The music industry is part of the lives of, let us face it, almost every one of us. Whether we attend concerts, listen to our favourite artist on repeat, put on some background music to relax and study to, or simply go to any shop – we are exposed to music everywhere. The industry, however, is much bigger than just the tunes. From the artist, through the musical personnel, the publishers and managers, up to the technical crew on tours, it is a massive organism that must function as flawlessly and efficiently as possible in order to deliver on what millions of people around the globe expect (Wendover Productions, 2022).

It does seem out of place then that in such a world seemingly commonplace issues have not been taken care of, and it is the people at this world’s core who seem to be treated the most unfairly – the artists. I do not necessarily have in mind those selling out arenas worldwide and flying private jets show -to-show, though they too have problems of their own. Because, despite the public’s attention being focused on the big names, it is the little guys, and even the not-so-little guys, who face the toughest obstacles. That being said, what sort of bullshit is the music industry dealing with?

In order to understand the current situation in the live music scene one must do what most of us do not do lightly – look back to the year 2020. Just like the entertainment sector as a whole and the rest of the economy, the music industry was heavily affected by the pandemic, though few others are as heavily dependent on live events to sustain themselves.

Lockdowns led to cancelled shows and tours, which stopped income flows for countless workers across the “food chain,” putting the whole industry in a stand-still. The thrill of being in a crowd is as irreplaceable of an experience for the fans as playing a live show to one is for the artist. And yet, some tried to substitute this with online livestreams throughout these trying times.

Most notable of those events included the K-pop band BTS’ livestreamed show in June 2020, which sold over 750,000 tickets earning the band over $20 million (The Economist, 2020), and the virtual Travis Scott show ‘Astronomical’ in the videogame Fortnite, watched live by over 12 million people and currently holding the Guinness World Record for the largest music concert in a videogame (Guiness World Records, 2020). Smaller artists followed a path similar to the former examples looking for support from their fans, aiming to generate income to not only sustain themselves through the indefinitely long pandemic period, but, more importantly, to be able to continue their journey afterwards. But what did that journey look like?

After concerts were allowed to resume, not only artists struggled to get by – many grassroots music venues had a hard time staying open too. With soaring post-Covid inflation, almost all touring-related costs increased, but fees and audiences have not, and artists were simply unable to tour some venues (Wray, 2024). Moreover, being able to go on tour did not mean they would turn profit – were they signed to even major labels or working independently. Adam Neely of the jazz fusion act Sungazer breaks down his band’s touring costs in detail in his video on their early-2022 US West Coast tour. While the video entitled “How we almost lost $17,000 on tour” may seem somewhat clickbait-y, Neely makes a point in how uncertain turning any sort of profit was in those circumstances – when a member getting sick meant cancelling a number of shows with no guarantee of rescheduling, no possibility of getting the up-front costs back, and extra costs resulting from quarantine and the likes. But with the Covid issues mostly gone over two years later, has the situation gotten any better for smaller artists?

Simply put – no. With no real incline in concert fees, even artists playing over 1000-capacity venues struggle to earn money from touring and, in more extreme cases, even pay rent. It is mostly middle and upper class members of the music industry who can afford higher costs and to “take a hit,” while the working class turn losses from touring and are faced with having to consider staying in the music business whatsoever. Moreover, the disparity between the smaller and larger acts in the music industry could not have been bigger. While the smaller yet relatively successful artists signed to some of the major labels struggle to keep a roof above their heads, the top end of the industry is reporting record profits, aided by the notorious Taylor Swift’s Eras tour (Wray, 2024). But while figuring out how to help the smaller-scale artists is one thing, how the big stars are doing so well is another.

When it comes to touring, part of the answer lies in what causes headaches for artists, other industry professionals, and the fans alike – Ticketmaster, the online ticketing platform accounting for majority of the concert ticket sales worldwide. Since the merger in 2010 it is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, the biggest promoter in the United States, and has established the level of control over the live entertainment market hardly short of a monopoly.

