Jasmine Moradi

The global music industry is said to lose $2.65 billion every year, and one of the causes is said to be illegal use of personal music distribution services by small companies. On the 15th, local time in the United States, the results of a joint investigation by Soundtrack Your Brand, which develops licensing services, and Nielsen Music, Inc., revealed.

When playing music in stores, restaurants, and other public facilities (places where public performances are held), separate from the laws regarding personal use of music distribution services such as Spotify and Apple Music, licenses must be obtained in accordance with copyright laws. must get. However, according to the survey, only 17% of small businesses have licenses, while the remaining 83% use personal music services. Furthermore, the majority of these business owners mistakenly believed that their personal music service accounts could be used as background music for commercial establishments.

“I’m not surprised by the findings per se, but I’m honestly surprised by the scale,” Soundtrack Your Brand chairman and co-founder Andreas Lifgaarden told Rolling Stone. “I think the music industry should be working together to raise awareness. You can’t open a movie theater with a Netflix account. You may say that, but for some reason this is not the case with music.What is taken for granted in the TV and film industries does not apply in the music industry, except for the big companies.”

Soundtrack Your Brand, an enterprise licensing service, has been dubbed the “BGM version of Spotify,” but they also bear some of the blame. That’s why the company asked Nielsen Music to conduct a BGM survey on a global scale. Nielsen conducted an interview survey of approximately 5,000 stores in seven countries (USA, UK, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Germany). Large companies like McDonald’s were excluded. According to the survey, out of 29.4 million stores worldwide, 21.3 million stores are using personal music services. In other words, if one company used a music distribution service for individual members, it would lose an average of $8.33 per month. Free music services lose an average of $11.96 per month. Music copyright owners, musicians, composers, labels, arrangers and producers, lose more than $100 million each month.

Riffgarden, who served on the board of directors of Spotify in the early days of the music distribution service, recalls that when Spotify was founded 10 years ago, it aimed to build a service that emphasized acquiring music fans rather than illegal copyright violations.

“The music industry decided it wasn’t a good idea to criminalize consumers and sue teens and single mothers. The watchword in the industry has been “must have”, and it’s no different in this case: we have to build a better service that people want to use.” The survey also found that 86% of business owners favored the music billing system, and 42.8% said that “music is important to their company.” But the problem lies in a lack of awareness (the music industry’s lack of awareness of copyright rules) and lack of understanding of the system (the licensing process is confusing and a headache for users).

In a press release, Riffgarden called the investigation “a wake-up call” and said its customers should admit to abusing their streaming services.