Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two

One of things we pride ourselves on at MIDiA is helping the marketplace peer over the horizon with disruptive, forward-looking ideas and vision. We have a long track record of doing this (you can find a list of report links at the bottom of this post). While many of these ideas were difficult to swallow, or a little ‘out there’ at the time of writing, they became (or are still becoming) a good reflection of where markets ended up heading. Well, it is now time for another of those big market shaping ideas: bifurcation theory.

Today, MIDiA publishes its major new report: ‘Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two’. The full report is available to MIDiA clients here and a free synopsis of the report for non-clients is on our bifurcation theory page here. So, check those out to find more, but in the meantime, here is an overview of just what bifurcation theory is, and why it is going to affect everyone in the music business, whatever role you play in it. 

The old maxim that change is the only constant feels tailor-made for the 21st century music business. Piracy, downloads, streaming, and social all triggered music industry paradigm shifts. Now, all the indicators on the disruption dashboard are flashing red once more. AI is, of course, standing centre stage, but it is not the cause of the coming change. It is simply a change enabler.The causal factors this time round are all direct byproducts of today’s music business, unintended consequences of a streaming market that has cantered along its natural path of least resistance. Everyone across the music industry’s value chain has played their role, often unwittingly. Whether that be shortening

songs, increasing social efforts, changing royalty systems or following viral trends, each of these micro actions has contributed to a macro effect.

The fracture points of today’s music business are simultaneously the catalysts for tomorrow’s. For example, the commodification of consumption is resulting in a raft of apps and industry initiatives that try to serve superfans; the rise of the creator economy’s long tail is resulting in both traditional rightsholders raising the streaming drawbridge (long tail royalty thresholds) and a fast-growing body of creators opting to invest less time in streaming.

Streaming was once the future but now it is the establishment, the cornerstone of the traditional music business. It has rocketed from a lean forward, niche proposition for superfans into a lean back, mass market product for the mainstream. Music consumers have always fallen into two buckets:

1.    Fans

2.    Consumers

The former used to buy music, the latter used to listen to radio. Streaming put them both into the same place, pulling up the average spend but pulling down fandom into consumption. Streaming is the modern day music business’ radio, just much better monetised than the analogue predecessor. Now though, everyone across the music industry’s complex mesh of interconnected value chains is realising there needs to be something more, built alongside, not instead of, streaming. This is the dynamic behind bifurcation theory. This report explores how today’s music business challenges are becoming the causal factors of a new business defined by two parallel consumer worlds.

The music business is bifurcating – splitting into two – with streaming emerging as the place for mainstream music and lean back consumption, and social as the spiritual home of fandom and the creator economy. We identify these two segments as:

1.    LISTEN (user-led): streaming services, monetising consumption at scale

2.    PLAY (creator-led): highly social destinations where fans lean in to create, connect and express identity

Of course, this process has already started, but social is still largely seen as a driver for streaming. Many artists who try to get their fans to participate on social do so primarily in the hope of driving streams rather than for the inherent value of fans participating in their creativity. However, many next-generation creators are realising they will simply never reach the scale needed to earn meaningful income from streaming.They are therefore shifting focus to building fan relationships on social media and monetising them elsewhere, be it via merchandise or brand sponsorships. Meanwhile, a new generation of fans are creating as a form of consumption, whether that means using songs in their TikTok videos or modifying the audio of their favourite song. While copyright legislation and remuneration have lagged behind these developments, they will be an important part of the future of PLAY. Over time, PLAY will evolve as a self-contained set of ecosystems, built around the artist-fan relationship. It will not be an easy transition. Mainstream streaming will become even more lean back, and social and new apps will exert what will increasingly look like a stranglehold on fandom and the creator economy.

Social apps are plagued with challenges (royalty payments not the least of them) but they will emerge as a parallel alternative to streaming, rather than simply a feeder for it. To this end, the full bifurcation theory report not only describes the lay of the future land, but also presents bold visions of how we think both sides of the music business equation should evolve. We present detailed frameworks for what PLAY services will look like and how LISTEN services can evolve, focusing on core competences to continue to appeal to the mainstream but also deepen appeal to – and better monetise – superfans.

AI will play a key role in the future of both sides of the bifurcated music business, but rather than being tomorrow’s business, it will act as an accelerant for the underlying dynamics of bifurcation theory.

Bifurcation is such a big concept with so many layers and nuances, we have only been able to skim through some of the highest level trends here. We encourage you to check out the full report and report synopsis to learn more.

We’ve spent a long time gestating this concept, so we’d love to hear your thoughts. We’re not expecting bifurcation theory to be to everyone’s taste, but if nothing else, hopefully it will spark some creative thinking and debate.

Don’t forget to check out our bifurcation page for a video discussion of bifurcation theory and a free pdf report synopsis.

