David Crosby
‘The big one is streaming. That just killed us. The streaming companies are making billions of dollars. The numbers are right out there, in the public.
The three main record companies are making, I was told, $19 million a day, off of streaming, and the artists are getting shafted.
It’s as if you did your gig for month, and they paid you a nickel. They’re paying you, but not enough to live. It isn’t right.
And it’s very, very, very, very tough on young people who are trying to get in.
They snuck it past us.
What happened is that the streaming companies, when they developed their technology, went to the big record companies, they said, ]
“Hey, we need a different rate.What we’ll give you is no physical object. You don’t have to produce a physical object, so there’s less cost. You’re gonna like that. What we need is a better rate. We need a way where we can make the billions of dollars, instead of the artists making the billions of dollars. Okay?”
And the record companies said, “Sure, no problem. All you have to do is give us a piece of your company.”
And they did that. That’s how it went right around us. When we thought the music up.’
David Crosby.