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T

here’s a big difference 
between paying to stream 
music and streaming for 

free.

Calculations 

from 
the 

Recording 
Industry 
Association 
of 

America’s annual 
data report show 
that each paid 
music subscriber 
contributes 
about 
$100 

annually to the 
music 
industry. 

That is 25 times as much as people 
using 
free 
streaming 
services 

supported 
by 
advertisements. 

Each person using those services 
generates around $4 for the music 
industry annually. Unfortunately 
for the music industry, way more 
people stream music for free 
rather than purchase streaming 
subscriptions.

Streaming’s 
takeover 
is 

inevitable, but a free model 
doesn’t seem to work because it 
generates only one-third of the 
revenue of paid subscriptions. On 
top of that, less of the money from 
free ad-supported streaming is 
getting passed along to artists. 
Royalties — what the artists earn 
per stream — differ depending 
on whether it’s a free stream or 
a paid stream. As of December 
2015, free streaming royalties 
paid 23-percent lower rates to 
artists than paid subscriptions. 
So while a majority of users are 
generating a small fraction of 
total streaming revenues, less 
of that fraction is getting passed 
along to the artists.

The industry is struggling to 

grow, but there’s an opportunity 
to change that by converting all 
these millions of free streamers 
into 
paying 
subscribers. 
It 

shouldn’t be a hard sell — pay 
$10 per month and you get access 
to a library of 20 million songs. 
More than fair — I think it’s our 
obligation to the artists to pay. 
There are tens of millions of 
people using Spotify, SoundCloud, 

Pandora and YouTube to stream 
music for free. A lot of money is 
being left on the table and major 
labels need to better monetize 
these platforms. Fortunately, that 
process has begun.

SoundCloud has been working 

for months to finalize licensing 
deals 
with 
Warner, 
Universal 

and Sony — the three parent 
companies 
that 
represent 
the 

majority of music produced in 
the country. After SoundCloud 
finished a licensing deal with 
Sony in March, it immediately 
rolled out a paid-subscription 
service named SoundCloud Go. 
Now, certain tracks will only be 
available to paying SoundCloud 
Go users. For example, a band and 
their label can choose which songs 
to release for free and which songs 
to keep exclusively for premium 
users. The transition toward a paid-
subscription model will help nudge 
SoundCloud’s large user base to 
start paying to stream music.

SoundCloud’s new business 

model 
is 
categorized 
as 

“freemium” 
— 
offering 
both 

free and premium subscription 
service options. It’s the same 
freemium model that Spotify 
uses and, according to their 
recent 
billion-dollar 
funding 

round, it has worked for them 
so far. Spotify has been great 
at converting free users into 
paid users. Their CEO Daniel 
Ek announced the company has 
been adding one million paid 
subscribers per month since last 
June — that’s 10 million new 
paying subscribers in the last nine 
months. Hopefully, SoundCloud 
will yield similar results.

Those paying subscribers are 

needed now more than ever. The 
industry’s 2015 growth is barely 
even growth at all. If streaming 
is going to come to the rescue, 
it’s not going to be just any 
streaming. A small percentage 
of paying subscribers are doing 
a bulk of the work. The current 
model might benefit streaming 
services 
and 
help 
stimulate 

industry-level 
growth. 
We 

should ask, though, does it work 

for artists?

Even 
with 
more 
paying 

subscribers, the current system 
for compensating artists is flawed. 
Do you think it’s fair that your 
monthly 
subscription 
payment 

goes to artists you don’t listen to? 
That’s how the royalty system is 
currently set up. Your subscription 
payment goes into a large pool 
that then pays artists fractions 
of a penny per stream. Instead of 
your money going directly to the 
artists you listen to, some of the 
money is used to pay bigger artists 
generating greater royalties.

