Bush’s Gavin Rossdale “can’t work out” how young musicians make a living: “It’s terrifying”

Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale has revealed his concern for young musicians and how they are able to make a living through modern streaming – see what he had to say below.

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The veteran rocker recently appeared on an episode of Q with Tom Power where he and Power reflected on Rossdale’s work throughout his career. Towards the end of their chat, Power asked him about what he thinks is the biggest difference in environment between musicians back in the ’80s and 90’s and musicians now.

Rossdale started: “Well, quite obviously, when I began, if you made something good, people might buy it. Now, if you make something good, people might stream it. And I have two sons that are poised to make music their lives, and I couldn’t be more concerned for them.”

The Bush frontman continued: “I’ve been a musician my whole life and I’m at a loss to explain to someone how to do it, how to build from the ground up, how to get a career in that. It’s just terrifying because how do musicians, how do young bands get paid? I can’t work it out.”

He then highlighted streaming platforms like Spotify and record labels as the reason artists aren’t paid well: “I don’t know. Maybe you get one song with loads of streams and we know that Spotify barely pays, and whatever they pay, the record companies make sure they siphon off most of it before it goes to the artist. So it’s the same deal — artists getting screwed, record companies making a fortune and getting all the money. So same shitty business, but if you love it, what are you gonna do? You just do the best you can. And you can obviously make money touring, but it takes a while to build up a catalog, so if you wanna come and see you, that’s a crap shoot.”

Rossdale concluded: “So, the difference is I think it’s much, much harder now, and it was nearly impossible then. So, I don’t know what the odds are, but they don’t feel good for young musicians, which breaks my heart for them because we always need music. We always need people’s opinions. AI can take care of many things, but you talk about people relating to other people, it’s by writing that brutally painful, honest lyric that other people can relate and get strength from. That exchange will never go away because people will continue to be upset and look for other people that understand.”

Gavin Rossdale of Bush. CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for iHeartRadio

In line with Rossdale’s comments, last month Björk said that she thinks Spotify is “probably the worst thing that has happened to musicians”. This wasn’t the first time that Björk has shared her thoughts on the streaming platform. Back in 2015, she also opened up about her decision not to release her album ‘Vulnicura’ on Spotify out of “respect” principles.

“It just seems insane,” she said at the time. “To work on something for two or three years and then just, ‘Oh, here it is for free’. It’s not about the money; it’s about respect. Respect for the craft and the amount of work you put into it.”

Her comments echo the outlook shared by Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante last November, when he described streaming as the place “where music goes to die”.

“Subconsciously this may be the reason why we don’t make records every three years or whatever, because I don’t want to give it away for free,” he said. “It is basically stealing. It is stealing from the artist – the people who run music streaming sites like Spotify. I don’t subscribe to Spotify. I think it is where music goes to die.”

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Spotify Daniel Ek (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Spotify)

In late January, Spotify won a lawsuit over a bundling strategy it adopted which led to decreased royalty payments to songwriters. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also previously sparked backlash for his comments relating to the cost of “creating content”, with countless users and musicians describing him as “out of touch”.

In part, the backlash related to reports that Spotify had made profits of over €1billion (£860m), following staff being laid off and subscription prices rising. It also came as Spotify officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1,000 streams – making it harder for artists to generate royalties from their music and restricting new artists looking to crack the music industry.

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