As mentioned above, here are some of MIDiA’s most impactful future vision reports, in (roughly) chronological order:

Agile Music (Free report)

Music Format Bill of Rights (Free report)

Rising Power of UGC (Free report)

Independent Artists (Free report)

Music Rights Disruption

Insurgents and Incumbents

Creator Culture

Rebalancing the Song Economy (Free report)

New Top of Funnel

Slicing the Funnel

Music’s Instagram Moment

Scenes – a New Lens for Music Marketing

Attention Recession

Creator Rights (Free report)

Creator Hubs

Music Product Strategy

Fan Powered Royalties (Free report)

Addressable Creator Markets

Misaligned Incentives

Artist Subscriptions

Field of All Levels

Kill the Campaign

Rise of a Counterculture Industry

Music has become a ‘just-in-time’ economy

The modern day economy is built upon ‘just-in-time’ supply chains. This framework has enabled the benefits of consumerism that we have come to enjoy, such as next day delivery, out of season foods on our shelves, and the digital devices we live our lives through. Each component of the just-in-time economy works in tightly coordinated partnership, from factories, through transport, to point of sale. The underlying principle is that every component is manufactured and delivered at just the right time, to ensure that there is a continual throughput of production, assembly, and consumption. Gone are the old days of large warehouses containing product, just in case it is needed. Instead, just the right amount makes its way around the world in shipping containers to meet demand. Most of us never even knew this system existed until the pandemic, when it suddenly broke down and we found ourselves short of essentials, like toilet paper. Perhaps without even realising it, the music business has become a just-in-time economy too, and that is not a good thing.

The music business used to be characterised by artists disappearing into the studio for months on end and emerging with an album for expectant fans to get their hands on at some time in the future. Bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers were able to average four years between their albums and still expect their fanbase to be there, waiting eagerly for the next release. Streaming and social media combined to turn that model on its head, heralding the era of the always-on artist. Now, artists fear the consequences of not putting out a single every month. Heck, even Daniel Ek said it is “not enough” for artists to release albums “every 3-4 years” and that they need to create “continuous engagement with their fans”.

Add this to the very real fear that the algorithm will ‘forget’ artists if they do not keep up a steady flow of social posts and releases, and you have the foundation stones for music’s just-in-time economy. The implication, no, the reality, is that if artists do not conform to the always-on model then they will be lost by (not in) the system. Artists (and their rightsholders) have become just-in-time suppliers, with the subtle, yet seismic, shift from delivering art to their fans when they have finished their creative process, at their pace, to filling a slot in the never ceasing supply chain. It is an environment that, unsurprisingly, has created the hit today, gone tomorrow world that today’s music business operates within.

The model works well for platforms, and consumers, but less so for artists, due to misaligned incentives across the industry. The underlying problem with the system is that the content platforms that shape today’s entertainment business (TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, etc.) value creation more than they do creators. The more creation that there is, the more that the platforms’ algorithms are able to target users with ever more specific and personalised content. The platforms all, of course, talk a good talk about creators, but what matters most to them is that their users get the right content. It does not matter whether that means a thousand creators delivering one piece of content to a thousand users, or one creator to one thousand users. With the pervasive obsession with ‘new’, as soon as one piece of content has been served, another is needed.

This is how we described this dynamic back in early 2021:

“In the attention economy’s volume and velocity game, the streaming platform is a hungry beast that is perpetually hungry. Each new song is just another bit of calorific input to sate its appetite.”

And it is not just the consumer platforms that fuel this fire. Artist distribution platforms play a role too. The unspoken promise of the platforms is that artists have a chance to compete with the likes of Taylor Swift. Of course, 99.99% of the nearly six and a half million self-releasing artists will never get into the same race, let alone win it. 

We are at the point where there needs to be a duty of care to creators, from both distributors and platforms. This starts with selling the right dream. Some artists may only ever have a thousand fans (or fewer) who want to listen to their music. That should be embraced as an aspirational goal, not failure. Service offerings should be geared around helping creators understand what their realistic (but aspirational) goals should be, and helping them achieve them. Not a nudge and a wink implication that they can all become superstars.

If this does not happen, we are heading towards a massive creator backlash, driven by a generation of creators wondering why they are not superstars yet. And that is not in the interest of any of the industry’s stakeholders, except perhaps the homes of superstars.

The just-in-time model in the wider economy has underpinned an unprecedented amount of consumption, and that comes with its own set of challenges, especially with regards to sustainability. It has also contributed to, as the Guardian put it, “the growth of low-wage, often more precarious jobs, with workers recruited only when they would beneeded. This constant squeezing of workers has fuelled our 24/7 work culture and the mental health problems that go with it, while attempts to cut the price of labour have added tothe growth of economic inequality, regardless of who sits in government”. All of which sounds remarkably similar to the plight of many of today’s artists.

