The Other Songs creates new songwriter royalty for streams

The revenue stream aims to give songwriters a bigger share of the company’s music streaming royalties. The label will give back 3% of its streaming income to fund the royalty, which will be shared among the songwriters on the platform who do not have another claim as an artist or producer. The payment will become effective from the first stream and without any cost to the songwriter.

“We are seeing first-hand the disproportionate payouts between label and publishing income and, unless something is done now, the job of a songwriter will become extinct,” The Other Songs co-founder Alastair Webber said. “The TOS Writer Royalty alone won’t be enough to move the dial, but with other likeminded people we can make a difference and, in the end, create a fairer playing field for songwriters.”

The Other Songs was started as a live music event where industry stakeholders went to discover new music and watch performances. The events have seen more than 100 songwriters perform in the UK and US with some of the world’s most successful songwriters performing their songs. Some of the musicians signed to the label include Julia Church, Endor, Mabes and Amyelle, among others. In 2018, The Other Songs record label and management arm was established, and the company last year made a foray into publishing by signing a worldwide agreement with independent rights management company Kobalt. 

The Other Songs is not the only music company promising to return a portion of its income to clients. As part of Canadian-owned startup Emergence Music Distribution’s business model, co-founder Renald Boyd recently told Music In Africa that his business ploughs back 3% of its annual income to its artists for further development. The company also returns 100% of artists' royalties.

Meanwhile, Trqk recently launched a beta version of its performance royalties’ analytics tools called TrqkIQ. The feature is aimed at users ranging from songwriters to publishers and collecting societies and is described as “a visualisation, detection, and insight platform for performance royalties”.