Thousands of the artists with music signed to Sony Music will now be able to earn royalties from streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify.

Sony addressed a letter to its artists which informed them of the record labels change in policy and how this will affect their royalties. The letter states: “We are not modifying existing contracts, but choosing to pay through on existing unrecouped balances to increase the ability of those who qualify to receive more money from uses of their music.”

Most record labels only payout to an artist once certain costs are recovered such as studio time for recording. This means that some artists end up in debt to the label, meaning they won’t revive any royalty payments from their signed music until the label has recouped its costs.

These new terms mean that those artists in debt to the label will start to earn royalties from this point onwards. Instead of Sony keeping all payments until the costs of them releasing the artist’s music have been paid off.

Lots of artists have recently been raising awareness about poor payments from labels after receiving what they feel are unfair record deals. This pressure on labels to offer better contract deals has been further increased after it’s been revealed how little artists often earn from streaming.

Sony’s move is a welcome change to the industry, but they are only one piece of a much larger puzzle, and it’s hoped that other labels will follow their lead. Usually, it’s only smaller labels like Beggars Group that allow artists to earn fair royalties by writing off debts.

The #BrokenRecord campaign prompted a parliamentary inquiry into the state of music streaming, and an inquiry into how this could be made fairer for artists. Tom Gray is the founder of the campaign, and speaking to the BBC he described Sony’s move as “incredibly welcome”.

Tom Gray said that he feels the campaigning has paid off: “From the perspective of somebody who’s been running a campaign to try and get these companies to behave more ethically and transparently, it feels like a win.”

H/T: Mixmag