In September 2019, cellist Zoë Keating published her figures. Two hundred and six thousand and eleven streams on Spotify that month. Seven hundred and fifty-three dollars. A year earlier, she had accumulated two million streams from two hundred and forty-one thousand listeners in sixty-five countries, and that yielded twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-one dollars.
The first thought upon reading those figures is that someone is keeping the remainder along the way. The usual answer points to the record label, and in many cases, this is true. Not here: Keating is independent and receives one hundred per cent of her recording royalties through her distribution channel. There is no label taking a percentage. The seven hundred and fifty-three dollars are what the system produces when there is no one in between.
To understand where that figure comes from, one must abandon an idea that almost everyone holds and which is false: that there is a price per stream. There is not. Spotify states this in its own materials for artists, and it is worth citing because it contradicts what is repeated in every conversation on the matter: it pays royalties according to the share an artist represents of the total streams on the platform, not according to a fixed rate per stream. And in its support documentation, it phrases it even more directly: contrary to what one might have heard, it does not pay per stream.
What exists, instead, is a common pool. The platform collects from subscriptions and advertising, sets aside a portion for rights—Spotify claims around two-thirds of its music revenue—and distributes that pool proportionally according to what percentage of total streams each catalogue has received. No one has a price. Everyone has a share.
That design explains what no accusation of greed explains well. If payment is a fraction of a pool, then what each artist receives depends on two things they do not control: how much the platform earns in total and how many others are dividing that pool with them. And both have moved in the same direction. The UK Competition and Markets Authority documented that the number of creators publishing music doubled between 2014 and 2020, from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand. At the same time, consumption became concentrated in a way that is difficult to overstate: in 2020, more than sixty per cent of streams corresponded to music recorded by the top zero point four per cent of artists.
Combine one with the other. The pool is divided among twice as many participants, and six out of every ten streams go to four out of every thousand artists. What remains for the rest is not small because someone decided it: it is small because it is what is left after such a division. The same authority, and this is important, concluded that these figures did not derive primarily from a competition failure, but from structural features of streaming itself: more artists publishing, an abundance of catalogue, competition for attention, and concentration of consumption.
A piece of data from the same source provides a measure of what this means for those who make a living from this. Twelve million streams per year could generate around twelve thousand pounds, and less than one per cent of artists reached that volume. Read the second half of the sentence calmly. Twelve thousand pounds a year is not a salary; it is a supplement. And not even that supplement is within reach for ninety-nine out of every hundred.
Now, the part that usually remains outside these discussions, and which I must include because it dismantles the simple version. If Spotify allocates two-thirds of its music revenue to rights, the money leaves the platform. The question is not only how much is paid, but what path the payment takes. The evidence that an independent musician, Gordon Robertson, submitted in writing to the British Parliament describes this with a precision that no report achieves: two hundred and thirty-nine thousand accumulated streams since 2017, seven hundred and seventeen dollars generated, three thousand pounds in recording costs for the four songs that produced them, and twenty per cent for his management office before he receives what remains.
There is the complete picture: a pool distributed by share, highly concentrated consumption, and a chain of deductions between the distribution and the pocket. Each link is defensible in isolation. The aggregate result is that an artist with two hundred thousand monthly streams earns the price of a dinner.
The composition side is even starker, and it must be said that this is a different plane, because songwriter royalties and recording royalties are not the same. Damon Krukowski published the figures for a Galaxie 500 song: it was played seven thousand eight hundred times on Pandora in one quarter and its three authors received twenty-one cents in total, seven each. On Spotify, five thousand nine hundred and sixty streams gave them one dollar and five cents, thirty-five cents per head.
The average ratios estimated a posteriori confirm the order of magnitude, with the caveat that these are calculations made after the fact and not tariffs. An independent 2024 study on independent artists placed the global average at three dollars and forty-one cents per thousand streams, with Spotify among the lowest, around three dollars, and Amazon Music near nine. Apple, for its part, informed artists in 2021 that its average per stream in 2020 had been one cent, including label and publishing royalties, and clarifying that they also distribute on a pro-rata basis.
I do not want this to be read as nostalgia for the record, because that would be false. Streaming solved real and significant problems. It ended the need for an intermediary to be heard, made almost the entire recorded catalogue in history accessible for the price of two coffees a month, and allowed two hundred thousand more creators to publish their music in six years. None of that is minor, and I will not pretend that it is. What it did not do was replace the income that old-fashioned distribution carried within it. Distributing ceased to be a problem and was not replaced by anything that sustains those who produce.
The institutional response, until now, has been lukewarm. In the United Kingdom, there is a voluntary transparency code agreed upon by a dozen industry bodies and a modelling exercise on equitable remuneration that did not reach the stage of a legislative recommendation. In Europe, the Parliament approved a non-binding resolution at the beginning of 2024 that asks the Commission to explore fairer revenue reallocation models. A British private member's bill on musician remuneration did not become law. None of this compels anyone to do anything.
And here is what I find most difficult about this matter, more so than Keating's figure. There is no villain. The competition authority stated it clearly: it is not primarily a competition problem; it is how the mechanism functions. It would be much easier if someone were stealing, because then it would suffice to stop them. What is happening is that a system designed to distribute attention is distributing attention very well, and it was never designed to sustain anyone. Confusing those two functions has lasted fifteen years. Correcting it requires redesigning the distribution, not denouncing a culprit, and that is considerably slower and considerably less satisfying.
On open conversation
This text intersects with a line of enquiry I am pursuing in this notebook: that the material conditions of creative labour are determined by the design of infrastructures rather than the conduct of their users. Music streaming is a particularly clear case, as its payment mechanism does not operate on a unit price, but rather a pro-rata distribution, and that technical detail explains more than any accusation of greed. If one wishes to intervene from the perspective of music, rights management, the platform economy, or the experience of publishing and receiving payment for it, this notebook remains open.
Sources
Competition and Markets Authority. Music and streaming market study: final report, executive summary, 29 November 2022 (consumption concentration, number of creators and revenue estimation by stream volume).
Spotify for Artists. Royalties Guide and support documentation (pro-rata distribution; percentage of revenue allocated to rights).
Apple letter to artists, April 2021, reproduced by Digital Music News (average per stream in 2020 and pro-rata distribution model).
Duetti. Music Economics Report 2024, 23 January 2025 (average ratios estimated per thousand streams for independent artists).
Music Ally, 22 November 2019, and The Ringer, 16 January 2019 (figures published by Zoë Keating).
Damon Krukowski, composition royalty figures for Galaxie 500.
Gordon Robertson, written evidence to the Economics of Music Streaming Inquiry, UK Parliament.
Intellectual Property Office (UK). Voluntary code of transparency in music streaming, 31 January 2024; study on equitable remuneration, 19 February 2024.
European Parliament. Resolution on music streaming, 17 January 2024.