue” could be as much as $3 billion (using an admittedly rough method for approximation), of the $15 billion in global, recorded music revenue reported by the IFPI for 2014, only a small portion of this money beyond the initial recording advances paid ultimately makes its way to the artist as ongoing revenue.”