While the fans, rightfully so, get angry at Ticketmaster for adding high fees onto their tickets that they queue for online for extended periods of time, they cannot do so in relation to the ticket prices themselves. It is, somewhat unsurprisingly, the artists who set the prices often deemed ridiculously high and allow for dynamic pricing, similar to that for airplane tickets, all truly in the capitalist spirit (The Economist, 2022a). The issue with the digital box office company, or rather its owner Live Nation, on the industry level is quite different. The promoter owns the majority of the biggest music venues in the US and is signed with hundreds of artists, which combined with the control over ticketing creates no room for competition neither from other promoters nor from the venues (New York Times, 2024). On the other side of the music industry, however, there is an issue of far too much choice.

The world of digital streaming is something that developed with younger generations and that they nowadays take for granted. It also happens to generate roughly 84% of all the music industry revenue in the US (RIAA, 2024). Almost every song that has been published digitally is available to everyone in a matter of seconds, and most of those can be found on digital streaming platforms, of which the largest, and the default for most, is Spotify. Though it does not have the market power similar to Live Nation, it accounts for over 30% of the streaming market, with 640 million users worldwide, of which 236 million are premium subscribers (Sing, 2025). However, on its path to reaching those numbers Spotify did not fail to make many users, be it artists or listeners, quite unhappy with some of its features.

Possibly the most common complaint of an average music enjoyer on Spotify is the shuffling algorithm. Truth be told, it is unlikely the users would actually be satisfied with the streaming platform bringing back the truly random shuffle – the company’s engineers explain how and why they developed their current algorithm and stepped away from the previously used perfect shuffle (Spotify Engineering, 2014). It does, however, reveal the tip of the algorithmic iceberg that Spotify has been developing since its launch. Aside from Smart Shuffle, mood-based recommendations, and ridiculous AI-fuelled subgenres along the lines of ‘cinnamon softcore art deco,’ there is a particular feature that has been slowly amassing notoriety since its launch in 2020.

Discovery Mode is slightly different than the aforementioned features, in the sense that it is not controlled by the user, but by the artist. The tool allows musicians to forego part of their streaming revenue in return for a higher chance of being prioritised in recommendations. It does not work platform-wide, only in specific, personalised playlists, and only recommends a certain artist if the algorithm deems them applicable to the listener’s musical taste (Spotify, n.d.). It was, however, enough to stir up plenty of controversy, when users blamed Discover Mode for having to listen to the same chart-topping songs over and over. Some industry professionals even went as far as to deem it the 21st-century equivalent of “payola” tactics [1] (D’Souza, 2024). As of writing this article, there is no official data on the usage and effects of this feature, merely suspicions as to why certain artists or tracks tend to be played regardless of the musical context. And yet, a certain issue associated with streaming is further amplified with the mere existence of such a feature.

It is becoming increasingly known how little digital streaming platforms, and particularly Spotify, actually pay artists for their streams. While TIDAL tops this chart with an average pay-out of $12.84 per 1000 streams, Spotify’s is only $3.18 (Virpp, 2023). However, this money is divided across a number of parties – in the case of Spotify, 30% of the pay-out goes to the streaming service, while the rest is split across the composition and the recording rights owners, with the artist’s cut ultimately being between 15% and 50%, leading to absurdly low real rates (Krukowski, 2024). One would require a couple million streams per month to see anything close to a real income from streaming. And if one were a small artist willing to use Discover Mode in order to boost those numbers, supposing it works, the income from streaming would be almost non-existent.

Another issue is the pay-out model itself. In the current pro-rata scheme, the entire revenue from streaming is put into a single pot where it is distributed between artists based on their total streaming share on the platform (Legrand Network, 2022). This means that the money from streams from the (premium) users goes mostly to the big names in the industry regardless of whether each user listens to them or not, simultaneously making the smaller artists even less money. With all this, it is difficult to think of a musical career as a full-time endeavour that could sustain anyone on a day-to-day basis. But there is a silver lining. Of sorts.

