WE have spoken before about the fact that the digital age has, in many ways, made it more difficult for musicians and creators to make a living.

Whereas previously musicians could look forward to a steady income stream from recorded music, the advent of downloading, mp3 players and streaming services mean that the money that performers get from sales of recorded music has reduced massively.

However musicians have always been quick to adapt to changing markets — they have had to many times over the years.

And just as the internet made illegal downloading possible, it has also provided one of the potential solutions to piracy — streaming.

Recent research by Next Big Sound revealed that there have been more than one trillion plays across popular streaming services in the first half of 2015. This figure far exceeds figures for the whole of 2014.

So streaming is and continues to be a phenomenal success. It offers music-lovers the opportunity to access an enormous catalogue of music either free — supported by advertising — or at a very low price.

Moreover, there’s growing evidence that these platforms are leading people away from illegal sites and helping to reduce music piracy.

This is all very good news for the music industry. But at the moment, it’s not really benefiting musicians themselves as they see very little of the money that is made by streaming services.

Taylor Swift recently took on Apple Music over its proposed payments (or non-payments) to artists.

She was absolutely right that it is “unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing.”

And yet musicians are asked to do this time and time again. Swift has, rightly, won her battle with Apple Music, but the battle for musicians to get fair remuneration from streaming services continues.

The Fair Internet for Performers campaign, which is the subject of one of the Musicians Union’s motions to the TUC conference this year, is a Europe-wide performers’ initiative lobbying for a change in copyright law.

The campaign centres on the way that performers are paid when their recordings are downloaded or streamed.

We believe that as well as the royalty received from the record company, which is almost always very low or non-existent, there should be an additional payment akin to the money the performer receives when their recording is played on the radio.

We also believe that the session musicians on the recording should receive this payment, as at present they receive nothing other than the original fee.

This payment would go via a collecting society to the performer and (crucially) not to the record company.

Put simply, without the changes I’ve described above, performers will never earn more than a pittance from streaming. Most musicians earn a very low royalty from a purchase due to their contract with their record label.

If streaming was dealt with as radio is, musicians would earn much more from it.

So why should streaming be treated in a similar way to radio, rather than in the same way as a purchase?

To us it seems fairly clear. Streaming services are, essentially, a sophisticated version of radio. Radio for the new generation, if you like.

Consumers using Spotify do not feel they are purchasing the music they listen to in the way they do when using iTunes. The experience is more akin to listening to a broadcast.

The fact is that the most popular services on Spotify are the curated playlists where the listener chooses, for example, “dinner jazz” or “fitness” and a selection of music is then streamed to their device.

The listener only knows the type of music — not the specific tracks — he or she will be listening to. Is that any different from listening to Jazz FM or Planet Rock or even the chart show?

The major record labels have lost a huge amount of money as a result of piracy and illegal file sharing.

But now that consumers are choosing streaming instead of “free” sources, it would be immensely unfair if the labels were allowed to continue to claw back their losses from the pockets of performers.

If they are, all we will see is an increase in up-and-coming bands giving up before they are able to get started and a further diminishing of the British music scene.

The Musicians Union is urging everyone who cares about music to visit the Fair Internet for Performers website (fair-internet.eu) and sign this very important petition.

• John Smith is general secretary of the Musicians Union.