Shakespears Sister has slammed streaming services like Spotify for devaluing music.
Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit reunited as a duo for the first time in more than two-and-a-half decades earlier this year (19), to tour and record new material.
However, they are disappointed with the state of the modern music industry, and blame the rise of streaming for reducing the value people place on music.
“Everyone expects everything for nothing these days, including art,” Fahey tells British magazine Music Week. “I miss the days in the ’70s when we didn’t have so much. You had to save up for weeks to buy a single. Things were more precious then. The horrible mountain of disposable bullshit, it’s devalued everything.”
The band’s return has boosted their monthly listens on Spotify from 90,000 to more than 220,000, but Detroit is unhappy with the way bosses at the streaming giant work out royalties, as she believes they are opaque to artists.
“I went for a meeting with Spotify a few years ago,” she says. “A bunch of artists were invited to ask them to explain how we actually get paid and what they said was vague. ‘We collect all this money, it comes into a pool, we disperse it to the record companies and they are responsible for giving it to the artists…’ Well, wait a minute, how do we know what we’re getting? They couldn’t really give a proper answer…”
Despite their misgivings about the state of modern music, the duo is planning to release a new EP later this year.
You’ll discover music news first following Noise11 on Twitter
Comment on the news of the day, join Noise11 on Facebook
Listen to the Noise11 Music News channel now at iHeartRadio