Artists’ voices have finally been heard, and policymakers are not staying idle. In May 2024, the US Department of Justice started a case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster and their supposed monopolistic behaviour. The DOJ believes that, with yearly global sales of 600 million tickets and the control over roughly 80% of ticketing in the major US venues, the entertainment giant unfairly harms a number of parties across the music ecosystem, including the consumers. Thus, the aim of the court case is to bring back, to the extent possible, the level of competitiveness in the industry to that from before the merger, ironically enough approved by the DOJ in place in 2010 (The New York Times, 2024). It is difficult to say how the case will resolve given the new government’s leniency towards big businesses, but it is not an isolated situation.

The UK House of Commons released a report from the 2021-2022 parliamentary session regarding the economics of music streaming in which it highlighted the issues faced by musical artists in the world of streaming. The Committee discussed the importance of the music industry in the UK, which contributes over £5 billion in gross value added to the British economy, and the contrast between the digital streaming platforms’ and music companies’ success in the recent years and the struggle of artists in terms of streaming revenue. The solutions suggested in the Parliament included laws supporting equitable digital music remuneration, aiming to close the disparity in value between the compositions and the recordings, as well as recapturing the rights to works and contract adjustments. Moreover, the Committee called for support of the independent sector of the industry, investigation into possible market power distortions, and normalisation of digital streaming pay-outs. While it is but the first step in the right direction, it is already more than some artists had hoped for, and the improvements do not stop at the policymakers.

TIDAL, one of the major streaming platforms, has made it its mission to directly support artists. Aside from the highest pay-out rates amongst the competitors, the TIDAL RISING program active since 2015 puts focus on promoting up-and-coming artists through various media (TIDAL, 2023). Mentioning names such as Megan Thee Stallion and 21 Savage, there are over 1,500 artists said to have benefited from the program, in particular by obtaining funding and assistance through music videos, live shows, documentaries and the likes. However, TIDAL continues to improve the RISING program and offers aid not only in the creative field itself, but in the entrepreneurial aspects of the craft as well. And amongst all that, the artists themselves contribute to changing the industry as well.

The British artist YUNGBLUD stood up against the industry in an unusual way, namely through starting his own festival. Believing the popular ones have gradually shifted focus from the artists and the audience to the corporate, the idea behind BludFest is to create an experience about and for the people and where everyone can be themselves. The festival is not only supposed to be about the music, but also about the community gathered there (Trendell, 2024). And on top of that – it is more financially accessible than most of similar festivals and even concerts. The ticket price for BludFest’s debut edition was only £50, and the sophomore edition’s prices increased to just over £70, along with the expansion of the line-up. But can we, the consumers, help out at all?

Naturally! In recent years some of the listeners have been growing disillusioned with the streaming model, a metaphorical faucet that can endlessly produce musical content to fill the silence in our lives. Because, while having an immediate access to an infinite library containing ranging from the earliest recordings to the latest hits is a dream for some, others believe it drastically changes the way we consume music (Lu, 2023). Being able to mindlessly put on a playlist in the background as we go about our day takes away from the personal connection we could build were we to create our libraries ourselves. This is why people increasingly shift to digital downloads or ripping CDs to compile their digital collections, as well as buy new or second-hand CDs, cassettes, or vinyl in order to have something more tangible (or feed the inner nostalgia) (Pelly, 2022).

On top of that, Bandcamp is one of the most popular online music platforms where the listeners can directly support the artists. With low entry costs for digital purchases, Bandcamp makes it accessible to help the creators, with the majority of the money, an average of 82%, actually goes to the artist or their label. This way, the platform has allowed the fans to pay almost $1.5 billion, with $193 million in just 2024 spent on digital downloads and merchandise (Bandcamp, n.d.).

With all the positive and negative aspects of what the music industry looks like nowadays it is, to say the least, uncertain what the future holds for those treated the most unfairly. The rising awareness of the issues that smaller artists face already prompts a decent number of initiatives pushing their case in the right direction. The help from the listeners’ communities cannot be undermined either, though it often is those who help that do not even realise how much it matters to the creators. The issues that artists face are unlikely to go away any time soon, but we can already see the light at the end of the tunnel, and if the current support and momentum are maintained, things will gradually improve and, perhaps, being a musician may become a sustainable career the way people imagine it to be already.

[1] – payola refers to undisclosed payments for promoting a particular recording, originally in reference to radio stations