More Perfect Union
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Why Spotify’s CEO Is Worth Billions While Musicians Make Pennies
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July 25, 2025
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22:45Now PlayingWhy are so many artists struggling in a booming music industry? Over 600 million people globally have streaming subscriptions, with most of them paying about 12 bucks a month. And for musicians, it’s never been easier to release work into the world. But ease of access doesn’t mean things are becoming more fair. Streaming services like Spotify have so much power and influence. With a whole new world of corporate middlemen, an already highly consolidated industry has only become even more consolidated. Music today is a winner-takes-all economy. And the biggest winners of all aren’t even musicians.
To read Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist visit lizpelly.info/book
Correction: Artists report making, on average, only $0.003 to $0.005 per stream on the platform. In text-on-screen in our video, we wrote “.0035 cents per stream” where it should say “$0.0035 per stream”
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