Donald Malter

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.

The traditional recorded music business was all about selling units, which naturally meant that the most important markets were not the most populous but the wealthiest. Throughout the late 20^th century this created a ‘global’ market that was dominated by North America, Europe and a few others. This is why (among other political reasons) Japan became the biggest Asian music market, rather than China. 

Today’s music business is different. Streaming (particularly via ad-supported and bundles) can monetise large-scale audiences in lower per-capita GDP markets. Suddenly population size matters, and emerging markets become the world’s largest addressable music audience. The emerging markets opportunity has the western music and investment sectors salivating, but there is another layer many have missed: this shift is going to change how western record labels operate, not least by challenging the very notion of the global superstars which they trade in.

Anglo repertoire’s traditional dominance

Prosperity drives prosperity. Where music sales did well, music businesses did well. The music business did best in the US, as well as to a lesser degree in the other big English-speaking markets. These countries also benefited from English being the most exportable language for music. By the start of the 2000s (and excluding the US), of the top 10 music markets, domestic repertoire represented more than half of sales in only Japan and France. Anglo repertoire dominated the global music market and was extending its reach. Most countries across the globe were seeing their domestic repertoire shares falling year-on-year as we entered the new millennium. This of course meant less money feeding back into the local scenes, which meant more opportunity for international superstars to dominate. It was a cultural vicious circle. And then piracy happened.

A decade of piratical wilderness hit domestic repertoire hardest in many countries. For example, in Spain, the best way to keep track of domestic artists was ‘la manta’ chart. Literally ‘the blanket’, referring to the guys who would unfold a blanket on the street corner full of counterfeit CDs. So many local music scenes in lower-income emerging markets essentially remained largely organic and local for a decade. Then came along streaming, and suddenly artists can find their audiences in ways previously unimaginable. In geographically large countries like India and Brazil, touring the country was not a realistic option for most artists, so streaming enabled them to reach across their countries, and beyond, in an instant. 

Streaming, cultural catalyst for local scenes

Streaming’s cultural impact on local scenes was actually first seen at scale in Europe, with German, Dutch and French rap scenes fast emerging that found massive domestic popularity but that rarely export. In the old model, the lack of ‘exportability’ meant no record deal which meant no local scene. Streaming changed that. Another early milestone was the rise of Latin American music, especially Reggaeton. Although some Latin American artists have broken through on the global stage, the most important impact has been the rise of both domestic and regional superstars. This is the future that we are entering.

To expect emerging markets to lap up Anglo repertoire just because they are now streaming not only smacks of cultural imperialism, it also misses the underlying fundamentals of how music scenes and consumption are changing. The steady rise of Anglo repertoire up to the early 2000s has been replaced by a rise in local and regional music. Globalism is becoming replaced by internationalism, homogeneity with diversity. All of which means that global Anglo superstars will feel the pinch. The superstar business was already facing the headwinds of fragmenting fandom, so emerging markets are an accelerant to a pre-existing trend, along with multipliers such as the growth in the number of artists, releases and personalised recommendations. 

Build from within, not from without

None of this, however, necessarily means western labels cannot prosper in emerging markets. After all, they have the resources and expertise that decades of global success bring. They will need to shift their mindset from looking for export markets to territories where they can build new, domestic talent-centred business. A smattering of joint ventures from the western majors in Asia and Africa suggest the first steps are being made, but to succeed these strategies will have to be seen as the central plank of repertoire strategy for emerging markets, not a supporting strand. 

However, the western majors should not assume they will be able to out-perform local and regional labels. In Japan and South Korea, the western majors are minority players, having been unable to unseat the dominant local ‘majors’. Interestingly, both countries are long-term exceptions to Anglo repertoire dominance. Both are high per-capita markets with large economies that can sustain thriving domestic music businesses. Also, Anglo repertoire does not import as well to these markets (despite endless western acts trying to ‘break’ Japan), with international repertoire stuck at around a quarter of sales in both markets at the turn of the millennium. Now in the third decade of the millennium, it is South Korea that is exporting music to the world, from ’Gangnam Style’ through to Black Pink and BTS. This shows that global superstars will still be a long term-feature of the music business – though fewer will be Anglo artists. 

The outlook will thus be defined by:

• Fewer Anglo global superstars
• A rise in non-Anglo superstars
• The rise of regional superstars
• The rise of local scenes and domestic artists

It is an exciting time for music culture across the globe and we are most likely entering what will be the most culturally diverse era the global recorded music business has ever known.

I’ve been approached by some leading figures within the World of Blockchain Technology and the world of Crypto Finance to advise and help introduce and manage many new inititiatives in this space and I plan to share my opinions and experiences here.

This is a very fast paced world and it represents a great many exciting opportunities some less obvious but more financially profitable than hitherto thought and it is a great many of these that I propose to be able to share with you in these pages in the forthcoming weeks, months and years ahead.

The Convergence of Blockchain Technology and the worlds of Music and the Arts presents some of most exciting developments funding wise for the Arts hitherto never been seen before, and the financial ramifications of these should not be misunderstood.” 

Though the world of Crypto may be seen to be suffering from a slow downturn in other words a bear market correction, the opportunities the worlds of what is now referred to as “Decentralised Finance” offer to the monetisation of Music and the world of Copyright is truly amazing.

With Bitcoin off its recent highs by some 15% the Crypto world is correcting itself at the moment but this should be viewed as partial correction. Any fears the world may have regarding the affect the world of Crypto may be having regarding Climatic Issues is now being redressed by newer “greener” initiatives. 

The bottom line here is that with the new funding opportunities that Blockchain presents, these have brought along some exciting opportunities.