Take part in MIDiA’s music creator survey

It’s that time of year again: MIDiA is fielding its annual global survey of music creators. If you are a music creator (artist, songwriter, producer, whatever!), whether you are independent, signed to a label or publisher, or not even releasing music at all, we want to hear from you.

The survey explores issues such as income sources, marketing, industry challenges, music production and spend. In short, it will create a full view of what it means to be a music creator in 2023. What’s the reason for taking part? Well, every creator that completes the survey will get an Excel and slide deck summarising the results of the full survey, so that you can benchmark your career against your peers and learn how they are approaching building their careers.

As with all MIDiA surveys, the results will be treated as strictly confidential, so none of your responses will ever be seen by anyone else as we only ever report the total responses for the whole survey. 

You can take the survey here; it should take you less than ten minutes. And, of course, feel free to share with any other creators you think would be interested in taking it and seeing the results.

Artists – take our survey and get a free MIDiA report

With 2022 coming to a close, and Spotify’s Wrapped just around the corner, artists are beginning to look back across the year at how they performed and what they have achieved, and whether it lines up with their hopes for the coming year. If you are one of these artists, we would love to hear from you. MIDiA has launched a new artist survey, designed to take the pulse of artists and their careers. You can complete the survey by following this link.

In the survey, you will be asked about topics such as:

• How streaming is working out for you
• What sort of career you are pursuing
• What tools you use, such as distributor platforms
• How you feel about navigating today’s streaming-centred music business

All respondents to the survey will get a free copy of our report, Music creator survey, Redefining success, which presents the findings of our most recent major global survey of artists. This will give you a benchmark to monitor how your career is shaping up against other artists, and allow you to compare your aspirations and approaches with theirs.

Women making music

This is a guest post from MIDiA’s Hanna Kahlert.

Even taking into account the impact of the pandemic, it has never been a better time for independent creators in the music business. The various 2020 lockdowns may have prevented artists from earning vital touring income and disrupted release and promotion cycles, but for many it also pushed new creativity, with nearly 70% of independent artists choosing to use the time to write or make new music. 

Yet, with access to the industry easier than ever, a glaring discrepancy remains: why are there still so few women, and so many men? What is stopping female creators – artists, songwriters, producers and DJs from picking up an instrument or learning the software, and releasing music into the market? Despite women occupying leadership positions and topping the charts, women overall remain starkly in the minority and remain massively unrepresented in the music industry. Why?  

2020 has been a year of change, some of it very much positive, including months of protests within the Black Live Matter movement, driving global conversations and pushing for diversity, equity, and ‘minority’ recognition. The demand to recognise that more is needed from governments, businesses, and institutions, for a universal recognition of discrepancy in opportunity and lived experience, has forced changes in practise and behaviours – and hopefully attitudes too. While many want to forget 2020, it was the year that moved the global mindset forward unilaterally.

The challenges women and others face in the music industry (and beyond) are deep, varied and unrelenting – some obvious and now exposed (in part through #metoo), but many either subtle or deniable enough to have escaped accountability for decades, if not centuries. #metoo shone the spotlight on harassment and assault, often by men in positions of power. Yet discrimination and bias can also be as simple as girls experiencing discouragement from participating in “male” activities in schools, like technology, or from playing ‘male’ instruments likes drums and guitar. 

It’s well known that women creators in the music industry (and other sectors too) must work harder to achieve the same approval or reward as their male counterparts. They are sometimes treated with an air of dismissal, or are not as initially respected, or suffer expectations of childcare/parenthood as a burden or skill proclivity based on gender. 

Much has been done over the past few years to address a myriad of these issues in music by the likes of Women In Live Music (WILM), Women In CTRL, Pass the Aux and more. The F-List female creator database has removed the excuse that there simply “aren’t enough women in music to hire”. Female-centric projects like Rhythm Sister, She Is the Music and SheShreds are working to develop, provide resources for and spotlight female artists that both inspire and empower the journeys of more women and other minorities into music. The Annenberg Study highlighted shocking statistics, finding that only one-in-five of artists are female, but worse: only 12.3% of songwriters and 2.1% of producers are (2012-2018). While men and women of colour have climbed ladders, and female representation in the ‘big leagues’ is rising, behind the scenes it remains to be seen how much has really changed.

No in-depth work has recently consulted the global community of female creators. This, too, is changing. MIDiA has long focused on the path of the independent artist, and in conjunction with Tunecore and Believe Digital we are now conducting a comprehensive global study asking creators themselves about their challenges, inspirations and experiences. 

Through this we can discover the main issues they face, what is helping them along their journeys – or holding them back. We can point to solutions that can bring the industry forward. Let’s find out what we need from those working in the weeds of the industry today and those looking to carve out a living from music – whether independent, signed, solo or part of a band. 

