Loud and Clear by Spotify

There is an overload of music. 60,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day. Over 20% of those don’t get streamed even once. The ubiquitous access to almost every piece of recorded music in history has led to a paradox of choice, promoting passive and playlist-driven music consumption and creating winner-take-all effects for the biggest artists.

Spotify’s main form of compensation is the promise of exposure. Put your music on Spotify and it’s instantly available to 138 million subscribers, a veritable nation-state of potential listeners. But with that promise comes the relinquishing of even more control. Reaching any of those listeners depends primarily on Spotify’s recommendation systems;... See more

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".

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

Sound, which lets musicians sell their songs as NFTs to their biggest fans, has been on fire in its first month. Its 5pm daily drops have become appointment internet, and it sold out its first 21 consecutive drops in under a minute each and paid out over $200k to artists (plus a 10% cut of secondary transactions, which have been very active). It wo... See more

This is reflective of a broader trend—artists want direct ownership over the relationship with their fans, and to be compensated based on how these fans interact with their music. Case in point: SoundCloud’s recent foray into ‘fan-centric’ payouts, Deezer’s continued experimentation with user-centric payout models, and the ongoing parliamentary inq... See more

Crucially, Spotify announced that 7,500 musicians are making at least $100,000 per year through its platform, which isn’t much considering the service is available in 93 markets.