I'm Miles Bloxson,
And I'm Elizabeth McQueen.
And this is Pause Play the podcast about live music, why
it matters and what comes next.
This season we're talking all about what the future might hold for Austin music.
In episode one, we talked about how musicians might make a
living by doing all the things.
In episode two, we explored whether musicians really need social media
moving forward, and in episode three we're talking about streaming.
Yeah.
Most musicians use streaming services and also have their music on them, but when
you ask artists if they make money from streaming music, you mostly get a response
like this one from Carrie Rodriguez.
When you're looking at streaming, like, do you count it as any kind of
like noticeable part of your income?
I.
Not at all.
Zero.
No.
Mm-hmm.
Nope.
So let's talk about streaming in this current moment.
First off, a lot of people stream music.
Yeah.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or
IFPI in 2024, streaming made up 69% of worldwide recorded music sales.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, that number
is even higher in the US where streaming makes up 84% of revenue
from just recorded music alone.
In 2014, the global music industry brought in just under $15 billion.
That a statistic from the IFPI
and in 2024 it was over $29 billion.
But like we said, most musicians don't see noticeable income from
streaming and it's not just Carrie.
In some of our earlier episodes, you heard from Tribe Mafia.
They're an Austin group that has found a way to make money getting
songs placed in movies and TV shows, also known as Sync licensing.
And they do have one song called Travel the World that's done well in streaming.
It has over 250,000 streams on Spotify and they've seen some money from it.
Travel The world, it's impressive.
It's like, okay, little 500, that's not bad.
That's not bad.
That's a flight.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But the other song is the like, what, three bucks, 10 cents bucks.
Like, why'd you even send this?
I don't want this.
You can keep that.
It cost more money to send that than for us to get it.
I, I don't need that.
We've talked before about how little artists make from streams,
I mean, it's pretty common knowledge that streams pay a
third to a half a cent per stream.
Yeah.
I mean, we've used those numbers a lot in this podcast, but it wasn't
until I started researching things for this story that I found out that it's
actually way more complicated than that.
Miles streaming is not paid out on a per strain basis.
Instead, streaming is paid out on a prorata basis.
Prota Prorata, what does that even mean?
Okay, so the streaming service has take in money, right?
And then they distribute this money based on how many song blah.
Okay, so the streaming services take in money, right?
And then they distribute this money based on how many plays a song gets
versus how many songs get played total.
The streaming services call this stream share.
So say in one month, all Beyonce's songs get 1% of all streams.
On Spotify, her stream share would be 1%.
So they take all the money they made in a month and give
the Queen Bee just 1% of it.
Well, not really.
First.
Streaming services take their cut of revenue.
This can be anywhere between 30 to almost 50%.
So Beyonce gets 1% of whatever is left after the streaming
services take their cut?
No.
Oh my goodness.
Okay.
So you may remember from when we talked about this in previous
episodes, but every time a song gets played, there are two royalties paid.
There's a songwriting royalty paid to whoever wrote the song, and
then there's a mechanical royalty.
This is paid to whoever owns the rights to the actual recorded
version of this song streaming.
Streaming services don't pay artists directly, like they
don't pay Beyonce directly.
Instead, they pay intermediaries like labels or distributors or
aggregators for mechanical royalties, and they pay performing rights.
Organizations like BMI, ASCAP or CSAC for songwriting royalties.
And some streaming services like Spotify have deals with these labels
and distributors that are super secret.
Liz Pelley wrote a great book about Spotify called Mood Machine,
the Rise of Spotify, and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist.
It goes super deep into all things Spotify.
I highly recommend it.
And she writes that there are often NDAs in place so that artists on a label don't
really even know what the labels deal with the streaming services looks like.
But it's widely understood that major labels have really good
deals, at least with Spotify.
So Beyonce's on a major label, and she may not know how much money
the label is getting for her music.
Totally.
Though I feel like Beyonce may have the clout to get to see that info,
but mid-level artists on that label may not, but it gets more complicated.
Does it?
Oh yeah.
