With almost almost 30% market share overall, independent music is a music industry force to be reckoned with. But that share falls to below 20% on the major streaming services. In a effort to rectify the inequity, digital distributor Record Union is leading a campaign urge Spotify. Apple Music, Amazon and others to acknowledge independent music with a label.
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“We want independent music creators to have the ability to tag their music in your product – just as you tag explicit content,” writes Johan Svanberg, CEO of Record Union ijn an open letter to the music services. “This would help independent music creators to stand out in a crowd full of major label backed artists and it would also help consumers to actively choose to listen to independent music.”
Svanberg is also asking creators to sign a petition in support of indie labeling.
“The believe that equality and diversity within music is not only about gender and ethnicity. It is also about who is behind the music in terms of creation and ownership. Today, the global independent market share of streaming is 19.55 percent. The rest is controlled by three major record labels.
We want this to change and we want to give independent music creators the most important tag for independent content to acknowledge independent music.”
Read the full open letter to the streaming services and sign the petition.
Independent Musicians Survey: Obstacles For Success
The call for labelling comes after Record Union conducted a survey of more than a thousand independent music creators in the Nordics, the UK and the US, asking them what they think about the music industry and their career and how to make things better.
“To win the hearts of independent music creators today,companies need to find a way to democratize what happens before and after distribution in terms of marketing, promotion and financing.
Thousands of songs are being uploaded to streaming services every day.
Just because your song is on a platform doesn’t mean it’s going to be automatically listened to.”
Read and download a pdf of the full Independent Music Report 2018 here.