Musicians deal with stingy streamers and AI threats, too. So why aren't they on strike?

The money in music is even more slippery. The list of highest earning musicians last year is filled with artists who either got rid of their song catalogs—they made the list by  selling out  to corporations and investment funds—or had side deals in other industries. You can be the greatest musician on the planet, but still need to peddle

... See more

As T Bone Burnett once said, “Major labels figured out that catering to people who don’t need music in their lives makes them more money.” Passive streaming is a prime example—when music plays in the background at shops, hairdressers, or when Spotify keeps going after you’ve fallen asleep. Major labels don’t pay for these streams but heavily invest... See more

In other words, streaming is a lot more profitable for all the actual value creators after we bypass these technopolies.

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 music industry is one that has never ceased to have a need(s) for revamping and improvement. It is interesting to see that Goldberg, and I am sure many others, had the vision for a better future back then. Today, we are still grappling with ways to allocate more resources to music creators and incentivize fans but is not an easy task.