Amazon… Bad?? Media/Commerce Giant Deplatforms Documentary Exposing Unfair Treatment of Musicians
Until recently UK world-record breaking indie band The Pocket Gods have had their documentary ‘The 30 Second Song Movie’ on Amazon’s video streaming service Amazon Video, but on March 11th the film was removed. With no explanation given, despite inquiries, it’s worth looking into the background of the band and the documentary.
Those who keep up with music industry news may recognise the band from their earlier campaigning that has seen them create 10 albums, each with 100 songs only 30 seconds long. With Spotify paying out royalties on songs once they reach 30 seconds, the band thought ‘why bother making songs longer when Spotify pays out so little?’.
The protest piece was meant to highlight the unfair royalties that DSPs pay out to the artists that populate their platforms, which resulted in meetings with Spotify founder Daniel Ek and the company’s Head of Music, and features on BBC News and Sky News.
The documentary ‘The 30 Second Song Movie’ chronicles the band’s journey against Spotify’s £0.002 per stream pay out, as they try to fund their own ethical alternative that aims to pay artists 1p per stream (50x Spotify’s current rate). To raise this money, the band have created their final album, printing one copy of it on vinyl and pricing it at £1m. It is currently available for purchase at their local record shop in St Albans.
“We’ve spent the last year making our documentary on music streaming & our campaign for fair royalties so we were excited when the film was picked up in January by Amazon Prime Video,” says vocalist Mark Christopher Lee “but we still don’t know the reasons why all they have told us is that is does not fit their content guidelines despite it passing all their guidelines in January so not sure what has changed.”.
While no reason has been given for the film’s removal from Amazon Video, it is worth noting that Amazon also owns and operates its own music streaming platform – Amazon Music.
“We are passionate about this issue and we thank Amazon for their initial interest but, as we want to get the message out there to as many people as possible we are making the film available for free via our Youtube and Vimeo channels. We want to continue the debate and we hope the film helps with this and goes towards creating a better future for artists and songwriters.”
The 30 Second Song Movie is available to watch on Vimeo and YouTube at the links below: