There are about 600 versions of Adele’s Oscar-winning song Skyfall on the Spotify subscription music service. Not one of them features Adele.
Adele’s label, XL Recordings, keeps her music off of all-you-can-listen subscription plans until download sales peter out. In the meantime, copycat artists fill the void, racking up royalty revenue, often before customers realize they’ve been listening to someone else.
Alice Bonde Nissen found that out the hard way. She once paid 99 Krone ($17) a month for Spotify’s premium service in Denmark. Bonde found a version of “Skyfall” and mistakenly clicked on a “follow” button to become a fan of GMPresents and Jocelyn Scofield, the name for a cover-song specialist with some 4,600 Spotify followers. Scofield, who didn’t respond to a message seeking comment for this story, has the most listened-to cover of “Skyfall” on the service.
“When I found out … that I couldn’t find the original Skyfall (and some other hits) I decided to quit Spotify,” Nissen says.
Thousands of cover songs crowd digital music services such as Spotify and Rhapsody and listeners are getting annoyed. The phenomenon threatens the growth of these services -which have millions of paying subscribers- and could hold back the tepid recovery of a music industry still reeling from the decline of the CD.
Streaming services put a world of music at listeners’ fingertips with millions of tracks, everything from the latest pop hits to age-old violin concertos. For a flat fee – usually about $10 a month in the U.S. – users can listen to as many songs as they wish. The music resides on the provider’s servers and gets transmitted, or streamed, to subscribers as they listen on smartphones, tablet computers and PCs.
The services allow users to store songs on their devices as long as they keep paying. But because such a vast selection can be stored online in the so-called cloud, when listeners search for popular songs, they often find oddball renditions.
Today anyone with a computer, a microphone and an Internet connection can create and distribute a cover. New technology, from affordable digital recording equipment and sound-mixing programs to convenient online services are making homemade covers an easy and profitable endeavor. And sing-it-yourself shows such as American Idol, ‘The Voice and The X Factor are fuelling the notion that anyone with a decent voice can be a star.
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Spotify’s head of development and analysis, Sachin Doshi, acknowledges that finding covers instead of originals can be frustrating. “We recognize it’s a problem we haven’t fully solved yet,” Doshi says.
Jon Maples, Rhapsody’s vice president of product management, says customers have asked that cover songs be removed and the company has targeted 10,000 for deletion. “It just clutters the experience,” he says.
Some independent artists insist cover songs are a fast way to achieve fame. Kina Grannis says covers are helping her build a fan base.
US copyright law says cover artists don’t require the original artist’s permission, as long as they get a license, pay royalties and let the original songwriters release their version first. Streaming services like Spotify are obligated by law to handle songwriting royalties on behalf of cover artists.
Obtaining a license to record a cover is easy and inexpensive. Services like Google Inc.’s Limelight, which launched in late 2009, offer commercial song licenses to anyone who fills out a form. For each song they cover, artists pay a $15 fee.
By law, Limelight also charges $9.10 in advance for every 100 downloads the artists may sell. TuneCore, which launched in 2006, distributes songs on outlets like iTunes for $10 per track. Selling a couple hundred tracks – because of consumer confusion or otherwise – can earn cover artists enough money to pay the bills.
The hurdle is so low for the average amateur that once a hit song comes out, it’s covered quickly. Take Suit & Tie, a Justin Timberlake song released by RCA Records in January. There are already around 180 covers on Spotify in addition to Timberlake’s version.
Since Adele’s “Skyfall” was released in October, it has sold more than 1.9 million copies in the U.S. Cover artists sold more than 54,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The top-selling cover was produced by Movie Sounds Unlimited, a subsidiary of German music publisher BMG, and sold over 9,800 units.
The singer on the Movie Sounds Unlimited version of Skyfall imitates Adele’s official version down to the brassy intro and the unique way the British diva rolls over the sound “L” like an “O” when she sings “Let the sky fall when it crum-bows.”
On iTunes, 35 people have reviewed the album containing Movie Sounds Unlimited’s version of Skyfall. Half of them felt the purchase was a dud, giving the album a one-star rating, the lowest in the electronic store.
“Adele’s voice is perfect for this song, not whoever sung it for this album,” writes one reviewer.
– AP
