Merchants Of Garbage

It's just come to my attention that Universal Music Group has acquired Downtown Music, the parent company of CD Baby. CD Baby is the distributor I have been using since 'One Way Ticket' days for all my releases. Universal Music Group is the same mega corporation who advocated for the 1000 stream royalty that redirected millions from smaller artists to larger ones. Essentially, what that means is that any song an indie artist has which is generating less than 1000 streams per month, the royalties are put into a pool and redistributed to the big artists.

The chairman of Universal Music Group, Sir Lucian Grange (surprise, surprise what his background is!), also dismissed the critics of the 'artist-centric' streaming model he is pushing for, which included CD Baby, as "merchants of garbage". Don't be fooled by the 'artist-centric' term, what he really means is the big artists, the artists they can control. Like so much else in society, this is fuelled by the need to have complete control, so they can control the narratives and they can't do that if the public are exposed to different expressions of reality from independent artists.

I have noticed over the last year that despite generating more consistent regular streams than ever before the PRS is paying me less than ever. Currently, I only have one song over the 1,000 streams per month mark, which is "Satellites", and so now that is the only song I am getting royalties for, despite the fact many of my other songs are still generating royalties, albeit in small amounts.

This is why I have been continuing to encourage people to buy my work direct from my website or through Bandcamp. I don't think the public are fully aware of the outrageous theft of indie artists' money that is going on within the industry.

All of this relates to the timeline split because it is clear this cannot go on. Reality, as we knew it, is splitting apart into two or maybe multiple realities. Indie musicians like myself will eventually completely disappear from that world and that world will disappear from us. Our own version of reality will begin to form that is in alignment with the qualities of Truth - openness, fairness, love, true creativity, sincerity. Although it is unsettling, there is nothing to fear because those left in the old system will lose far more than they currently realise when we disappear from their world. Don't let their apparent power and riches fool you into thinking they hold all the cards. They only think they do! And I'll leave you to decide who are the real merchants of garbage!