It used to be said that you could walk from the west of Ireland to Nantucket on the backs of the cod, so thick was the Atlantic with the fish. But as readers of a certain age will remember, by the last decade of the last century, it was looking doubtful that the cod population would see this century out to the end. By 1992, the cod population was one hundredth of its historic level.  

We knew that the way we were fishing was, in that unappealing but apt vogue-word, unsustainable. The fishermen themselves knew that it was unsustainable – that they were destroying the very resource on which their livelihoods and futures depended; that they were, in effect, sawing off the branch they were sitting on. And yet, for years, the overfishing… just sort of happened. The logic of competition, and individual short-termism, added to the difficulty of regulating the open ocean, drove this weird industrial suicide-loop and the attendant environmental catastrophe. It’s a pretty good instance of that quirk of economics sometimes called the tragedy of the commons.

It was the fate of the Atlantic cod that came to mind as I read a report yesterday about how shockingly little musicians and songwriters are getting paid for their work on streaming services. This is not, it should be said, a bolt from the blue. Fully fifteen years ago, I remember writing in response to the story that Lady Gaga (remember her) had earned just $167 from Spotify after one of her songs was streamed a million times.

Spotify are in a position to squeeze........

© The Spectator