A proposed alternative to the 

current system is a “subscriber 
share” method that addresses this 
issue. A subscriber share system 
would pay artists based directly 
on how much users listen to them. 
This would refocus payments from 
a system only concerned with 
the number of listens to a new 
system concerned with accounts 
for percentage of time spent 
listening to the artists. If you only 
listen to one artist this month, 
your subscription payment would 
only be used to pay that artist. 
This proposal would not affect 
the streaming services. It would 
only redistribute royalties among 
artists, from those you aren’t 
streaming to the ones you actually 
are. If compensating artists fairly 
is a concern, maybe this is a better 
way to do so. Otherwise, we are 
perpetuating a music industry 
with massive inequality.

Like our tax system, royalties 

are very complex and systematic 
changes are hard to come by. The 
first step toward a fairer system 
is 
understanding 
the 
current 

one. And the current one is this: 
Most users don’t pay to stream 
music and don’t contribute to 
compensating 
artists. 
Those 

who do pay to stream are being 
taken 
advantage 
of 
and 
the 

artists they listen to are not being 
compensated accordingly. Not all 
streams are created equal, nor are 
they created fairly.

— Zach Brown can be reached 

at zmbrown@umich.edu.

Not all streams are created equal

ZACH
BROWN

Dear 
University 
Elections 

Commission,

Please do your job.
With another year of Central 

Student 
Government 
elections 

behind us and another set of 
representatives 
and 
executives 

set to be sworn in soon, many 
students on campus want to let 
the memory of CSG elections fade 
to the past. This election cycle, 
like many before, has brought a 
number of candidates, parties 
and campaign promises to the 
Diag. However, unlike in prior 
years, this campaign season has 
brought an onslaught of extreme 
campaigning 
and 
more 
than 

$4,500 in campaign spending 
between the two major parties.

I 
have 
no 
problem 
with 

campaigning for CSG. Chalking 
the Diag in favor of a given 
party is as old of a tradition as 
any. However, I begin to have 
problems when an unending 
assault on my privacy occurs. 
While much of this is unavoidable, 
as candidates are allowed to 
enter residence halls and go 
door to door, the University 
Election 
Code 
specifically 

prevents 
“Irresponsible 
Use 

of Email Privileges.” Article 
6 of the CSG Compiled Code 
specifically prohibits candidates 
from 
“harvesting 
student 

email addresses for campaign 
purposes,” assigning a 3-percent 
vote 
reduction 
per 
recipient, 

per e-mail. With this in mind, I 
became concerned when I started 
receiving e-mails from candidates 
I had no relationship with.

On 
March 
23, 
I 
filed 
a 

complaint with the University 
Election 
Commission 
against 

LSA Representative candidates 
Craig Motola and Seth Schostak, 
who had e-mailed my name as 
part of a potentially harvested 
listserv 
advertising 
their 

campaign. A hearing was held, 
and 
despite 
overwhelming 

evidence to the contrary, both 
Motola and Schostak were found 

not guilty of an election code 
violation, 
a 
violation 
which 

would 
have 
most 
certainly 

disqualified both of them from 
the election.

In response to this injustice, 

I urge the UEC to look to their 
own prior decisions. In the 2015 
case Brenner v. George, the 
commission found CSG candidate 
Stevin George guilty of a code 
violation and disqualified him 
from the election. The offense in 
this case occurred when George 
sent an e-mail to a listserv 
he didn’t own. What makes 
spamming 
a 
private 
listserv 

worse than creating a listserv 
out of nowhere to spam?

Even more laughable about 

the 
UEC’s 
decision 
was 

their 
standard 
of 
evidence 

for 
conviction, 
noting 
they 

would 
be 
“hard-pressed 
to 

think 
of 
any 
conceivable 

circumstance, perhaps short 
of video evidence, in which 
a complainant would be able 
to prove email harvesting.” 
Aside from the unbelievably 
high standard of evidence that 
comes with demanding video 
proof of criminal activity, the 
UEC’s decision is extremely 
contrary to their own prior 
findings. There was no video 
evidence present in the ejection 
of Stevin George, nor was 
there in the 2015 case Email 
Harvesting, in which the UEC 
established 
a 
three-pronged 

test to determine if harvesting 
had occurred.