The survey is now live here.

Due to the very issue of representation, we welcome people of all genders to take part, but it is imperative to hear as many female/femme experiences as possible. The more respondents, the better a picture we can uncover. These findings will be published in full, in a free report in March – International Women’s month. 

Survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZZ8YFBL

Please also get in touch with hanna@midiaresearch.com or keith@midiaresearch.com if you would like to contribute to the study or discuss this research. 

Time to move beyond the song economy

The UK parliament is currently running an inquiry into the streaming music economy, having called for evidence from across the music business. Earlier this week were the first verbal submissions, from a number of UK artists including Tom Gray (Gomez), Guy Garvey (Elbow), Ed O’Brien (Radiohead) and Nadine Shah.MPs heard impassioned but balanced submissions that shone a light on the reality of what it means to be an artist in the streaming era. Mercury Prize-nominated Shah explained that she makes so little money from streaming that she is struggling to pay her rent. Clearly, the demise of live during the pandemic has created a uniquely difficult period for artists, but it has spotlighted that streaming on its own is not working for artists. The fact that policy makers are hearing this viewpoint (albeit later rather than sooner) suggests that change will be coming. But, while the focus is understandably on how to ‘fix’ streaming, it might be that efforts would be better placed building a complementary alternative.

Direct action

In Steve McQueen’s new film Mangrove, there is a intense scene in which Darcus Howe implores café owner and community leader Frank Crichlow that after Frank’s fruitless attempts to fix the problem via the system that direct action is the only way to change things: “self-movement – external forces acting on the organism”.

The equivalent of direct action in the commercial world is innovation – it comes from the ground up. In 2008 Spotify came up with an innovation that made the problem of the time –piracy – effectively redundant. What’s required now are new innovations that make the current streaming model look like an alternative, not the only choice – to enjoy music. 

Now is the time

Now is the right time to be assessing the long-term impact of streaming. It is a mature business model and is the largest revenue driver in most of the world’s leading music markets. Whatever streaming is now, is pretty much how it is going to be. The future of what streaming can be is already here, today. Assessments must be on what the model delivers now, not some future potential. 

Streaming’s current performance can be assessed as follows:

• Record labels and publishers have experienced strong revenue growth and improving margins. Their businesses have been improved
• Artists and songwriters have more people listening to their music than ever before and more creators are able to earn income than ever before 
  

However, beyond the superstars, most do not earn a sustainable income from streaming alone and cannot see a pathway to this ever changing. This is Guy Garvey’s reference to the lack of any new (financially viable) music artists in the future. 

A model for rights holders more than creators

Streaming benefits rights holders more than it does creators. It is far easier to enjoy the benefits of scale if you have scale. Here is a simple illustration: if a label has 100,000 tracks played 10 times each in a month (i.e., a million streams) it will earn around £/$5,000. But a self-released artist with just 100 tracks with 10 plays each (i.e., 1,000 streams) will only earn £/$5. Though this is the product of simple arithmetic, the first amount is the foundation of a small business, the other buys you a cup of coffee.

Record labels and publishers with large catalogues benefit from scale in a way that artists and songwriters do not, unless they have a megahit – and although streaming is great for megahits, they are few and far between. Changes to licensing (and there are many ways to do that) may make things better – but they will not change the underlying dynamic; it is simply how the model is.

We have a model that works for rights holders that is fuelled by artists and songwriters. Now we need an additional, parallel, model that works for artists.

Streaming music services are incentivised to drive consumption. What we need are additional models, incentivised to drive fandom. Streaming is a song economy, and we now need a parallel fan economy. 

Music used to be all about fandom. It was the way in which people identified and expressed themselves – a badge of honour and a symbol of personality. Streaming has industrialised music, turning it into a convenient utility that acts as a soundtrack to our everyday life. That may be fine, but it has simultaneously supressed those ways to express fandom. It’s not easy to express your fandom on a streaming platform, while on a social platform money must change hands. 

Music fandom hasn’t died, but it just has fewer places to live. 

The fan economy

So, what is a fan economy? A fan economy is one in which the value resides in the artist-fan relationship. Currently this model is pursued actively in Asia (e.g., Tencent Music in China, K-Pop in Korea) but far less so in the West. The fan economy will be defined by diversity but what its constituents will have in common is being built around micro-communities of fans.

Micro-communities that are built around an artist’s 1,000 true fans (or even fewer) allow the artist’s most loyal and dedicated fans to drive revenue that is small to the industry but large to the artist. For example, an artist with 1,000 subscribers paying $5 a month would generate the same $5,000 a month that a million streams would deliver a record label.

There are a number of platforms that are making a start, but now is the time for this to become a central music industry focus. Music rightsholders have a model that works well for them, so now they need to ensure that their artists and songwriters have models that work for them too. There is thus an onus on rights holders helping drive the fan economy, but to drive creator income rather than simply be another rights holder income.

