It's a tradition: Lucian Grainge always sends a message to the Universal Music staff at the turn of the year, and it's also a tradition that this can soon be read in a wide variety of industry media.

Above all, the memo is about thanks to the team, new company projects and the successes of the world's largest music company in the past year.

Of course, Grainge also lists a wide variety of artists and songwriters with whom Universal works and who have caused a stir in a positive sense - and considerable income - in the past year.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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You know all of this from the past.

However, a large part of the current writing is devoted to the status quo of the streaming economy - and the changes that Grainge believes are necessary here.

The key points of his criticism have been known for some time: Grainge had already explained to investors in October after the quarterly figures were presented that 100,000 new songs were now appearing on Spotify and Co every day, which is a shame for the user experience.

Because the algorithms steered the listeners to this sometimes poor-quality content, instead of high-quality publications and, above all, consumers paid for a streaming subscription to access such “great” works.

As an example, he called the new Taylor Swift album, distributed by the universal label Republic Records.

In the course of the takeover of 49 percent of the shares in the music company PIAS, the next unmistakable pointer came a little later: In the past it was often about "majors against indies", Grainge was quoted in the press release.

Today it is clear that the "important distinction in our industry" is between those dedicated to building artists versus those who value "quantity over quality".

To call some uploads “hardly music”.

In his memo he now writes that some new releases on the streaming services can “hardly be described as music”.

But while the services use the works of artists with a "large and passionate" following to drive consumers to subscribe, the algorithms often then navigate them to content that lacks "significant artistic merit" but does Services cost less license fees and some were even commissioned by them.

All major streaming services pay around two thirds of their sales to the rights holders of the songs represented on their platforms.

Grainge does not name any names in his memo, but there is no question that the upcoming license negotiations with the services will be exciting.

Especially since Grainge also explicitly mentions the 31-second rule.

From this limit, a stream counts for billing, no matter how long the song is or who published it and how.

“Thousands and thousands” of snippets that are exactly 31 seconds long are uploaded just to exploit the system, Grainge said.