How much are artists really making on Twitch? - Water & Music

On streaming platforms, each stream of a song contributes the same amount of revenue (approximately $0.004 per stream on Spotify), regardless of that fan’s particular intensity of affinity towards the artist. In contrast, on platforms like Catalog or Sound, superfans are purchasing NFT music for thousands of dollars each, with creators earning what... See more

The money flowing to recording artists dropped 65% in 15 years between 1999 and 2014 because digital music technology disrupted the mechanism the recording labels had for collecting money from consumers. With streaming technologies on the rise, and now NFTs, the tide has turned in the last 7 years. Same skills. Same inherent joy for the music maker... See more

Of the $40 billion in annual revenue earned by the music industry, only 12% is actually paid out to artists. The remainder goes to institutional middlemen like agents, platforms, and record labels, unfairly cheating creators out of the fruits of their labor. Moreover, fans, whose engagement almost entirely drives these revenue streams, are given no... See more

The top 1% of musicians now make ~77% of revenue in music. Many factions of the independent musical infrastructure have become closer and closer aligned with corporate interests and advertising supported journalistic models in order to keep their head just slightly above water, and are in danger of losing their distinction and identity as a result.

The streaming economy doesn't work for artists. In 2019, only 12% of music industry revenues went to artists. And, in Spotify's investor relations reports, payouts to rights holders are labeled as "cost of revenue" or "content costs".

1\ I think the more interesting story with the #twitchleak, in my opinion, is the fact that 99.925% of streamers aren't making a meaningful income. It goes all the way to the top streamers on the platform. 25% of the top 0.1% don't even make minimum wage.

This decision-making around how to price digitally scarce music and art illuminated to me that in a commodified streaming economy, most musicians don’t have the ability to set the price of their own creative output in the first place, and may be leaving money on the table in the process.