A multi-pronged approach

This is the three-pronged approach we propose:

• Governments, support new, innovative companies building fan economy models and ensure that they provide equitable remuneration for creators
• Record labels, build teams geared at helping their artists find fan economy income streams (and take a service fee or revenue share)
• Streaming services, allow artists more real estate to showcase where fans can find other content and experiences

None of this is to say that efforts to make streaming more equitable should not be pursued; they absolutely should. However, it should be done with a clear understanding of the ‘art of the possible’. Even if rates were doubled, the self-released artist with 1,000 streams would still only earn £/$10. For an artist with a million streams a month on a big label it would change monthly income from £/$1,250 a month to £/$2,000, i.e., £/$24,000 a year. Not a sustainable annual income. 

Our case is that streaming should indeed be made more equitable, but alongside proactive investment in a new generation of innovative fan economy apps. This is an opportunity to make UK Plc the innovation driver for the global music business. A unique opportunity that is there for the taking with the right strategy and support, from all vested interests.

The opportunity for the UK streaming inquiry

With the streaming inquiry, the UK government has an unprecedented opportunity to set a global standard for building a vibrant and viable future for music creators, but it is an opportunity that needs seizing now. In partnership with music creators and rightsholders, it can create a structure that supports the innovation and change the industry needs. Now that streaming has come of age, we can see both its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s use the weaknesses as a foundation for building something new, exciting and equitable. It is time to bring ways to allow music fans to express themselves and their support to artists more directly. That will keep music the uniquely valuable product it is, and not just the grease in the wheels. 

Mark Mulligan and Keith Jopling, MIDiA Research 

Are rights holders missing the point with Twitch?

Twitch has apologised to its users for the growing volume of rights holder takedown notices for music used in Twitch videos. Twitch is in an awkward transitionary phase with music rights holders, not dissimilar to where YouTube was when it was acquired by Google. 14 years on from that acquisition, YouTube’s relationship with rights holders is in a better place but short of where it should be. Article 17, weaving its way between the competing lobbying efforts of rights holders and tech platforms, is just the latest mile marker on a long and winding rocky road. Twitch, like YouTube, does not fit the licensing norms of most streaming services, resulting in repeated stand offs. But just like the music industry still hasn’t grasped the full potential of YouTube, it may be making a similar mistake with Twitch.

Firstly, for sake of clarity, MIDiA firmly believes that copyrighted work should be used correctly and remunerated. We are not, in any way, suggesting that a platform should be able to use music without permission. However, the current licensing structures are:

1. Not flexible and agile enough to truly capitalise on user-generated content (UGC) music (a market which will be worth $4 billion by year end – download our major new FREE report on UGC music here)
2. YouTube and Twitch represent an opportunity to create new growth drivers, especially for artists, that can help fix the ‘broken record’

A lack of sync in sync

Let’s address the first point, well, first. Platform-native creators on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok create content so frequently they make the music industry’s volume and velocity problem look like child’s play. Usually, creators who want music in their videos have a choice: 1) get sync licenses, 2) get library music, 3) use music without permission and get taken down or demonetised. 

The problem with option one is that sync clearance is a lengthy process that can take weeks and cost a lot. Not a great fit for creators who create and upload videos the same day. Companies like Lickd are trying to fix this with catalogues of pre-cleared music, but the industry as a whole is moving too slowly. For the record, MIDiA’s preferred solution is for platforms securing large ‘sandboxes’ of pre-cleared tracks for creators and developers to work with. An early example of this is the NFL making all of its soundtracks available for creators on a Synchtank powered site.Unless music rights holders want to cede the growth in the music UGC space (which will be worth $5.9 billion by end 2022) to library music companies, they need to put alternative approaches at the core of their licensing strategy, not simply pursue them as interesting ‘edge’ experiments.

Going beyond the stream

However, the biggest music industry opportunity is not licensing music. It is monetising fandom. The #brokenrecord debate has shone a light on how streaming’s scale benefits do not trickle down at a sufficient rate to creators. Artists compete for tiny bits of highly valuable ‘real estate’ – playlists, artist profiles etc – but most often do not get enough to earn a living. While efforts like user-centric licensing and better songwriter rates will help, they will not change the underlying fundamentals of streaming economics. The counter argument is that scale will change everything, but:

• Average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling. Spotify’s premium ARPU fell 34% between Q1 2016 and Q3 2020, a 34% decline
• Streaming growth is slowing in developed markets
• Consumption is slowing – last quarter Spotify reported an increase in consumption hours to pre-COVID levels but as there were 49 million new monthly active users (MAUs) compared to pre-COVID this implies a reduction in hours per user
• Emerging markets are growing but a) ARPU is lower and b) domestic repertoire will drive most of the long-term consumption – so this means only a small uplift for Western creators

Before live stopped, streaming existed in a mutually beneficial ecosystem, giving artists more fans for concerts and merch. Now that live is out of the equation, streaming isn’t enough. 

