<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear all, as I know a number of you are interested in copyright policy, I thought I would highlight a story on the economics of streaming services and major labels.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The contract between Sony and Spotify was leaked and The Verge has done an excellent job of making it understandable for people who don’t follow the Byzantine process in music which serves admirably to protect the guilty whilst harming the innocent (to put it bluntly).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You can find it here: <font face="OpenSans" class=""><a href="http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract" class="">http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract</a></font></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Few stories in the tech news manage to get this sort of thing right but they really have.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My personal hope is that this will help to change the debate from complaints about the services to one where the focus is on the behaviour of the middlemen - record companies and music publishers. From my direct personal experience/long suffering, I can tell you that it is the latter that are the real problem, and artists are doing themselves a huge disservice by focussing on the services instead.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Regards, Nick</div></body></html>