Revisiting the Pyramid of Inequality that is Streaming Music
2025 annual totals are worse than ever
It’s that time of year again: annual totals are out for 2025 and we get to revisit the pyramid of inequality that is streaming music.
In this image, only the white point and the first blue shade at the top peak above the 1,000 streams per annum level - which means those are the only tracks Spotify accounts to for any royalties. 88% of streaming tracks fall below the line and earn $0.
It’s no mystery why professional musicians are having so much trouble making a living through our primary work. Recorded music is dominated by streaming - on its most recent report, the RIAA calculates that streaming accounts for 84% of all recorded music revenue. And streaming is directing all its revenue to 12% of tracks.
Speaking as someone from that rarified 12%, the actual numbers we receive are absurd in any case — Spotify’s average payout to record labels is $0.003 per stream, gross. That fraction is then divided up, with artists receiving anything from 15% of it ($0.00045) to a maximum of 50% ($0.0015). Or, if they are fortunate enough to own their own masters - as my bands do, and Taylor Swift does - we get the whole ball of wax, 1/3 of a penny per stream to share among all those who contribute to the music. That’s $3,000 per 1,000,000 streams. Good luck.
This won’t be news to many of my readers, but it remains news to most music listeners. We have to change this system for recorded music to survive as a profession in the 21st century. I have been spending a good deal of energy working toward passage of the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would require that platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube pay recording musicians directly for every stream played. They profit from our work, why shouldn’t we?
Join this effort, we need your help whether you are a musician, a music worker, a music fan, or simply someone interested in economic justice. The inequality of this system is not sustainable for working musicians. And without our labor, there is only AI.
Listening to: The Return of the Durutti Column (expanded and remastered)
Cooking: Airborne tablets in a pint glass of water, shot of echinacea on the side
The 1,000 stream threshold functioning as an effective floor is brutal economic design. What's wild is how the pyramid structure naturalizes inequality by making it look like meritocracy when its actually algorithmic gatkeeping. I've seen indie artists with solid fanbases struggle becuase distribution across platforms fragments their numbers below each platform's payout threshold.