This is where platforms like YouTube and Twitch can come in. They enable creators to build loyal fanbases of which they can monetise the loyal core to build sustainable careers. The idea of ‘1,000 True Fans’ was first put forward years ago by Kevin Kelly but now the dynamics of social platforms have made this a realistic possibility for any creator. Nevertheless, music artists are still way off the pace. 

Micro-communities

Twitch and YouTube enable creators to build (often small) loyal fanbases that can generate them income that far exceeds what artists get from streaming. MIDiA terms this dynamic ‘micro-communities’ and we think it will be one of the trends that will shape the music business in 2021 and beyond. As part of our creator tools research we will be exploring how platforms like Splice and Landr will be able to build their own artist-fan communities that can be as valuable to artists as Bandcamp is to many already. 

Streaming created a superstar economy where even within the non-superstars, superstars exist. For example, Tunecore states it has ‘thousands’ of artists that make more than $100,000 a year. A simple bit of arithmetic shows that this means the remainder make less than $100.

Micro-communities represent an opportunity for artists to fill the income gap that streaming leaves without live in the mix. This probably does not reflect a direct revenue opportunity for rights holders – indeed, that would be missing the point. Instead, they can ensure those platforms are supported to empower artist monetisation without speed bumps. Why? Quite simply, rights holders have a model that works for them (streaming), so now they need to support a model that works for their creators so that they can in turn continue to support the streaming model that works for rights holders. 

If the industry does not support this new virtuous circle ecosystem, then it could bring the streaming model crashing down due to creator discontent. 

Why Rishi Sunak is both wrong and right

Earlier this week the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak suggested that creatives such as musicians who had seen income dry up during COVID-19 should consider retraining for the new ‘opportunities’ the lockdown economy is generating. 

The principle makes sense from an economic perspective, but it is just that – an economist’s solution to a cultural problem. A guitarist becoming an Amazon van driver or a Just Eat courier will certainly have the desired economic output (i.e. more economic productivity), but the cultural damage is potentially irreparable. Perhaps more importantly, however, it is throwing in the towel after the first round of the fight. 

A quick lesson from history

Culture is one of the most important outputs of society and the more developed a society is, the more it normally invests in that culture. A brief overview of history illustrates the point. The Roman Empire, one of the first great civilisations, was focused on warfare and expansion. It spawned some famous philosophers and orators, as well as great art (sculpture and mosaics especially). Yet warfare was the defining trait of the empire, and so the majority of the great figures we remember are the military generals and emperors. Fast forward to the Middle Ages in the same Italian peninsula and we had the Renaissance, ironically rediscovering the lost art techniques of the ancients. Although Italy in this period was dominated by warfare, and although there are no shortage of generals and petty princes to fill the history books, it is the art and culture that the period is best known for. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael are the great names of this era. There was no structured art marketplace, however; instead, rich benefactors (bankers, princes, generals) patronised them, subsidising their art. They did so often in the hope of immortalising their own names, but instead immortalised the artists. Art does not always pay for itself. Sometimes it needs a helping hand.

Small venues create national economic output; virtual ones may not

Now to be clear, I am not advocating that music should become state subsidised. Nor am I comparing the musical output of a bedroom musician with that of a renaissance master (though Kanye does think that he is ‘unquestionably’ an even better artist than even those Italian greats). The lesson to learn from history here is that in tough times, society benefits from supporting culture. If small music venues continue to fall like flies,smaller and emerging artists will be bereft of real-world places to perform and to build audiences. The music market will stagnate with new talent having one more hurdle to success put in its way. Live streaming will pick up some of the slack and may even become a valuable alternative for many artists. For the UK government, however, that will mean swapping the economic output of UK venues for that of predominately American technology platforms. That economic output will leave the UK economy – and at a time of trade uncertainty leading up to Brexit, to lose music, arguably the UK’s most culturally renowned global export over the last century, would be a weighty hit.

Artists need to experiment and innovate now more than ever before

This is bigger than national economic protectionism, and it is certainly bigger than the UK. To use that horrible management consultant phrase: change is difficult. We are cursed and blessed to live in interesting times. Technology has changed the recorded music business beyond recognition; now, because of the pandemic, technology is going to accelerate change in the live business as well. This process may be difficult, and it may be long, but it will result in a differently shaped music business in the mid-term future. Artists have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to innovate and experiment. Before COVID-19, live, merch, recording and publishing were – in varying degrees – the majority of the revenue mix for most artists. Live is unlikely to return to anything resembling normality until 2022. From this moment on, then, artists need to experiment with new models, new ways to engage with audiences and to generate income – whether that be writing for other artists on Soundbetter, making sound packs on Splice or Landr or selling digital collectibles via Fanaply. Artist income is more varied and sophisticated now than it was 10 years ago. The reality is that this trend is going to accentuate both in the lockdown economy and post-pandemic. 

