The coming long-tail cull

When governments plan to introduce controversial new policies, they prepare the ground in advance (dropping hints in speeches, privately briefing journalists, etc.), so that by the time the new policy finally arrives, it does not feel quite so controversial. A similar process is currently playing out in the music business. The biggest major label executives are starting to seed a narrative into the marketplace about the potentially corrosive effect that the rapidly-growing long-tail of music and creators is having on consumers’ music-streaming experiences. Of course, it also happens to dent major label market share too, but the issue is not quite as clear cut as it might first appear.

There are three main industry constituents that are at risk from the fattening of the long tail:

1. Major labels and their artists
2. Consumers
3. Long-tail creators

Let’s look at each of those in turn:

1 – Major labels

The first on the list is the most obvious, and also the easiest, to demonstrate. Over the course of the five years from 2016 to 2021, the majors grew recorded music revenue by 71%, which is impressive enough, except that artists direct (i.e., artists who distribute without record labels) grew revenues by 318% over the same period. Consequently, artists direct increased global market share from 2.3% to 5.3% while majors went from 68.8% to 65.5%. Meanwhile, the top 10 and top 100 tracks continue to represent an ever smaller share of all streaming. The very least that can be said is that majors and their artists have collectively grown more slowly than long-tail creators, and at the most, the case could be made that long-tail creators have eaten into major’s growth.

2 – Consumers

This one is far harder to make a definitive case either for or against. Consumers tend not to categorise music anywhere near as precisely as the music business. For example, only a third of consumers say they mainly listen to older music, despite industry stats showing that catalogue consumption dominates. Most consumers do not consider music to be ‘old’ as soon as the music business does. So, imagine how difficult it would be for consumers to delineate ‘what is long tail?’ They may say in surveys ‘music isn’t as good as it used to be’, but they could equally be referring to majors’ music as the long tail. So we are in the realms of measuring second-order effects (are consumers disengaging from streaming? Not yet, but they might) and of making logical assumptions. If consumers consistently hear poorer quality music, then it is reasonable to assume that their satisfaction would decline. However, DSP algorithms push music that matches users’ tastes, and there is so much high quality in the long tail that there is no particular reason to assume that more long-tail consumption should inherently equate to an increase in consumption of poorer-quality music. And do not forget, consumers have demonstrated plenty of tolerance for ‘average’ music in mood and activity playlists.

3 – Long-tail creators

It may sound oxymoronic to suggest that long-tail creators could be hurt by the rise of the long tail. But, as Will Page put it, the rise of the long tail means that “there are more mouths to feed”. The fractionalised nature of streaming royalties means that the more long-tail creators there are, the lower per-stream counts there are and, even more important, the harder it is to cut through. The irony is that it is easier to make the case that the long tail is eating itself than it is to establish causality between its rise and majors’ loss of share.

Divide and conquer

Of course, the missing constituency is the DSPs themselves, but they do not warrant a place here, because they are the ones with the power to scale up or down long-tail consumption via their algorithms. It serves DSPs to have listening fragment to a degree as it lessens the share and, therefore, the power of any individual label. But if DSPs ever thought they were pushing too far, then they would rein in the algorithms.

Where next?

So where does all this leave us? In the ‘do nothing’ scenario, listening continues to splinter, majors lose more share, long-tail creators find it harder to cut through and earn while consumers may (or may not) see any meaningful change to their listening experiences. In short, the head loses out, as does the long tail, while the market further consolidates around the ‘body’ of streaming catalogue (which, by the way, the majors are already key players in and could easily ramp up their focus – as WMG is already doing). 

The ‘do something’ options fall into two key groups:

1. Gate / limit consumer access to catalogue
2. Gate / limit creator access to royalties

There are many ways to achieve the first (preventing long-tail music getting onto DSP catalogues; lowering long-tail priority in algorithms; creating a separate tier of catalogue; deprioritising / blocking it from search and discovery, etc.). All of this risks looking very much like the establishment trying to prevent the next generation of creator and industry breaking through. That is without even considering the moral dilemmas of choosing who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’.

Option two, however, could be more altruistic than it looks. For an enthusiast hobbyist with a few hundred streams, royalties are going to be little more than a novelty. But for a hard-working, self-releasing singer / songwriter with tens of thousands of streams, the hundreds of dollars are already important. Let’s consider that there was a pay-out threshold, where 1,000 annual streams are the point at which royalties are paid, with all the royalties associated with the sub-1,000 stream artists being distributed between all other artists. Suddenly, those slightly more established long-tail artists can earn more income. 

None of these options are without challenges and moral dilemmas. But the direction of travel appears to be towards something being ‘done’ about the long tail. If that really does end up having to happen, then let us at least try to ensure that the changes benefit long-tail artists too, not just the superstars.

