Michael DeBarge
1:35:28
My name is Michael DeBarge.
1:35:30
I'm from Ozumba, Queens.
1:35:32
And I'm the owner of Midtown Radio and Records.
1:35:34
It's a firm that handles artist management, music publishing estates, radio promotion.
1:35:41
I'm here in support of the Fair Wage for Musicians Act.
1:35:44
These people moved to New York City to live their dream.
1:35:49
This is the culture hub where musicians come to thrive.
1:35:53
Over the last twenty five years as a writer, producer, and radio promoter, I've been very blessed to have many of my records go platinum.
1:36:01
But the artists that I know and that I meet and that I interact with, they're all struggling.
1:36:06
Basically, they're broke.
1:36:08
A couple years after the streaming started, I opened a studio.
1:36:13
I had it for ten years.
1:36:14
It was on thirty ninth and eighth and I never charged a single artist for a session.
1:36:18
I would go in there for sixteen hours a day on the weekends and let anybody who wanted to come, come record whatever they wanted free of charge.
1:36:25
They would own their masters.
1:36:27
And I did this because I knew they couldn't afford it and I knew that the way that things were going was not in their favor.
1:36:32
So fast forward to 2025, not even I could maintain keeping that studio in business.
1:36:38
None of us can afford to keep going doing what we're doing.
1:36:41
I've even had to diversify the way that I earned through bookings and other matters.
1:36:46
I even had to just move on from helping independent artists and it's terrible.
1:36:52
I still try to do it where I can, but I'm watching them struggle all the time.
1:36:56
I know I'm coming from the other side of the fence, but I know how important this is to all the other artists that really need it.
1:37:04
I really want the council and everyone to understand that these are not just musicians that are doing something they're passionate about, these are the people that write the soundtracks to your lives and it should be appreciated and it's not.
1:37:16
The most disgusting part of it is that the streaming companies have made more money and they now control 70% of the market and they continue to pay less and less and less every year.
1:37:27
At one point the streaming companies paid about 9.1¢ per stream.
1:37:32
Some companies like Xbox Live paid up to 3¢ per stream.
1:37:36
And now it's a fraction of that.
1:37:43
And Spotify is the worst culprit of it all.
