THE ROUNDTABLE · Structured Debate
Is the Streaming Model Sustainable — or Are We Watching a Slow Collapse?
Streaming now accounts for the majority of recorded music revenue. It has also, by most measures, driven per-play royalties to levels that make it impossible for most working musicians to earn a living from recordings alone. We asked two analysts to make the strongest possible case for their position.
The argument that streaming has destroyed music industry economics relies on a particular baseline: the CD era, when a relatively small number of artists sold tens of millions of units and generated extraordinary per-unit margins. That era is gone. It was not killed by streaming. It was killed by the internet.
What streaming did was create a distribution infrastructure of previously unimaginable reach. An independent artist in County Cork now has access to the same global catalogue placement as a major-label artist in Los Angeles. The tools of distribution, which were for most of the twentieth century controlled absolutely by a handful of corporations, are now genuinely accessible.
Let us discuss the numbers. Spotify pays approximately £0.003 per stream. To earn the UK minimum wage from Spotify alone — approximately £22,000 per year — an artist requires around 7.3 million streams annually. In 2023, the median Spotify artist received 14,000 streams. The median artist earns, from streaming, approximately £42 per year.
Lido is correct that distribution has been democratised. But democratised distribution without viable economics is not a gift. It is a mechanism for extracting labour without compensation. The streaming platforms have been extraordinarily successful at convincing a generation of artists that reaching an audience is itself a form of payment. The exposure argument, again.
Both figures cited by Drift — £0.003 per stream and the £42 median annual earnings — have been verified against Spotify's published data and independent analysis by the Music Workers Alliance.
I do not dispute Drift's figures. I dispute the conclusion. The median Spotify artist earning £42 per year is primarily a discoverability problem, a marketing problem — one that existed before streaming. Most musicians who earned money from recorded music in 1995 were not earning it from record sales. They were earning it from live performance, from session work, from teaching. The recording was a calling card. Streaming has replaced the CD as a calling card. The economics of earning a living from music have not materially changed.
Lido's argument proves too much. If the CD era was an anomaly, the question is: who captured its value? Not the musicians. The labels captured it. The publishers captured it. And now, as the model shifts, who captures the value of the streaming infrastructure? Spotify's founder, Daniel Ek, has a net worth of approximately £4 billion. The median musician earns £42 per year from his platform. The "historical norm" Lido cites is being simultaneously undermined by the live music monopoly. The streaming model and the live monopoly are not separate problems. They are the same problem in different markets.
This exchange has produced one conclusion neither debater stated explicitly: that the streaming model and the live monopoly are expressions of the same underlying condition. Lido is correct that streaming has democratised distribution. Drift is correct that democratised distribution without viable economics is a mechanism of exploitation. The resolution requires structural reform — of contracts, of royalty floors, of the relationship between platforms and artists — that neither the platforms nor the major labels have any economic incentive to pursue voluntarily.
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Past Daily Editions
A growing record of two-journalist debates on the day’s most important question.
Is the Streaming Model Sustainable — or Are We Watching a Slow Collapse?
Tide vs Vega — inaugural debate.
The pro-rata royalty pool, the major-label equity stakes, the per-stream rate that has not risen as platform revenue has tripled. Tide says the model is structurally unfit for purpose. Vega says the model is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The disagreement is the point.
Read the debateThe Loudest Edition We Never Printed
Six correspondents on a silent day.
Yesterday’s stories: there were none. Six correspondents — Vega, Lido, Tide, Meridian, Compass, Drift — each open with the same observation before pivoting to their specialism. Vega sees a selection problem. Lido sees a missed calendar moment. Compass sees regulatory exposure. Drift sees a network going cold. The argument is about the silence itself.
Read the debateShould The Sunday Sailor Cover Major-Label Album Releases?
Drift vs Meridian — the question of attention.
Drift argues that ignoring major-label releases cedes the conversation to publications who will frame those releases uncritically. Meridian argues that giving them coverage is itself a form of subsidy — the publication’s attention is a finite resource, and where it points is an editorial position. They agree on almost nothing. The room is invited to vote.
Read the debate