For an business constructed on the again of inventive labor, it’s astonishing what number of artists stay in the dead of night about how they’re paid. Streaming now makes up over 67 % of recorded music revenues worldwide, in keeping with the IFPI’s Global Music Report. And but, for many artists, month-to-month payouts from streaming royalties barely cowl an evening out, not to mention a livelihood.
Regardless of massive figures—Spotify paid over $10 billion to rights-holders in 2024, whereas Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube have every paid over $1 billion yearly to the music business lately—most artists earn solely a fraction of pennies per stream. As soon as that cash is cut up between labels, publishers, distributors, and managers, the precise creators are sometimes left with the smallest slice of the pie.
What’s much more alarming is the shortage of transparency throughout these platforms. Spotify publishes a yearly Loud & Clear report, however different main gamers like Apple Music and YouTube Music provide far much less public information. Artists usually depend on opaque dashboards from their distributors or labels, with little visibility into how income is calculated, the place streams occurred, or how royalties are cut up. In India, a number of artists talking to Rolling Stone India on the situation of anonymity to guard their privateness mentioned that platforms like JioSaavn and the now-defunct Wynk Music’s present backend data that is inconsistent and mired in delays, whereas worldwide aggregators typically don’t report earnings from native Digital Service Suppliers (DSPs) in any respect. Many impartial artists say they’re compelled to chase their very own information throughout platforms, solely to search out it incomplete, inconsistent, or misreported.
“There was some progress towards transparency within the course of, which is seen on the artist dashboards we’ve entry to,” Rahul Sinha of UnderTheRadar tells me. “Nevertheless, a elementary query stays: are the present methods really serving impartial artists?” He factors out that whereas there’s growing transparency, the problem lies within the advanced internet of intermediaries between artists and DSPs. “Will all of them turn into clear too? The very fact is that there are lots of people within the pie who create this opaqueness, and that doesn’t assist the artist.”
Even inside platforms, royalty charges can fluctuate broadly. YouTube, which stays essentially the most broadly used platform for music consumption globally, pays one of the lowest per-stream rates, estimated between $0.0007 and $0.001, relying on advert income and consumer engagement. Apple Music, then again, has publicly said it pays about $0.01 per stream on common—practically double Spotify’s common charge—however that’s nonetheless not sufficient to make a dent except you’re racking up hundreds of thousands of performs. The actual problem is the pro-rata mannequin utilized by practically each main streaming platform: as an alternative of your subscription charge being divided among the many artists you really take heed to, it goes into a large pool and is redistributed primarily based on general market share. Which means in case you solely stream impartial artists, your cash nonetheless finally ends up rewarding the most important world stars.
Producer Karan Kanchan, who’s labored with each labels and indie artists, displays on how little artists are initially advised about royalties. “After I began off, there wasn’t a lot consciousness about these items. I wouldn’t even be capable of battle or ask for it—issues like percentages and royalties and all the things like that. When working with labels or artists, it will all the time really feel like, okay, I’m getting an even bigger alternative to work with an enormous rapper or I’m getting an even bigger alternative to work with an enormous label.”
He says he first started to grasp the enterprise facet of music—like percentages, grasp splits, and publishing—via workshops organized by Gully Gang and its co-founder Chaitanya Kataria. “That’s what I realized on the go, and it has been fairly truthful,” he says.
Nonetheless, even when royalties are accounted for, cost delays are frequent. Kanchan says, “I feel with label songs, even in case you have royalties, by the point you really begin getting paid, it’s going to take a very long time as a result of there are big-budget music movies, big-budget advertising and marketing campaigns that go behind the music. The royalties are first used to recoup these prices, and solely then do you get something out of it. So I feel it’s nonetheless a great distance for me to earn a living out of royalties.”
Some reforms are underway. Streaming platform Deezer has begun implementing a user-centric cost mannequin in France, whereas Tidal trialed a similar approach in 2021 with combined outcomes. These fashions haven’t scaled globally, largely as a result of they threaten to shift earnings away from the superstars and main labels who dominate present payouts. In India, as soon as a shiny spot for indie curation, platforms like Gaana and JioSaavn now more and more appear to prioritize movie music and catalog hits, reinforcing the identical gatekeeping that streaming as soon as promised to dismantle.