However, new models take time to become viable. In this interim stage, if there is a role for state support, it is to provide artists and songwriters with the financial support and technical and business training to enable them to be winners in this new creative paradigm. Rishi Sunak was wrong to suggest that artists should retrain out of music. But he was right that they should retrain. They should retrain from being artists of the 2010s to artists of the 2020s, and that is where he should be providing support.

What AWAL’s $100k artists mean for the streaming economy

Kobalt’s AWAL division announced that ‘hundreds of its artists have reached [the] annual streaming revenue threshold [of $100,000]’. Make no mistake, this is major milestone for a record label that has around 1% global market share. It is compelling evidence for how a label built for today’s streaming economy can make that economy work for its artists. So, how does this tally up with all of the growing artist concern in the #brokenrecord debate?

It’s complicated. The short version is that we have a superstar economy in streaming quite unlike the old music business, one in which artists on smaller independent labels have just as much chance of breaking into that exclusive club as those on bigger record labels. Given that AWAL states its cohort of $100k+ artists grew by 40% (assuming they mean annually) while global label streaming revenues grew by 23%, the implication is that AWAL is getting better at doing this than the wider market. And it is the implied growth of the rest of the market where things get really interesting.

(A model with more than 50 lines of calculations was required to build this analysis so I am going to walk through some of the key steps so you can see how we get there. Bear with me, it will be worth it I promise you!)

Finding the third data point

To do this analysis I am going to share one of MIDiA’s secrets with you: finding the third data point. Companies, understandably, like to share the numbers that make them look good and hold back those that do not help their story. Often though, you can get at what that third number is by triangulating the numbers they do report. A really simple example is if a company reports its revenues and subscribers but not its average revenue per user (ARPU), you can get to an idea of what the ARPU is by dividing revenue by subscribers (and if you have a churn number to work with, even better).

In this instance, Spotify gives us the ‘second’ dataset to go with AWAL’s ‘first’ dataset. In early August, Spotify reported that 43,000 artists generated 90% of its streams, up 43% from one year earlier – you’ll note how similar that 43% growth is to AWAL’s 40% growth. Combining Spotify’s data with AWAL’s, we now have what we need to create the picture of the global artist market.

Superstars within superstars

Spotify generated 73 billion hours of streams in 2019, which equates to around 1.3 trillion streams. Interestingly, taking its roughly $7.6 billion of revenue, this implies that its global per-stream royalty rate (masters and publishing, across free and paid) stood at $0.00425 – which is a long way from a penny per stream. This highlights how promotions, multi-user plans, free tiers and emerging markets are driving royalty deflation. But that’s a discussion for another day…

For the purposes of this work let’s assume that the average artist royalty rate (across standard major, indie and distribution deals) is 35%. Spotify’s 90% of streaming label royalties in 2019 was $3.9 billion, which translates to an average artist royalty income of $29,221 for each of those 43,000 artists. That is obviously south of AWAL’s $100k cohort, which illustrates that those AWAL artists are not just superstars but an upper tier of superstars.

$66,796 is good, as long as you don’t have to split it

But how does this look outside of Spotify? Firstly, the top 90% of global streaming label revenues was $10.8 billion in 2019. We then scale up Spotify’s 43,000 top-tier artists to the global market and deduplicate overlaps across services and we end up with a global base of around 56,000 top-tier artists earning an average of $66,796 per year from streaming (audio and video).

$66,796 is a decent amount of annual income but it looks a lot better if you are a solo artist than, say, a four-piece band splitting that revenue into $16,699 slices. Interestingly, AWAL seems to skew towards solo artists (94% of AWAL’s featured artists are solo acts) so the $66,796 goes a lot further for them than an average indie label rock band.

And then there’s the remaining 99% of artists…

But of course, this is how things look for the most successful artists. What about the remainder that have to share the remaining 10% of streaming revenue? That remaining label revenue is $1.2 billion of which $0.7 billion (i.e. 57%) is Artists Direct. That means the entire global base of label-signed artists that are not in the top tier have to share 4% of global streaming revenues. This translates to an average annual streaming income of $425. Artists Direct meanwhile earn an average of $176 (only 59% less than those non-superstar label artists).

The 90/1 rule

The key takeaway then is that streaming is levelling the playing field for success. Consistently breaking into the top bracket is now achievable for artists on major and indie labels alike and, if anything, independents are enjoying progressively more success. But this is a very different thing from all artists doing well. Music has always been a hits business. Streaming is widening the distribution but with less than 1% of artists generating 90% of income, the spoils are far from evenly shared. Music streaming has taken Pareto’s 80/20 principle and turned it into a 90/1 rule.