The paradox of small

When the history books are written about our current times, the rise of creator culture will likely go down as one of the most impactful paradigm shifts. It is a dynamic that extends far beyond music, but it is impacting the music industry more directly than it is other entertainment industries – in large part because the music business is not yet set up for the economies of micro audiences. Until it is, artist royalty woes will remain a festering wound that risks infecting the entire business. The solutions will require a combination of a new approach to monetisation and a realistic understanding of what streaming can truly deliver to an artist community that is continuing to grow faster than streaming revenues.

More mouths to feed

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, streaming revenues grew by 20% in 2020, with subscriber numbers growing even faster. Over the same period, the number of releasing artists grew by more than a third. The arithmetic is brutally simple: more new artists than more new music revenue meant lower average income per artist. As economist Will Page puts it, there are more mouths to feed. Even within the fast-growing artists direct segment, where revenues grew dramatically faster than the overall market (34%), the average income per artist grew by just 2% to $234 a year – that’s right, just $234 a year, across all recorded music formats. And of course, that figure is heavily skewed up by a few thousand ‘superstar’ independent artists, with the vast majority earning far, far less.

Big numbers, small income

With artists direct numbering five million in 2020, never have there been so many people releasing their music to the global public. This creator revolution is unprecedented and represents five million dreams being chased. But with just $234 of annual income up for grabs, the reality is that nearly all of those dreams will be unfulfilled. It has always been thus with music, but the difference now is that expectations have been raised, with matters compounded by the fact that streaming numbers can appear big but deliver only small revenues. For example, a self-releasing artist that racks up 100,000 streams might only take home $500, which could easily feel like a very modest return to an artist that does not have a comprehensive grasp of how streaming royalties work.

The 0.05%

This is the paradox of small: more artists can reach global audiences and drive sizeable streaming metrics but have little or no realistic prospect of meaningful income. Much of the streaming income debate has revolved around the plight of the middle class artist but the bigger dynamic at play is the creation of the amateur enthusiast class. In the old music business, these artists lived in a different world from professional artists. They played in local bars and sold a handful of CDs there that they recorded in a local studio. Now they use the same creator tools as the pros and have their music on the same platforms. This can give the impression of playing in the same league as the pros, but they’re not. If they are good enough, do the right things and get the breaks then they can get into that league, but that will only happen for 0.05% of them.

Dreams just out of reach

Having dreams appear to be within touching distance but somehow never quite within grasp is fertile ground for breeding discontent and resentment. The parts of the music business that trade on this segment (artist platforms, digital distributors, streaming services, creator tools) have a duty of care that must move beyond its current remit of trading on artists’ dreams.

Fixing streaming royalties will not change things. Even if you doubled royalty rates, 100,000 streams would still only generate $1,000 for an independent artist. Meanwhile, it would result in streaming services losing 40 cents on every dollar earned, and that’s just to cover the royalty rates, i.e., not even considering things like having a product, staff, offices, marketing or operations.

Looking elsewhere for income

Streaming royalties are never going to add up for most independent artists, in the same way radio would never do so. And this is not just a self-released artist problem: most artists will never get paid ‘enough’ money from streaming, and trying to make streaming royalty mechanisms do so is tilting at windmills. As I have previously written about, the music business needs to build out its ancillary revenue streams for music creators. There are already lots of options, such as:

• Selling song writing services on Soundbetter
• Selling beats on Splice
• Selling merch on Bandcamp
• Selling subscriptions on Twitch
• Selling royalty free music on Artlist
• Sell live stream concert tickets with Driift
• Selling artist subscriptions on Fan Circles
• Selling digital collectibles on Fanaply

Record labels, management, distributors, streaming services, and creator tools companies all need to invest in helping their artists build their fan bases and income on such platforms. This investment in their creators’ incomes will ensure that they are better able to continue to make the music that fuels the business models that all those other entities have learned to make work in a way most individual creators have not and cannot.

Streaming services must fix the problem… or someone else will

Nevertheless, the market also needs something more – a platform glue that binds together creation, audience and consumption. Contrast a music artist with a games streamer. A games streamer creates, streams, finds and monetises their audience all within one platform (e.g., YouTube or Twitch). A music artist, however, creates music in one platform, takes it to another for distribution which then feeds it into streaming platforms where the artist has no direct relationship with their audience. There are exceptions to the rule (Bandlab, Soundcloud and YouTube especially) but they are just that: exceptions, not the rule.

Either streaming services need to start backing up their creator-first language with creator-first tools, or instead watch from the side lines as someone else does it for them. Whoever leads the charge, the paradox of small will finally become slightly less of a paradox.