How to support artists—when streaming doesn't
The dilemmas of being a music fan in the era of Spotify
Professional musicians in the internet era are suffering a financial crisis. At the heart is this paradox: on one hand, they have unprecedented control and freedom over the process of creation, collaboration and distribution of their music. On the other hand, the very tools which allow them that unprecedented reach—streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music—also provide negligible income, rarely earning artists a living wage from their work. Prior to digital consumption, physical records could be strictly valued at prices determined by their production cost and then marked up to earn a profit for the music’s copyright holders, labels and artists. Digital streaming, however, allows unfettered access for set subscription fees and thus is unbounded by society’s economically normative concept of music as a commodity. While commentators routinely evoke the suggestion that listeners may support musicians by purchasing merchandise besides recordings, this paltry response won’t be sufficient to improve the perilous economic situation musicians find themselves in. Likewise, as long as platforms have no financial incentive for change in the form of a mass exodus of musicians, the musicians remain captive, unlikely to change their predicament on their own. Therefore, in order to make streaming equitable for musicians, alternative relationships and models between musician and listener, both within and without the platform, must be developed.
The impact on musicians resulting from the switch from physical to digital is hard to precisely calculate. There isn’t a strict formula to determine how much money is left on the table now that streaming has usurped CD sales. However, the Recording Industry Association of America has standardized a method for converting streams to sales, which they use to determine an album’s “Gold” or “Platinum” status. In this measure, 1500 plays or on-demand streams represents one CD sale. Irrespective of how industry consultants arrived at this figure, it remains an arbitrary assumption about listening patterns. A consumer is unlikely to have listened to the average physical record they own this many times, even accounting for individual plays of each song. Furthermore, this math doesn’t justify the economics: 1500 plays, assuming a generous $0.003 per stream, puts the price of a full-length EP with 10 songs close to $5, while new CDs would, at their peak value, retail near $20.
The amount of income that streaming platforms pay out for each stream varies substantially, but nonetheless is likely to be insufficient for the average musician. For any given streaming platform, the average stream payout may be as low as $0.0004 per stream and as high as $0.01 per stream. However, the most utilized services, where artists are likely to receive a majority of their streams, are within the range of $0.003 to $0.005. A study by Broadbandchoices estimates that, given these rates, in order to earn a minimum wage salary of $15,000 from their streams, an artist would need to generate over three million streams. Furthermore, payout for each stream isn’t equal even within a single streaming platform: major labels often make deals with platforms guaranteeing them a higher per-stream payout. Compounding this, on Spotify, streams from “premium” users pay out a higher amount than those coming from a user on a free tier, the socio-economic status of an artist’s listeners can affect their own financial future.
The inherent inequities in streaming are amplified by how a platform defines what qualifies as a “stream”. Spotify, for example, requires a user only listen to the first thirty seconds of a piece of music to count it as a stream. Since Spotify’s recommendation algorithms are opaque, there’s no guarantee for partiality. Such a system may surface music to the listener that results in the copyright holders of those works receiving a outsized share of streaming revenue, without controlling for the actual popularity (or lack thereof) of that music. Spotify’s implicit stance is that their algorithm is unbiased, but evidently even such an “unbiased” system is fraught with ethical ramifications. If a full listen was required to count as a stream, a vast number of viral “hits”, uninspired pop numbers and novelty songs would likely immediately lose value. Accordingly, if stream payout reflected the proportion of the song listened to, listening patterns would have a more direct impact on artists. Further hypothetical models for defining a stream exist, which could result in more equitable outcomes. Listeners could be allowed to specify certain artists to whom they wish to lend more financial support during a particular subscription period. Streaming platforms could automatically give a higher proportion of payouts to artists whose work provokes repeat listens over longer periods of time. Without such changes, streaming statistics remain largely meaningless to both the artist and the listener, stripping both of the connection that such instantaneous interactions should provide.
Some attention has been given to the idea of the onus being on artists to diversify their incomes by making direct appeals and offering listeners unique connections. For example, a recording studio in Brooklyn, Leesta Vall, produces what they call “Direct-to-Vinyl” sessions, which allows artists to capture a single unique performance for a fan and cut it directly to vinyl. Having a physical artifact, as well as one that belongs solely to the listener, increases the value of the music. In another example of bridging the gap between artist and listener, an application called Serenade allows fans to request a unique performance video. However effective, these mechanisms alone cannot fully supplant the lost income from streaming without potentially involving a disproportionate amount of labor.
If the artist alone cannot change their circumstance, they may look to collective action. Yet, labor movements are at a nadir in modern America due to neoliberal economic policies brought on since the 1980s. It is therefore unlikely musicians will organize to collectively bargain, for example by removing their music from streaming platforms, save for those artists who can bear the financial cost of such a maneuver, such as Taylor Swift, who did so in 2014. Instead, working musicians and their fans could look to supplant platforms like Spotify and Apple Music with one that has fairness in mind from the outset. A newly developed cooperatively owned music streaming platform, Resonate, seems to fit this criteria. Their co-op model means that artists and listeners own the product together and make decisions about its future.
To illustrate how platforms can salvage the relationship between artist and listener, we can examine forward-thinking platform’s models. Under Resonate’s “stream-to-own” model, when a listener plays a song for the first time, streams are cheap—they only cost the listener a fraction of a cent. However, subsequent streams increase the cost for the listener (and payout to the artist) by 50%, until after 10 plays, the listener has subsequently paid $1. From then on, the listener owns the track and can download it in order to permanently add it to their collection. Another model, called “tipchaining” has been established on a platform for DJs called Currents. The platform allows for DJs to receive contributions, but they must designate another artist who receives 50% of the tip. This pattern continues, with the next artist designating 50% of the sum they receive to another artist, until the entire amount is forwarded. Thus, this model allows artists to not just receive compensation directly from listeners, but also for artists themselves to acknowledge interwoven webs of influence that create artistic communities and allow new art forms to thrive.
By actively reanalyzing our connection to these systems by which we are provided music, we are presented with even more evidence that the relationship between artist and listener must change. A codified platform like Resonate is useful, on one hand, but it raises the question whether artists and listeners should in addition form their own cooperatives and movements in a decentralized, ad hoc manner. Many upstart indie labels tend to remain small operations, often with the work of a lone individual at its core. If artists and listeners established cooperative labels, perhaps giving their listeners complete download access to their music libraries in exchange for some of their own labor, perhaps many more of these indie labels would thrive—in albeit discrete ecosystems. One could even imagine an application that simplifies the process of formation for these co-op labels, as well as providing a unified mechanism for accessing all the disparate content produced by the labels one participated in or supported.
It is unlikely that any one system will create an equitable result for all musicians. However, a substantial re-envisioning of the platforms we use can help make musicking a viable career path once again. Furthermore, desirable outcomes for all parties will require complementary and creative thinking—not just by musicians, who cannot sustain alone on generating personalized content—but by listeners, who, by way of supporting particular systems can make a world of difference for the survival of their favorite artists.
Coda
Hello there, friend. If you got this far, thanks for caring as passionately as I do about this subject—as an avid listener, myself, I’ve thought pretty deeply about the problems that have arisen due to the imbalances of our current system.
I hope this essay gives you some ideas on how we can make this path a sustainable practice for our favorite artists!
If you feel so inclined, and have the means to do so, consider pre-ordering one of the direct-to-vinyl recordings I’ll be producing at Leesta Vall in late January: Order now