Asda, Google, Apple, eBay, Ikea, Starbucks, Vodafone: all pay minimal tax on massive UK revenues, mostly by diverting profits earned in Britain to their parent companies, or lower tax jurisdictions via royalty and service payments or transfer pricing.
Apple's subsequent climbdown – the company claims it had already been considering it after being pressurised by independent labels – is a victory for musicians, who now stand to be paid an as-yet-undisclosed royalty (rival service Spotify pays a lordly $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream).
In total, some 20,000 songs fall under the care of his royalty collection service, Global Music Rights (GMR) and its 46 songwriters – including a number of mainstream pop artists.
However Geoff Taylor, the chief executive of UK music trade body the BPI, warned that if the BBC tried to avoid paying royalties the service would not be "viable".
Streaming radio itself isn't very lucrative due to the relatively high royalty rates services like Pandora must pay rights holders.
London-based Avid Larizadeh Duggan is joining Kobalt, a New York-based music tech company that acts as a publisher and provides royalty tracking services for tracks when any sample or full track is played across various digital platforms. .
Ms. Swift's approach to YouTube was to limit distribution of her current videos to the higher-royalty Vevo service available on YouTube through Vevo's relationship with Google.
Other costs include patent royalties (smartcard service fees) and business tax.
Meanwhile, the number of PC households that used royalty-paying services like iTunes Store shot up 65.8percenttoto 12.6 million, meaning such services could soon become the most widely used method of downloading music.
Groups like HFA, which represents about 46,000 publishers, have also been challenged by more nimble technology companies that say they can handle its licensing and royalty-reporting services more efficiently and transparently.
