The deals done between the labels, publishers, collecting societies and the streaming services are – at their core – revenue share arrangements based on consumption share.

So each month, Spotify works out what portion of total streams were Universal Music recordings, allocates that portion of its overall revenues to the major's catalogue, and then pays it a share of that money according to its revenue share agreement – Universal will likely get somewhere between 55% and 60%. Though that said, a series of minimum guarantees Universal has also secured from the streaming service may mean it gets more of the cash. How artists are paid then depends on their contracts with the record company.

On the publishing side, because a stream exploits both the reproduction and communication controls of the copyright, in the UK some of the money will flow through the publisher, who will then pay the songwriter a share. Some will flow through PRS, who will usually split that money between publisher and writer. So as a songwriter, neither your publisher statement nor your PRS statement will tell the complete story.

It's a bit confusing isn't it? Then you add in the fact that the specific figures in each streaming deal are a secret. In The Royalties Conference at The Great Escape we'll explain in a little more detail how all this works, while licensing expert Becky Brook will come at the whole thing from the perspective of the streaming service.

At the end of the day, we'll put the spotlight on the transparency debate, why are there so many secrets, and why is that a problem? MMF CEO Annabella Coldrick will join that debate alongside artists Dave Rowntree (representing the Featured Artists Coalition), Crispin Hunt (representing BASCA) and Suzanne Combo (representing the International Artists Organisation).





QUESTION TWO: HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY OUT OF MUSIC MEDIA IN 2017?
If you think it's a challenge making money out of music in the digital age, trying making money out of music journalism. Just like the music business, the media sector has also struggled to deal with the shift to digital, but unlike artists music journalists don't generally have a live or merch side to fall back on, nor a rapidly growing online subscriptions business to replace lost legacy income streams.

You could argue that in the social media age, where everyone is a publisher – and in the streaming era where people can check out a new album for themselves for free without relying on a critic to describe it to them – do we even need so much music journalism?

Yet music-based editorial content – whether news, reviews, interviews or other features – is still hugely popular. Indeed, most music media and most music journalists are talking to much bigger audiences online than they ever did in print. And the music industry still recognises the role media platforms play in building an audience for their artists and music.

The challenge for music media owners is how to turn that online audience into revenue. Music magazines traditionally had two sources of income: cover price and advertising. However, publishers – especially of consumer-facing titles – have found it really hard to persuade people to pay to access content online. In the advertising space, media owners face two massive new competitors for the online ad spend of big brands: search engines and social networks. And Google and Facebook don't have the cost of generating a steady stream of new content every day of the week.

So how do you make money out of music media in 2017? It's probably all about brands: either providing services or partnership opportunities to consumer brands, or media owners exploiting their own brands and building products or events around them. But what does any of that mean for future of music journalism? Or the future of music PR, for that matter.

We'll be debating all these issues in The Media Conference at The Great Escape later this month. We'll look at how four successful media brands – DJ Mag, Vice, GRM Daily and DIY – are generating revenue, and will discuss how both music journalism and music PR are evolving.

There will be plenty of food for thought for anyone working in or with the music media, whether generating content or looking for coverage. And for those in the record industry, things might look quite rosy in your sector by comparison!





QUESTION THREE: WHAT IMPACT WILL BREXIT HAVE ON MUSIC?
So, Brexit then. That's happening. Though, despite Article 50 having now been triggered, we still don't really know what Brexit will actually look like; except that whatever happens, we can be sure Theresa Mayhem will reduce it to a three word cliché. Brexit means Brexit, remember. Strong and stable, mind. Strong and stable.

However, while we may not yet know what Brexit will look like – and therefore what it will mean in tangible terms for the music industry – we can identify the areas where the UK exiting the European Union could impact on the music business.

The industry's trade bodies need to do just that, to inform the lobbying they will need to undertake, alongside every other sector. So that, on the off chance Mayhem takes her fingers out of her ears for a few seconds, the music community's reps in Westminster and Whitehall know what to shout.

Brexit will likely impact on UK copyright law, though probably not in the short term. But, cut free from its obligation to work in harmony with the European copyright regime, UK copyright law could be reformed faster in the future.

That might be a good thing, given how copyright struggles to keep up with the ever-evolving digital world. Though, for the music community, one down side could be that the lobbyists from Google and Facebook – who are arguably stronger in London than they are in Brussels – will be more likely to get things their way.

Brexit could also affect copyright in the rest of Europe. The UK has always been particularly vocal on intellectual property issues within the EU. With that voice absent from the table, and the French and German influence likely to increase as a result, the copyright priorities of European lawmakers could shift.

While the Brexit affect on copyright will likely take sometime to emerge, the UK's exit from the EU could have a more immediate effect on the movement of physical product between Britain and continental Europe, and – of course – the movement of workers.

This could impact on the CD and vinyl market in the UK, which relies on pressing plants elsewhere in Europe, while music companies which run European operations out of London may look to base themselves elsewhere if hiring European citizens becomes tricky.