Why have rules if there is no 

reason to follow them?

In the majority opinion, delivered 

by election commissioners Mallory 
Andrews and Emily Rosenthal, 
the commission agreed that 823 
people had been e-mailed by Craig 
Motola, and that 455 people had 
been e-mailed twice by Seth 
Schostak. Despite eight victims 
coming forward, all swearing they 
had no affiliation with the listserv, 
the UEC still suggested harvesting 

had not occurred, suggesting it 
had been “a prank” or “a simple, 
innocent typo.”

This type of treatment from the 

body slated to protect the students 
from out-of-control campaigning 
is unacceptable. By letting people 
the commission even admitted 
had “probably harvested emails” 
off the hook, the commission 
opens the door for unlimited 
spamming of innocent students. 
As 
dissenting 
commissioner 

Dylan Bennett reported: “We 
will now have representatives 
on our student assembly who 
the entirety of this Commission 
believes have likely cheated the 
democratic process.”

Cheating the democratic process 

is not something I’m looking for 
in a CSG representative. With a 
budget of more than $450,000, I 
need to know that those in control 
are capable of being trusted. 
Having every commissioner of 
the UEC think that two LSA 
representatives “probably” broke 
a basic rule destroys that trust. 
Ignoring the election code isn’t 
something I’m looking for in CSG 
either, as the UEC is responsible 
to 
enforce 
the 
code 
on 
the 

candidates. Without having full 
faith that those who won the 
election did so honestly and can be 
trusted to make decisions on the 
student body’s behalf, the $7.19 
that every Michigan student pays 
in CSG taxes may have been better 
off saved.

Though 
the 
decision 
in 

Pearlman v. Motola et. al has 
been made, I hope future CSG 
candidates 
are 
more 
honest 

regarding 
the 
election 
code 

and choose to follow the rules, 
even if they can get away with 
breaking them. I also call on the 
UEC to stop the harvesting of 
e-mails for campaigning during 
election season, even if it means 
ejecting candidates.

— Kevin Sweitzer is an 

Editorial Board member.

Why have rules?

KEVIN SWEITZER | OP-ED

Make baseball fun again

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E-mail Dan at Dancp@umich.EDu
DAN PARK

CHRIS 
CHOWDER

 Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Gracie Dunn, Caitlin Heenan, 
Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, 

Kit Maher, Madeline Nowicki, Anna Polumbo-Levy, 
Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, 

Kevin Sweitzer, Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, 

Stephanie Trierweiler, Hunter Zhao

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

4A — Monday, April 11, 2016

I

magine if Michael Jordan in his prime 
said basketball was boring. It would be 
sadder than the frequency with which 

we use the crying Jordan 
meme. 
Washington 

Nationals 
star 
Bryce 

Harper — arguably one of 
the top two young players 
in 
the 
game 
— 
said 

baseball is tired. Last 
week, he sported a hat 
that read, “Make Baseball 
Fun Again.”

I know from playing 

baseball for more than a 
decade of my life that it 
can be really fun or really 
boring. Making a diving catch in the outfield 
attempting to impress the softball team? Fun. 
Taking down stats and tracking the pitch 
count on the bench while eating a Subway 
sandwich with chips on it in 40-degree 
weather? Not fun.

As for Major League 

Baseball, 
the 
reason 
it 

isn’t fun is because there 
are unwritten rules that 
are too uptight. Not all of 
these rules are bad — my 
particular favorite is giving 
the opposing team a taste 
of its own medicine. If the 
opposing pitcher sends a 
mid-90s fastball to your 
teammate’s 
dome, 
you 

as a pitcher are basically 
contractually obligated to do the same thing 
in the next half inning. It’s like an honor 
code. If the benches clear, bonus. If you throw 
down the batter who charges at you like a 
sack of potatoes, even better. Here’s to you, 
Rick Porcello.

