How to make streaming PAY

6 Ways we could make Streaming music more equitable and get paid.

OK.

After my last post Kill the Music Industry, you might think I’m back to bash the biz.

But this time, I want to get positive.

I want to try and present a balanced view as it seems it’s either everything is great, or everything is 💩

Because I love the music industry.

Let’s be clear.

The music INDUSTRY is the complete community of people the make, sell and share music.

The music BUSINESS is the collective that values and monetises music.

And it’s the business that needs to change.

I’ve been in this music world all my life, left school at 17 and played in bands, became a Producer, Writer and then Artist.

Sold millions and been streamed billions.

I’m blessed to have spent my life making music and working with passionate people, many inside the very industry I’m calling to dismantle.

I want to help build a new music business that pays more people a living wage, in today’s money somewhere between $40-60k a year.

Right now the average UK PRO musician earns £21K a year with nearly half scraping by on £14K or less.

That is not a business that is fit for purpose.

Over the last decade, I’ve watched as creativity slowly losses its value, driven by tech and rubber-stamped by the business’ designed to protect it.

Music is the worst.

Front and centre? Streaming.

Streaming is amazing but the economics suck and with Daniel Ek’s recent investments in arms manufacture, music is literally bankrolling death, something no music creative wants to endorse.

We need to improve the economics. And we, as creators and consumers, have the power to change the system.

It’s just one system. Not the only one.

Lead with our eyeballs, our wallets, our attention and we change the system.

So I’ll be exploring and highlighting ideas, mine and others’ to build an ecosystem that truly supports and protects music.

Because I know the answer to how we can make streaming pay.

And once you know the answer, that’s when you demand the question.

Who’s with me…?

Popularity Contest!

It’s important to remember the environment that spawned the modern streaming experience.

First and foremost the music business (that is the business of creating value and making money from music) is a popularity contest.

Where do you think the word ‘POP’ comes from?

Some music, some artists, just connect better with the majority than others and the ‘business’ is geared towards that concept.

Sell more streams, tickets, merch, make more money.

And this is hard for some artists to take.

Perhaps you're just not good enough? And by good enough I mean your music isn't made to be popular, it's not made in a way that connects with millions of people.

That's all the music BUSINESS is interested in.

Of course one could complain that the choice of music we are given has been governed by a handful of power players, most notably the major labels but also radio, media, physical stores, influencers, etc and now streaming.

But thats capitalism, its works across every medium (what toothpaste do you buy?)

So don’t hate the player, hate the game.

There are plenty of passionate indie managers, labels and music lovers that support and promote music, that are never going to garner Swiftesq status.

And streaming does provide a new home for a lot of this community.

For all its sins, Spotify did something the old label system never managed, it built a middle class of musicians.

In 2021, 13,400 artists earned over $50K from streaming alone.

By 2022, that number was 16,500, a 23% jump in a single year.

Strip out the majors and legacy acts and you’re left with thousands of indie artists who under the old music biz model, never would’ve signed a deal, never been played on radio, yet are now making a living wage.

Let’s increase that number.

Streaming economics

It’s also important to understand the economics of streaming in the first place.

It works on a pro rata concept, the bigger the pool the less there is to go around.

Spotify has the biggest user base, which means its revenue is spread across far more streams.

Because payouts come from one big shared pot, each play is worth less than on Apple or Tidal, who charge the same but have fewer users and streams.

So every stream pays more.

Spotify’s scale is its curse, more users, more streams, but less money per play and its only going to get worse.

Actually the streaming rates are even more complicated, as elements like territory, subscription base rate and many other factors are taken into account.

I have friends in the accounting departments at major labels and they don’t understand the economics, so what hope do we have!

I think this is fundamentally one of the issues with the streaming model that could be improved.

Because it makes streaming economics VERY confusing.

And when you’re confused you think somethings wrong.

This is being reflected in the grumblings of us music creators. While Spotify paid out $10 billion to rights holders in 2024, 87% of artists earn less than $1,000 annually from the platform AND THEY DON”T UNDERSTAND WHY!!

As I said not everyone deserves to be big…

But as I also said what we are looking for is a rebalancing of streaming that helps to drive more artists to earn a living wage.

0.8% of the artists on Spotify take 95% of the revenues.

We have more artists than ever by democratising music making and sharing, through phones, laptops and cheap yet powerful software, yet we have not grown the music money pie.

Meanwhile social media has created a whole new generation of music fans where music is delivered and appreciated in bite size chunks.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, my parents loved nothing better than to go down a ballroom on a Saturday night and dance for hours on end to a big band.

Every generation has its thing because art reflects life and life reflects art.

People loving music in any form is always welcome.

But there’s no doubt that social media cheapens the music experience.

Simultaneously, AI-generated tracks now account for 14% of daily uploads, threatening to overwhelm human creators even more.

