Cover lesson · Music · Year 8 · Intermediate
DCF: Citizenship → Digital rights, licensing and ownership
Name: Class: Date:
Print: this sheet, one per pupil, plus the stimulus sheet “One month of streaming money”, one per pair. No computers needed; calculators help but are not essential. The same stream counts are in tonfedd-streams-month.csv if you are in a computer room.
Run: 5 min — read sections 1 and 2 of the stimulus sheet aloud · 7 min — Part A, who owns what · 8 min — Part B, what one stream is worth · 12 min — Part C, the band's month · 12 min — Part D, three questions about fairness · 8 min — Part E, ownership and the explainer. Every sum has an exact answer; they are all on the worked example sheet. Pupils often lose track of the decimal places in Part B — tell them to write the full number, £0.0022, not “0.2p”.
Collect: this sheet.
When you stream a song, some of your subscription reaches the people who made it — but not much, and not equally. You are going to follow the money for one invented band from Aberystwyth through one month on an invented streaming service: work out what a single stream is worth, split it between the label, the publisher and the four band members, and then ask whether the system is fair and whether a music library you stream is really yours.
Every track has two copyrights: the song and the recording (section 2). For each person or organisation, tick where they get paid from. Some get both; some get neither.
| Who | Song side | Recording side | Neither | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Elin: wrote lyrics and melody, sings | ||||
| 2. Lowri: plays drums, wrote nothing | ||||
| 3. Cyhoeddiadau Glas, the publisher | ||||
| 4. Label Cefn Gwlad, the record label | ||||
| 5. PRS for Music | ||||
| 6. Tonfedd, the streaming service | ||||
| 7. A choir that records its own cover of Golau'r Harbwr | ||||
| 8. Mali, a subscriber |
Use section 1. Show your working.
| Recording money | Song money | |
|---|---|---|
| Size of the pot this month (£) | ||
| Pot ÷ 2,500,000,000 streams = value of one stream (£) |
So one stream is worth £__________ in total to everyone who made the track.
Use section 4 and your Part B values.
| Track | Streams | Recording money (£) | Song money (£) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Golau'r Harbwr | 420,000 | ||
| Traeth Tanybwlch | 260,000 | ||
| Dim Signal | 180,000 | ||
| Hiraeth yn y Glaw | 90,000 | ||
| Cân i Mam | 50,000 | ||
| Total | 1,000,000 |
Now split it, using the deals in section 3.
| Who | From recordings (£) | From songs (£) | Total this month (£) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Label Cefn Gwlad | — | ||
| Cyhoeddiadau Glas (publisher) | — | ||
| Elin | |||
| Tomos | |||
| Siôn | — | ||
| Lowri | — |
Check: your six totals should add up to the recording total plus the song total.
D1. How many streams in one month would it take for Lowri to earn £1,000 from Tonfedd? Show how you worked out what one stream is worth to her.
D2. If the band had released the music themselves through a distributor that keeps 15% of the recording money, how much would each member get from recordings this month? Give one reason a band might still choose the label deal.
D3. Read section 5. Under the pro-rata model, how much of the money for Mali's 150 Y Niwl Coch streams reaches the band's rights holders? Under the user-centric model, how much would? (Tonfedd still keeps 30% of her £10.) Explain why the answers are so different.
E1. Is Mali right that she owns 3,000 songs? Use the word licence in your answer, and say what could make a song vanish from her library.
E2. Write an explainer of no more than 80 words for a Year 7 band who are about to put their first song on streaming services. Tell them the two things they own, and one question to ask before they sign anything.