Corey Taylor Goes on Old Man Rant About Streaming Services

This is incredibly difficult to admit, but even The Single Greatest Carbon Life Form to Ever Exist™, Corey Taylor, can be wrong sometimes. You know the expression “even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day”? That, except the opposite.

And so: in a recent Twitter post, Taylor, responding to a Twitter post by guitarist Nils Lofgren (who plays in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band), who shared a photo of a royalty check for $7.91, took the typically old man stance of “artists don’t get paid enough on streaming services.” Very disappointing, Corey!

I have been repeating this argument for nearly a decade in this space, but here it is yet again. Yes, it sucks that artists don’t get paid more for streaming, but it is a privilege, not a right, to get paid for making music. The period of roughly 1950-2000 was an anomaly in the history of music, not the norm, in which artists were compensated well for selling recordings due to the stranglehold on distribution of physical product. Once technology broke that monopoly, balance was restored.

Artists have always had to perform live to earn money dating back hundreds of years. Why should it be an artist’s right to make music then sit at home and watch the dough roll in? Get out there and work most of the year like the rest of us. And it’s not as if Corey isn’t verrrrry well compensated for that work! He is doing just fine. And don’t “oh but the young artists” me; they’re quite happy with the benefits of streaming their music to literally the entire world with one click.

Perhaps Corey and fellow old man Charlie Benante would enjoy riding from gig to gig on a horse and buggy together. Be sure to pack some warm clothes, fellas, those nights are chilly!

Now, if we can please return to the woke, forward-thinking, generally rad Corey Taylor we all know and love… that’d be stellar!