For the artist community, perhaps the biggest question is what this will all mean for touring. Will there be new costs and bureaucracy when UK artists tour Europe, and will that affect the ability of middle-level artists to tour at all, or at least to take their British crew and session musicians with them?

At the conclusion of The Export Conference at The Great Escape this month, we will put the spotlight on all things Brexit, considering all of these issues, best and worst case scenarios, and what the music community's lobbying priorities should be.

Leading the conversation will be the BPI's Director Of Public Affairs Ian Moss, and he will be joined by Proper Music's Vangel Vlaski, the Musicians' Union's Naomi Pohl, music export expert Anna Hildur and lawyer Luke English.





QUESTION FOUR: HOW DO YOU GET PAID WHEN YOUR MUSIC IS SYNCED?
Ah, sync deals, we all want one of them don't we? But how exactly do artists and songwriters get paid when their music is synchronised into TV shows, movies, video games or ads?

With sync licensing, sometimes it goes through the collective licensing system, sometimes it's done through direct deals, and sometimes it's a combination of the two. It depends on who the client is, and whether we are talking about the song or the recording.

With TV, in most countries (though not the US) sync licensing goes through the collective licensing system, so in the UK that's PPL on the recordings side and PRS and MCPS on the songs side. Producers and broadcasters can usually tap a blanket licence giving them access to any of the recordings or songs represented by the respective societies at a set rate. Labels, publishers, artists and songwriters are then paid their share of the money via their societies.

For movies, video games and advertising, sync deals usually begin with direct deals. The licensee must agree terms with each rights owner who has a stake in the song and recording they wish to use. This will usually mean doing at least two deals: one with a label to secure the recording rights and one with a publisher to secure the song rights. Though many song copyrights are co-owned, and the licensee needs a deal from each co-owner.

Once the deal is done, the producer or advertiser will pay a chunk of cash over to the label and publisher – according to the terms of their bespoke agreement – and the label and publisher will share that money with artist and songwriter, subject to the terms of their record and publishing contacts.

However, on the publishing side, that direct deal will often only cover the actual synchronisation, which exploits the 'reproduction' control of the copyright. If and when the resulting audio-visual product is shown in public or broadcast – which will exploit the 'performance' or 'communication' controls of the copyright – further royalties will have to be paid via the collecting societies, which commonly control the performing rights in their members' works. So songwriters will also see some income from the syncing of their songs via their societies.

This is all sounding rather complex, isn't it? That's one of the reasons why some video makers rely on 'production' or 'library' music rather than commercially released songs and recordings. Going the production music route is usually simpler and definitely cheaper. Though if you are an artist or songwriter who created some production music, how do you get paid? Well, that depends too.

We'll be putting the spotlight on all the deal-making and money elements of both sync and production music in The Royalties Conference at the Great Escape next week. Simon Pursehouse from Sentric Music will join us to help explain how things work, plus we'll chat to The Box Plus Network's Director Of Commercial & Business Affairs Stacey Mitsopulos, the BBC's Head of Music Licensing Nicky Bignell, PRS For Music's Director Of Broadcast & Online Andy Harrower and artist manager Ros Earls from 140db.





QUESTION FIVE: HOW DO YOU GET YOUR MUSIC ONTO A JOURNALIST'S RADAR?
Here's a fun thought for anyone who's ever agonised over writing the perfect press release for an artist, a show or a record. There is always a chance that not one of the hundreds of journalists that you sent it to actually read it.

That's not because music journalists all get a kick out of ignoring your hard work; in fact most journalists want to be up to speed with most new music, certainly from within their specialist genres. The problem is time or, more to the point, a lack of it.

We are currently surveying UK journalists, and of those a quarter report that on average they receive more than 1000 PR emails a week. Another third say they receive somewhere between 250 and 1000 a week. So it's probably unsurprising that over 40% of respondents admit that they are unlikely to open any more than half of the emails they receive.

So, how do you get your press releases read? Personal relationships are a key factor of course, journalists are inevitably more likely to open emails from people they know and like. That's one of the reasons why artists and labels pay PR agencies, who have those personal relationships. But is there anything else you can do to stand out?

Of course, it's not just about the press release. Of the journalists we've surveyed so far, 80% say they also find out about new music by monitoring the music blogs, by catching support acts at gigs and by chatting to people they know in the industry. Which means getting some love on the music blogs and getting out there to gig are also key to getting noticed by the wider media.

We'll be sharing more facts and figures from our journalists' survey during The Media Conference at The Great Escape next week. We'll also consider how – in the streaming and direct-to-fan age – artists need to get media coverage on a more regular basis, rather than just around the album release, and what this might mean for the way artists and labels plan their marketing and PR campaigns.

For that latter conversation, we'll get the input of five great music PRs and marketers from a number of different strands of the industry, including Afryea Henry-Fontaine from Virgin EMI, Jane Kearney from Festival Republic, Jodie Banaszkiewicz from Stay Golden PR, Michelle Kambasha from Secretly Canadian and Rosie James from Tru Thoughts.