Jay Aston is not happy with music streaming services.
The 63-year-old singer is part of The Fizz, along with Cheryl Baker and Mike Nolan, who won Eurovision in 1981 with Bucks Fizz with “Making Your Mind Up” alongside former member Bobby G. She said their hits sold four million copies worldwide in their heyday, but with the advent of platforms such as Spotify, only global artists like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran had the potential to make money from digital releases.
She told BANG Showbiz: “It's kind of awful in the sense that we're not actually getting any money from it.”
“You need a million plays on Spotify to make a few thousand pounds.
“So every time 100 people listen to a song, it's like 000.1 pennies. Most artists aren't happy about it, but there's nothing we can do about it at the moment.”
“In the old days, if a million people listened to your song, you'd make a million pounds. So technology has improved and in some ways it's great, but for artists and others it's not and often people say, 'You recorded something in 1982, you put out an album, why do you think you should be able to make an ongoing income from that?'
“But, you know, it's like any investment, people have to put it in context.”
“There are artists like Taylor Swift, and there are artists who are so poor they can't even earn enough for a cup of tea. It's a different time now, a different world.”
The “Land Of Make Believe” hitmaker said she and her bandmates have been “literally surviving” by performing live these days, and admitted that she and the rest of her bandmates would “be nothing” without their loyal fans, ahead of taking to the stage at Indigo at London's O2 later this month.
She said: “Usually we only get 45 minutes of the hour to play, and the audience wants certain songs, so it's good to play things that we really enjoy. We can also survey our fans, our closest fans, to find out what they want. We love that and it gives us a bit more excitement in our performance.”
“It's a really wide range of people, but generally they're in their 40s and 50s. Or they're Eurovision fans.”
“It's a party atmosphere with great fans. They're very loyal and everyone's fun and just wants to have fun. There's never any negativity because the band is so balanced.”
“And there's a strong friendship between them. We've been really lucky in our careers because without them we wouldn't have been able to do anything.”
The Fizz (formerly known as Bucks Fizz) will play at Indigo 02 in London on June 28th.
Tickets are available to buy at theo2.co.uk/events/detail/the-fizz