Why Covid could mean the end for Irish artists

Our stars make millions for music streaming services — but even in lockdown, the tech giants refuse to give back, writes Donal Lynch

WHEN the lockdown took hold, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, a virtuoso violinist and founding member of The Frames, saw his schedule of live performances vanish and he decided to do what many Irish artists have done: he went online.

In April, he streamed a 30-minute performance to Facebook and it was, by any standards, a success. Over 250,000 people watched it and it is one of the most popular live streams by any Irish artist in 2020. In terms of filling the gap in his income, it was a largely pyrrhic victory, however, one measured in nebulous terms like ‘exposure’.

“Facebook didn’t pay me anything for that,” Mac Con Iomaire explains from his home in Wexford. “And they wouldn’t, generally, even if you bring a large audience in. This [the pandemic] has put a sharp focus on the fact that since the collapse of record sales, nothing has really replaced that in terms of generating income for artists. The streaming rates are negligible.”

And as for the mythic benefits of ‘exposure’, he is dismissive: “You can die of exposure.”

Over the last decade, as everything creative has been given away for free, artists have primarily depended on live performances to make up the majority of their incomes. As social distancing has become a necessity, these income streams have dried up, leaving many artists facing into an uncertain future.

With theatres shuttered and performers confined to their living rooms, there has been more scrutiny about the inequitable way in which the tech giants harvest content from artists.

When the Cranberries recently hit one billion views on YouTube, it was hailed as a landmark moment in Irish music, but an industry source tells the Sunday Independent that the band likely made less than €100,000 from this — far less than would have been made from having a number one record in the pre-digital era.

Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U has almost 200 million hits online — but the singer recently spoke about how she felt she had to go on tour to pay the bills. And if legends make little from YouTube, for new performers eager to make a name for themselves, streaming represents a Faustian pact that must be signed.

Digitisation has not really demonetised the arts, of course — it’s just that someone else, other than artists, is now making the money. YouTube has an estimated 1.3 billion users who regularly watch music videos and it paid €785m in royalties to music companies last year — an estimated 67c per user annually.

For years, the music industry has argued that the website exploits the lack of protection for content to pay minimal amounts to artists and labels when they are viewed. Last year, a crucial vote by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs went the way of the music industry with an agreement to adopt copyright laws that will eventually force platforms such as YouTube to seek licences for music videos. Even this doesn’t really foretell a fair shake for artists however.

“The three major record companies own about 70pc of recorded music,” Mac Con Iomaire says.

“They are like the big banks, which stand to really make big money, and artists are like the small mortgage holders.”

Some of those mortgage holders see little option but to put their work on YouTube however. Mick Konstantin is a singer-songwriter from Kildare who shot to fame three years ago when one of his songs garnered over three million views on the site. His music income still comes primarily from streaming fees rather than live gigs, but he says the returns from YouTube, in particular, were negligible.

“I would say I made a couple of thousand during that time,” he says. “Other services like Spotify are a bit better, a bit fairer and they give a bigger proportion of the money they make to the artist. But you have to put your stuff online to be seen and to get noticed — there isn’t another way.”

Musicians are not the only artists who have been tempted to work for free online. Since the lockdown has taken hold, theatre companies like Druid and Pan Pan have also streamed their work gratis. Druid’s work has been viewed in more than 50 countries around the world, but its artistic director Garry Hynes says that online viewing is no substitute for live performance.

“Streaming or broadcasting work is not really an option because theatre is fundamentally about bringing people together. It’s about how one actor affects another actor and how they affect the audience.”

The pandemic is going to present grave challenges for theatre producers, she adds.

“This is an incredible situation, I never thought I would see anything like it in my lifetime. We are resourceful people and we’re all searching for ways to connect with our audience, but there is no substitute for live performance.

“Theatre companies don’t make money on anything, the financial model in theatre doesn’t really work anyway. The idea that the Abbey or the Gate could operate with vastly reduced seats just doesn’t really stand up.”

The most hopeful development for independent artists over the past decade has undoubtedly been the emergence of crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter and Patreon. Crowdfunding is the patronage model updated for the digital age, and it has become a lifeline for creators and may be an important part of economic recovery for those working in creative fields. But like all patronage, crowdfunding depends on benefactors who feel they have the confidence to give, something that may be in short supply as the economic consequences of the pandemic continue to be felt.

In the meantime, the status quo — whereby artists get shafted by the tech giants — prevails. It will be up to politicians and the companies themselves to ensure that over the coming years, the balance is tipped back in favour of creators.

“What’s really been clear during all of this [the pandemic] has been how important music and the arts have been in our lives,” Mac Con Iomaire says.

“They have helped us to make sense of everything that has been going on. What it’s also shown us is that we have a golden opportunity right now to try to ensure that artists get paid fairly for their work. And we can’t waste that.”

‘Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U had 200m online hits — but she recently spoke about how she felt she had to go on tour to pay the bills...’

‘The Cranberries probably made less than €100,000 from one billion YouTube views...’