The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Barry Gibb and 71 other prominent British musicians joined a campaign by artists and songwriters pushing for a larger share of streaming royalties from platforms like Spotify and YouTube — and closer scrutiny on the major labels’ hold on the market.

The call by the 74 musicians comes two months after a group of more than 150 artists — including Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and Chris Martin — sent the same letter to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for the British leader to change U.K. copyright law so that streaming revenues would be treated more like radio revenue.

The new push by British artists to show solidarity in their quest for fairer compensation also comes as a Parliamentary body — the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Committee — is set to release recommendations after an inquiry into the music streaming economy that concluded in March.

The letter’s signatories are calling for a government referral of the multinational corporations that wield “extraordinary power” over the music business to the U.K. competition enforcer, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which can act against businesses engaging in anti-competitive behavior.

The U.K. Parliamentary probe has seen major labels’ dominance of the market emerge as a central issue. The first stage of the inquiry concluded with government minister Caroline Dinenage saying she would support a referral of the three biggest music companies — Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music — to the CMA.

The committee expects to publish their report next month before Parliament breaks for its summer recess, although a date has not been announced. Ministers will then have eight weeks to respond, and although they aren’t obliged to enact its recommendations, they are expected to engage with them.

During the inquiry, bosses from all three major labels faced hostile questioning from DCMS committee members over how labels pay out streaming royalties to creators. Senior execs from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube also appeared before members.

The musicians are pressing for a change in the U.K.’s 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which would see music streaming classified in the same way as radio and TV broadcasting. Songwriters earn on average 50% of radio revenues, but only 15% of streaming receipts, the signatories say in their letter to Johnson. If a re-classification were to happen, streaming would be subject to the principle of equitable remuneration, which guarantees royalties to performers on recordings.

Currently, music streams are covered in most international markets by a “making available right,” meaning that only copyright owners receive payments, which they then share with featured artists according to the terms of their contract. Unlike royalties for U.K. television and radio, session musicians do not typically receive a share of streaming royalties.

The major labels strongly oppose any change to copyright law around how streaming is classified. The labels have said that a move towards equitable remuneration would result in a substantial loss of earnings, reducing their ability to invest in new acts. It could also hamper the ability of rights holders to negotiate licensee agreements with streaming services, they say, by making it harder for them to walk away from negotiations.

The renewed call from British artists also comes after the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a report last week (June 1) that streaming should start to pay more like radio.

The WIPO reported noted that global recorded music revenues have grown six consecutive years to a total of $21.6 billion in 2020, even growing substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This streaming-fueled success has not trickled down to performers, especially non-featured performers,” the report said. “The more global revenues surge, the harder it is for performers to understand why the imbalance is fair—because it is not.”

The latest signatories to the letter to Johnson include well-known British music acts such as the Pet Shop Boys, Alison Moyet, Emeli Sandé, Van Morrison, and the Estates of John Lennon and Joe Strummer.

“This letter is fundamentally about preserving a professional class of music-maker into the future,” Tom Gray, founder of the #BrokenRecord Campaign, one of the U.K. organizers, says in a statement. “Most musicians don’t expect to be rich and famous or even be particularly comfortable, they just want to earn a crust.”

Ari Emanuel has resigned from his position on the Live Nation board of directors nearly 14 years after the founding partner at Endeavor was elected to represent shareholders of the world’s largest concert promoter, according to an SEC filing from Friday.

Emanuel had planned to leave following the launch of Endeavor’s IPO in April, according to a source at Live Nation, After a false start in 2019, Emanuel was able to successfully take the sprawling entertainment company Endeavor — which owns the WME and IMG talent agencies, the Miss Universe Pageant, Ultimate Fighting Championship and ticketing and hospitality company OnLocation — public on the New York Stock Exchange, raising about $511 million at a valuation of a little over $6 billion.

But his timing exiting Live Nation makes sense for another reason: Documents obtained by Billboard suggest Emanuel was waiting until June 3 for the vesting of his final stock award of 4,470 shares issued June 2020 worth nearly $400,000.

In a Live Nation SEC filing announcing Emanuel’s exit, the company said he “withdrew from reelection to the board of directors and will not be standing for reelection at the Company’s annual meeting of stockholders” on June 10. Live Nation officials note that the split was amicable and “not the result of any disagreement.”

Emanuel has enjoyed a long relationship with Live Nation chief executive and president Michael Rapino. Endeavor’s talent agency, WME, is one of the world’s largest music agencies and has booked the company’s clients across Live Nation’s portfolio of venues, festivals and global touring deals, resulting in billions of dollars in tickets sold. Endeavor also holds a partial ownership stake in Lollapalooza with Live Nation, which the promoter acquired in 2014 with the purchase of C3 Presents.

Live Nation’s stock value has grown nearly 350% during Emanuel’s time on the board, trading for approximately $20.30 per share in September 2007, down to a low of less than $5 per share in 2009 during the worst months of the financial crisis before beginning its ascent in 2013 and eventually reaching $75 a share in 2019. That’s a point Emanuel famously reminded Irving Azoff of in June 2013, six months after Irving unexpectedly resigned from his chairman position at Ticketmaster and cashed out his stock.

Emanuel began the fight, with many executives and WME agents on copy, forwarding an article from the Financial Times reporting that Live Nation’s stock price nearly doubled in the first half of the year.

“The article says since you left stock has continued to grow…..interesting,” Emanuel wrote. “How much money you lost by selling. Stupid move.”

Irving Azoff’s wife, Shelli Azoff, disagreed: “I am in the air on my new g450 (private jet),” she replied “We did ok with the LN stock.”

Years later, Emanuel might now be wondering if he sold his own Live Nation stock too early. On March 3, 2020, about 10 days before the company pulled touring shows off the road due to the growing COVID-19 pandemic, Emanuel sold more than 71,000 of his shares in Live Nation — representing 97% of his holdings in the company for approximately $58.26 per share, for a total of $4.8 million. Had he waited 15 months until his other stocks had vested on June 3, 2021, to cash out his holdings, it would have been worth $90 per share, buoyed by investor expectations for a strong recovery after the pandemic, generating $6.4 million.