But the one unwritten rule I find 

incredibly stupid is that bat flips are a no-no. 
For those of you who don’t know, a bat flip is 
when the batter obliterates a ball over the 
wall with no doubt, and instead of setting 
the bat down like a gentleman, they toss the 
bat in the air as to say, “Won’t be needing 
this anymore.” If you haven’t seen it before, 
it’s majestic. The Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose 
Bautista did it so beautifully in the playoffs 
last season that a fan had the scene tattooed 
on his leg. I get goosebumps when I watch 
the replay as popcorn rains down from the 
upper deck of Rogers Centre.

However, players in Korea make bat flips an 

art form. Choi Jun-seok even did one off of a 
foul ball. You’re not supposed to do that, but 
more props to him. If that happened in the 
MLB, benches would no doubt clear, because, 
of course, it’s in the unwritten rules. The Fake 
Unwritten Rules Of Baseball, section eight, 
article seven: No bat flips, and if you flip your 
bat on a foul ball, Babe Ruth will haunt your 
dreams for eternity.

The problem with baseball purists — 

which include former and current MLB 
players and fans — is that hating bat flips 
is more about hating personality. Baseball 
purists want every player to act the same: to 
shut their mouths, hold onto their bats and 
not showboat. But some of the most beloved 
players were different from the norm. Ozzie 

Smith did backflips in the ‘80s. Ty Cobb put 
fear into middle infielders in the first two 
decades of the 20th century by sharpening 
his spikes. Prince Fielder will eat a fan’s 
nachos and Justin Verlander used to eat 
Taco Bell before every game. Those are 
accepted behaviors — well, except for Ty 
Cobb’s sharpening spikes (his opponents, as 
well as their fans, hated that).

But why do we hate when a player just 

wants to be himself? Let Ty Cobb be Ty Cobb. 
There shouldn’t be any griping when Yasiel 
Puig of the Los Angeles Dodgers wants to 
catch a fly ball behind his back or does a bat 
flip. Who are fans and opposing players to 
say what an individual should or shouldn’t 
do in a sport that needs flair because it’s so 
long and can be boring at times? Different 
is what makes baseball cool. Baseball is the 
best sport when its quirkiness from its fans 
and players come alive. There needs to be 
more things like fans trolling Hunter Pence 

with signs like, “Hunter 
Pence wears socks with 
sandals,” or how I noticed 
the 
Oakland 
A’s 
made 

the 
Oakland 
Coliseum 

the rowdiest and most 
rambunctious 
stadium 

come playoff time. The 
drums and noise makers 
were 
never 
enough 
to 

beat my Tigers every year, 
though.

Baseball needs crazy. It 

thrives off it. Fans love it. 

Like no other sport, it drives millionaires 
off their rocker to throw temper tantrums 
like little leaguers. ’Roid rage is a different 
story. Steroids have no place in the game. 
Though they led to more home runs, which 
lead to a higher probability of bat flips, it’s 
cheating, no matter how impressive the 
amount of work the players put in is.

Baseball is at its best and more fun 

when the players are free to be themselves. 
Baseball 
needs 
weirdos, 
outcasts 
and 

villains. It needs players who are way too 
cocky for their own good and will not be shy 
to tell you that.

Baseball needs the charm it had while 

I was playing baseball in high school. We 
clotheslined each other off walk-off hits, 
danced in the dugout while we mixed 
Gatorade and called it Slow Motion Potion. 
We despised kids on certain teams, my best 
friend threw knuckleballs in games for the 
hell of it, and we even got in yelling fights 
with opponents where benches cleared.

As Bryce Harper who at 23 years old is 

a kid in the game, wants, the MLB needs 
to play the sport like they are kids again. 
Baseball is not adult, it’s not perfect and 
it’s not vanilla normal. It’s a game when 
it’s being treated more like a business.

How will we make baseball fun again? 

We will build a wall keeping the purists 
out. How are we going to fund it? They 
will pay for it. I can’t explain how, but 
they’re going to, and I’m going to make 
sure of it.

— Chris Chowder can be reached 

at ccrowd@umich.edu.

“Baseball needs 
weirdos, outcasts 

and villains.”

