Santiago, Chile. Photo Credit: Chalo Gallardo
A new report is providing a closer look at the “streaming paradox,” or the idea that on-demand listening plays an important role in artists’ careers but leaves much to be desired in the royalties department.
Funded by the European Research Council and part of the broader PlatforMuse project, that report was just recently published by Femke de Rijk and Robert Prey. Unsurprisingly, the analysis covers a variety of angles across its nearly 90 pages.
But at the top level, the resource breaks down artist survey responses (more here in a moment) en route to providing a relatively balanced look at the streaming landscape.
As for other takes on this landscape, most are already aware of existing criticism concerning DSPs’ royalty rates, unwillingness (or inability) to decommission AI slop, and affinity for policies that shortchange indies.
On the opposite end of the debate, Spotify’s long highlighted the growing number of professionals hitting certain royalty thresholds annually – while stressing streaming’s role in lowering “barriers to entry for artists around the world.”
Back to the report, then, the main survey – distinct from a far smaller collection of follow-up interviews – fielded responses from almost 1,200 total artists residing in Brazil (417), Chile (327), Nigeria (213), the Netherlands (137), and South Korea (104).
Therein, 501 respondents described music as their full-time career, 633 disclosed plans “to make music their full-time career in the future,” and 74 said it’d previously been their full-time career. (Apparently, there was a bit of overlap between the latter two categories.)
Additionally, 84% placed themselves in the “self-releasing or DIY” category, and across the board, the income-related responses were discouraging. All told, 55% earned less than €1,000 from music in 2025 – with 26% identifying “no income from music in the previous year.”
Meanwhile, 22% said they’d earned between €1,001 and €10,000, compared to 11% for the €10,001-€30,000 range and 8% for north of €30,000.
Furthermore, with an unprecedented (and ever-growing) DSP upload volume making it harder than ever to stand out from the crowd, 69% of “post-streaming artist” respondents – referring to those who debuted in or after 2015 – confirmed making less than €1,000 annually.
Consequently, that many criticized streaming as a net negative won’t come as a surprise; only in Nigeria did a majority (83%) of respondents point to a career improvement with the advent of streaming. For Netherlands-based participants, the figure came in at just 14%.
Nevertheless, “[a]lmost half of the Nigerian artists surveyed did not earn any income from music in the past year,” and the respondents were rather united in their dissatisfaction with streaming royalties. 83% described themselves as “not very satisfied” (37%) or “not at all satisfied” (46%) in this regard.
Back to the initially mentioned paradox: Even so, 81% acknowledged streaming as “extremely important” (47%) or “somewhat important” (34%) career-wise, emphasizing, in the main, discoverability benefits.
As highlighted, there’s more to the report – including country-specific findings and respondents’ AI views, to name a couple components. But the identified figures appear to be the most significant takeaways, particularly when considered alongside the idea that it was and remains inherently difficult to make a living from music.
Two closing notes: The report also explores artists’ differing approaches to distribution; logic suggests that releases put out via a single platform, and especially a platform known for its abysmal per-stream rates, are at a disadvantage.
Finally, while Spotify pays the majority of its revenue to rightsholders, the involved compensation doesn’t necessarily land in artists’ pockets. One indie-signed respondent lamented earning “nothing” from the DSP, but a cursory glance at the appropriate profile indicates that compensation might be getting diverted somewhere along the way.