Streaming’s remuneration model cannot be ‘fixed’

The #brokenrecord debate continues to build momentum and new models such as user-centric are getting increased attention, including at governmental level in the UK. But as Mat Dryhurst correctly observes, there is a risk of the market falling into streaming fatalism; that the obsession with trying to fix a model that might not be fixable distracts us from focusing on trying to build alternative futures.

I have previously explored what those new growth drivers might be, but now I want to explain the unfixable problems with the current streaming system for creators and smaller labels. Streaming’s remuneration model cannot be ‘fixed’, but that is mainly because of its inherent structure. Tweaking the model will bring improvements but not the change artist and songwriters need. Instead of exploring sustaining innovations for streaming, it is time to explore new disruptive market innovations

Product remuneration versus project remuneration

Smaller independent artists and labels are outgrowing the majors and bigger indies on streaming, so why are we having the #brokenrecord debate? Why isn’t it adding up? The answer lies in how artists and songwriters are remunerated. In all other media industries other than music and books, creators are primarily remunerated on a project basis. An actor will be paid an appearance fee for a film or TV show; a games developer will be paid for their time on a project; a sports star paid a salary; a journalist paid for a story. In many of those cases the creator will sometimes have the opportunity to negotiate a share of profit too, an ability to benefit in the upside of success. But, crucially, the media company has assumed all of the risk. Also, of course, the media company owns the copyright.

Artists and songwriters might get an advance, but that is a loan against future earnings, not a project fee. Artists and songwriters, like authors, are remunerated via product performance. They shoulder the risk, and most of the time they do not even own the copyright. Actors and sports stars do not have to worry about slicing up a royalty pot; they have been paid for their creativity whatever the outcome of the project. Any royalty splits are an upside, an ability to benefit from success rather than a dependency for income.

The consumption hierarchy has become compressed

Music used to be split into a neat hierarchy, with radio and social being about passive enjoyment and generating usually small royalties, while albums were about active fandom that generated large income. Streaming fused those two together into one place and created a royalty structure that, in artist income terms, resembles radio more than it does album sales. The problem does not lie with how much streaming services pay (c.70% of income is a hefty share to pay out), but instead:

1. how those royalties are divided up
2. the way they monetise consumption
3. the fact royalty rates are determined by how much streaming services charge

Streaming rates are going down because users are listening to more music and streaming services are charging less per user due to promotions, trials, multiple-user plans, telco bundles, student plans etc. Even before you start thinking about how the royalty pie is sliced, it is getting ever smaller in relation to consumption – and there is no onus on streaming services to protect against rates deflation because they pay as a share of income rather than a fixed per-stream rate (for subscriptions).

Monetising fandom

Music fans care about artists and songwriters, and given the opportunity and the right context many fans will support them. But that context is often artificial and happens outside of the normal consumption experience; for example, a music fan listening to a band on Spotify then going to Bandcamp to buy an album. It requires a conscious decision for the fan to say ‘I want to support this artist’. No such decision is necessary for a sports fan or movie fan because the remuneration system already ensures the talent has been adequately remunerated. On top of this, most music consumers are not passionate fans of most artists, so most will not make that step.

There are two natural paths that follow:

1. Build fandom monetisation into the streaming platforms, e.g. virtual artist fan packs, virtual gifting, premium performances, creator support etc. I have written at length about how Chinese streaming services do well at monetising fandom, but there it is the platform that benefits most, not the artists. Western streaming services have an opportunity to monetise fandom for the creators, not for the platforms.
2. Create new models where consumers pay for artist-centric experiences. These will always be more niche and have the challenge of building new audiences rather than tapping into existing streaming audiences, but the decision does not need to be ‘either/or’.

The third way

There is additionally a less obvious third path, that would reframe the entire basis of artist/label/publisher/songwriter/streaming service relationships: direct licensing for creators. No streaming service is going to want to do this (they already prefer to negotiate with aggregators rather than small labels) and labels and publishers are unlikely to want to cede such power. But a pragmatic compromise could be a new generation of artist and songwriter contracts that provide for the creators to set stipulations for royalty floors to ensure that they do not pay for streaming services cutting their prices via promotions and multi-user plans. This would also require rightsholders to ensure that streaming services set a royalty floor which in turn would compel streaming services to start pushing up the average revenue per user and perhaps even introduce metered access for users.

Options 1 and 3 are not exactly easy to do and they would require seismic industry change with wide-reaching impact. But if the industry wants a significant change in creator remuneration, then it needs to embrace truly disruptive innovation rather than spend its time tweaking a model that simply cannot change in the way many want it to.