Even regulatory efforts haven’t caught up. The U.S. Music Modernization Act and the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, which aimed to simplify how songwriters and artists are paid within the streaming period, had been steps in the appropriate path. However disputes just like the 2024 Spotify–MLC bundling controversy—the place Spotify successfully argued that its Household and Duo plans certified as “bundles” and paid decrease royalties—present that even in mature markets, the definition of truthful royalty calculation remains to be up for debate. In areas like South Asia, the place amassing societies (royalty monitoring and distribution our bodies) are under-resourced or riddled with governance points, musicians usually do not know what they’re owed—or whether or not their songs are being monetized in any respect.
In India, nonetheless, the state of affairs has improved via the work of the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS)—the one registered copyright society representing lyricists, composers, and publishers. Since rebooting beneath new management in 2017, IPRS has turn into one of many world’s fastest-growing assortment businesses. In line with information from their annual reports, revenues rose from ₹46 crore in FY 2017–18 to ₹314 crore by FY 2021–22, and ₹564 crore in FY 2022–23. That 12 months, over ₹300 crore was distributed to greater than 7,500 members. IPRS has additionally launched digital dashboards to provide members real-time entry to utilization and royalty information and has invested in AI-driven metadata methods to establish unclaimed royalties. Public campaigns like “Credit score the Creators” and “My Music, My Rights” are serving to extra artists perceive methods to defend and accumulate their earnings. It’s not with out flaws, but it surely does present what’s doable when infrastructure, transparency, and schooling align.
Alongside amassing societies, new gamers within the Indian music enterprise are additionally stepping in to offer higher monetary instruments for artists. MGMH Groove, a rising distribution and artist providers firm, not too long ago partnered with Snafu to supply royalty advances to artists and labels. This transfer, reported by Musicplus.in, is a part of MGMH’s shift towards expanded providers that transcend simply distribution, now together with advertising and marketing help, information analytics, and upfront monetary backing for creators. For artists nonetheless navigating delayed royalty cycles or irregular payouts, such choices provide short-term liquidity and elevated management.
In the meantime, the rise of streaming fraud provides one other layer of chaos. In 2024, a Danish legal reportedly earned over $290,000 via fraudulent streams before being caught. In the meantime, trustworthy artists battle to get playlisted or promoted except they’re backed by main labels or pay for visibility via platform-specific “promotion instruments,” which frequently commerce discoverability for diminished payouts.
Sinha notes the broader systemic imbalance: “It’s clear that impartial artists are excluded from the dialog. They’re on the mercy of the industrial pursuits of those platforms. We stay in a digital world, so in that sense, sure, streaming royalties are necessary. However that doesn’t take away from the truth that someplace it’s taking away an artist’s capacity to economically compete on this area.”
For impartial artists, self-releasing could provide higher management. “In case you’re releasing your music independently, it’s a lot simpler to handle all these royalties and quantities,” Kanchan says. “Now even distributors like Madverse or TuneCore assist artists cut up their royalties on-line. On the level of assortment itself, it splits to the artists in keeping with their contributions, which is a extremely good factor for managing royalties with collaborators.”
He provides, “It’s going to be extra necessary to get folks educated about it as a result of after I began off, I had zero clue, and I didn’t understand how a lot cash I used to be leaving on the desk. Having these issues within the contract when you’re signing for songs—like bi-monthly or once-a-year stories of the royalties—is one thing which you could battle for within the contracts.”
This isn’t nearly low per-stream income—it’s about an ecosystem designed to learn platforms, labels, and catalog house owners, whereas sidelining the artists who energy it. Musicians deserve entry to wash, auditable information: the place their streams are coming from, what their precise payout charge is, and the way middleman events are reducing into it. With out that, streaming stays a sport of scale, not sustainability.
Platforms will argue that they’re doing greater than ever—Spotify says over 10,000 artists earned $100,000 or extra in 2024, and Apple has elevated its payouts according to subscriber development. However these headlines solely mirror a small elite. For the overwhelming majority of artists, streaming isn’t a profession mannequin—it’s advertising and marketing. And till the economics and information buildings shift to prioritize creators, not simply shareholders, the business will proceed to thrive off the very folks it undervalues most.