But the traditional music discovery concept is not going away anytime soon.

So we need a better system

Streaming is grubby

Streaming makes music fun but its tinged with a grubbiness that is difficult to wash off

It’s a bit like your drug dealer coming round for Sunday lunch.

But streaming is hard to beat as a means to distributing, finding and sharing music.

As someone that started my musical journey with vinyl, from the crackle of a 7-inch bought with saved-up pennies, to the dust and mystery of Record and Tape Exchange bins in Notting Hill, the hunt for that hit was the high.

Now with streaming the crates are endless, the shelves invisible, the artwork clean.

The magic’s still there… but the soul feels lighter.

Because it’s not the same experience.

Bangin’ on about the good ol’ days.

I got so much satisfaction out of searching in the bins, being mesmerised by the artwork, scanning the credits for a familiar name that might justify the £1 the album would probably cost (a Kings ransom when your on 50p a week from a paper round!)

Then excitedly clutching them to your chest as you navigate jumping on an often wet bus.

Getting them home and without even a second to have a pee, sticking them on yer crappy Amstrad stereo.

As the first notes would come floating out of those extraordinarily bad speakers, that first wave of either euphoria, or abject disappointment as the music unfolded, would take the exploration into its Ark of the Covenant finale, bringing the whole experience to an exhausting yet thoroughly exhilarating close……

……until next weekend!

People forget that the modern music business is built not just on the amazing music but on experiences like these.

It’s built of the packaging, the credits, the rarity, the one in a hundred and the quest to find it.

Genres like jazz, folk, hip-hop, reggae, House, thrived on this trainspotteresq search for the ultimate status.

The claim to say I’ve got that on vinyl.

In 2024, global revenues from physical music formats grew 5% to $2 billion, with vinyl accounting for $1.7 billion

This all points to the idea that with the right kind of concept, music can be sold.

But it’s not gonna be with vinyl.

We need to export some of that excitement in a modern more digital way.

My mate Keith’s brother’s a plumber and his dad knows a cabbie that DJ’s and he says this track is bangin’

Personal recommendations still command the most currency.

When a trusted mate suggests a new artist or track you’re generally on it but that seems to happen less and less, beholden as we are to the opinions governed by people we have never met but are ‘friends’ on the Socials.

To me streaming is a bit like a hamburger without the relish. It's good, it sort of does the job but there's always something slightly missing.

And that slightly missing thing is access overload.

Do we really want 100 million tracks in our pocket when we can only listen to one at a time?

And backing this overload up is the Tinderisation of social media where music is defined in 15 second swipeable chunks.

TikTok blows tracks up but doesn’t care about music. They paid less than Peloton to rights holders in 2023

Their goal is clicks, views. A constant barrage of stimulation, dopamine overload.

Music is the comfort blanket because music makes everything cool.

And we fall for it. So now our criteria for good is the likes that a track has?

Popular=Great…right?

Sometimes.

Millions of people eat Big Macs, does this make them great?

Sometimes (at 2am 😉)

This abundance is cheapening the music experience and it’s one of the main reasons why music appreciation has quietly slid down the list of our priorities.

Music has lost its perceived value, both financially and spiritually.

And that’s why personal recommendations garner a higher currency than ever before.

Humans treasure something more the harder the experience is to attain it.

So if we are to make streaming pay, fundamentally we need to get back to a more personalised experience where our engagement with the music we love is rewarded.

Something the internet promised but certainly has not delivered.

Do you know your fans?

Streaming that pays

Streamings here..for now, so how could we encourage the DSP’s and all stakeholders to make a better, more equitable and fairer system that builds on all of our love of music?

Here’s a blueprint for doing it right.

1. Rethink Royalties

The pro‑rata payment system is broken. It pays by total streams, which favors the biggest stars and viral bait.

A fairer hybrid model looks like this:

• User‑Centric Pay. 60% of revenue goes to artists each listener actually plays.

• Engagement Bonuses. Full plays, repeat listens, and playlist adds earn up to 3× more than quick skips.

• Redistribution Pool. Tax the top 1% and match payouts to smaller artists, like SoundCloud’s fan‑powered royalties that boosted incomes by 60% for many creators. Applied to Spotify’s scale, this could shift $1.2 billion annually from megastars to mid-tier creators.

• Platform Cooperativism. Voting rights and profit shares for artists and fans who drive listenership.

2. Progressive Royalty Tax

Not all streams are equal. The more a track is played the more ‘tax’ it could pay.
A fair tax curve could be:

• 0% on first 1M streams

• 5% on 1–10M

• 15% on 10–100M

• 30% on 100M+

Funds go to health insurance for musicians, grants for endangered genres, and bonuses for artists who block AI training on their work.

Historical data shows the top 0.8% of artists earn 95% of streaming revenue.

Combined with user-centric payments, this could shift 12-18% of top artists’ earnings to developing talent, reducing that disparity to 85/15 within five years.

3. Hold AI Content to Account

AI music isn’t going away but it can be governed, by managing and defending the quality and provenance of music on streaming platforms right now.

Unverified AI content should be clearly labelled, kept out of recommendations, and paid at a lower rate.

• C2PA Authentication. Cryptographically embed everyone involved in a track and its training sources. get this system onchain for easy access, provenance and automation.

• 🛑NOAI Tags. “No AI use” markers embedded into audio files, triggering penalties if breached.

• Music Attributes. Music is no longer just melody, lyric and Beat as AI music referneces thousands of minute nuances, or ‘attributes’ to create its music. We need deeper protection. Partner with companies like MusicalAI to implement payment rails for music attributes, protecting composition and performance and opening up new revenue streams.

• Performance Model Registry. Blockchain‑backed proof of consent for synthetic voices and performances. Allows for easy authorisation of usage.(e.g., 23% “Dolly Parton twang” in AI country track)

• Micro-Royalty Splits. Smart contracts distributing payments from AI usage to original artists and stakeholders in real-time.

4. Fix Discovery Bias

Right now, Spotify and others recommendation AI concentrates streams on whoever’s already big. Flip it:

• Keep hearing the same tracks? Cap how much one artist can dominate a listener’s feed by restricting recommendations via shuffle or 3rd party playlist.

• Double the push for new artists. UNESCO protected genres like Portuguese Fado or Jamaican Mento and smaller native languages.

• Reward listeners who actively explore. Tastemaker badges, subscription discounts, exclusive perks.

And keep at least 70% of recommendations human‑made.

AND CREATE LEAGUE TABLES OF FANDOM THAT HIGHLIGHT HOW BIG A FAN A USER IS, SO THEY CAN BE REWARDED!

5. Give Artists Web3 Power

Ok I’m biased but only because I’ve seen it works.

Blockchain tools put artists in control:

• Turbo charged fan clubs and perks. Digital identities prove fan engagement, allowing more detailed segmentation and rewards

• NFT Royalty Shares. Fans buy a slice of a song’s future earnings.

• Stem Tokens. Legal remix rights sold directly to fans.

• Concert Coins. Stream and social media loyalty swapped for gig tickets or merch.

Artists like Violetta Zironi, Emily Lazar, Josh Savage, Daniel Allan, Emma Miller and many more prove it works.

6. Rewrite the Rules

CISAC warns that AI could claim up to 20% of traditional streaming revenue and 60% of catalog-based income by 2028, highlighting the urgent need for royalty frameworks and AI‑era copyright reforms, to build the music ecosystem for the future.

Governments need to legislate, invest and promote the following

• Protect music attribution. So tracks can be broken down into detailed composite parts, exactly what AI training models do to create ‘new’ AI music.

• Legalise transparent money flows. Publish real data on who gets paid and how much.

• Artist freedom. Make it legally easier for artists to renegotiate and reclaim their rights, especially for old, unfair contracts.

• Invest in new payout model protocols and standards. Where fans money goes to the artists they actually play.

• Fix credits and payments. Work to standardise data so every contributor gets paid, on time.

• Audit recommendation algorithms. Make platforms prove their systems aren’t locking out smaller acts.

• Break up monopolies. Empower regulators to challenge label and platform dominance.

• Keep updating the rules. This is all moving fast. Commit to ongoing, public reviews as tech evolves.

The Fork in the Crossroads

AI music uploads are growing at 230% a year.

Without action, “catalogue enshittification” will bury originality under cheap mimicry.

The music business stands at its own Crossroads.

Like Robert Johnson in the Mississippi night, staring down the choice, do we cry out to protect the human spark, or strike a deal with the Devil of AI?

One path keeps creativity sacred, nurtured, valued.

The other promises shortcuts and endless output, but at the cost of soul.

The industry has to decide, guard the human in music, or sell it cheap for speed and scale.

Perhaps this is one for Tidal, still the streaming platform that actually seems to respect music.

They’ve led on master quality sound, pay better royalties (although this is because of the pro rata system) and even gave user-centric payouts a shot before moving their energy to Tidal Rising, direct funding, promo, and real support for emerging artists where it matters most.

It's a shame they didn’t do both, fleshing out the user-centric model with more artist and fan centric features.

But it’s a start.

If you want to do something today shift your library to them using platforms like TuneMyMusic to transfer tracks and playlists.

Spotify being the market leader could actually lead instead, using tech to amplify creativity and help 1M artists earn a living wage by 2030.

This might go some way to building back the trust with music creatives.

Or maybe with the big Spotify equity sell off and Ek’s dodgy investments elsewhere, the exploitation of music is done and the tech bro’s have moved on to other shiny objects.

WE’LL still make music whatever.

The algorithms are listening.

It’s time WE decide what they’ll amplify next.