On the mechanical royalty side, the amount that gets paid out can also depend
on the territory, like where in the world the song is being streamed from.
And it depends on what kind of subscription the song
is getting streamed from.
So if someone streams a song on Spotify free, it pays out differently than if
they had a paid subscription to Spotify.
And check this out.
Labels and distributors don't just have deals in place with streaming services.
They also have deals in place with artists detailing how they're gonna
split the proceeds from any streaming.
So a label may offer an artist in advance to make a record, and they
take all of the mechanical royalties from that record until they make
back the advance, and after they make back the advance, then they split
those royalties with the artist.
They also may ask for a share of the artist's songwriting royalties as well.
What about songwriting royalties?
Well, according to BMI, songwriting royalties are calculated by a quote,
unique royalty rate for each work, which is based upon the license fees collected
from the service that performed the work in combination with the number of
times each work streamed on the service.
What does that even mean?
It means it's complicated,
but a lot of artists in Austin are independent, which means they
don't have labels or publishers.
So what do they do?
So in order to get their music on streaming services and collect
mechanical royalties, they have to make deals with digital distribution
companies like Tune Core or Distro Kid.
All of those businesses charge something for those services,
whether it's a subscription fee or a portion of the mechanical royalties.
And then in order to get paid songwriting royalties, they have
to register with performing rights organizations like BMI, ASCAP or csac.
So if you're an artist before you see any money, the streaming service
calculates your stream share.
And then after they take their cut, they pay out your royalties
to a label or a distributor.
Or a publisher or aggregator based on a deal they made with that company.
The details of which you may never know, and then the company gets their share of
whatever amount of money you agreed on with them, and then you get your money.
Yep.
I mean, it's simple to say streams pay a third of a penny per share, but the
reality is so much more complicated.
Elizabeth, my brain hurts
mine too.
Do you know how long it took me to write this part of the episode?
I mean, honestly, it's still like such an oversimplification of a really
complex system that I bet there are people out there who think, I don't
even know what I'm talking about.
But the thing is like the point is it's super opaque and hard to
understand like by design, and it can get even more complicated.
Miles.
How?
Okay.
So on Spotify, artists can opt into what's called discovery mode.
They can basically trade a lower royalty rate for the chance of
their music being more discoverable.
It basically boosts music in the algorithm.
And Spotify recently started a policy where if a track doesn't get a
thousand streams in a 12 month period, then the artist isn't gonna see any
streaming income from that song at all.
That's crazy.
I thought $0 was nothing.
But this sounds a lot worse.
Yeah, I mean, it's wild.
It's like the music industry is growing and it's mostly growing because of
streaming, but because of the way streaming is monetized, a lot of artists
don't see much income and it's super confusing to try and figure out how
the money is even being distributed.
Yeah.
And most artists have streaming subscriptions, so I wonder how many
artists don't even make enough money from streaming to cover those subscriptions.
Whoa.
That's actually a very heavy thought.
Miles.
But it's not all doom and gloom.
I mean, some people are making some money from streaming like Walker.
My name is Walker Lukins.
I'm a musician, and I, uh, have a podcast as well.
You've heard from Walker on this podcast before.
And like he said, he has a podcast of his own, it's called Song Confessional
and KUT and KUTX studios distributes it.
The song Confessional podcast is part of a larger song confessional
project that Walker and his friend Zach Catanzaro started.
We'll, let Walker tell you about it.
Song confessional.
We collect anonymous stories.
We call them confessions.
We go to like events, music festivals, state fairs, all sorts of stuff.
People hire us, we come, we set up.
People come into our confessional trailer and it's all anonymous
and they tell us stories.
Then me and the song Confessional Crew, we choose our favorite ones.
We give them to songwriters and bands who then will write and record a song.
So how many songs has song confessional put out?
I think like 75.
And do you consider song confessional, like a label y?
Yeah.
I mean, we didn't set out to start a label.
We just sort of fell into having one.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's a label.
Yeah.
And you've had a couple of songs that like really hit.
Mm-hmm.
So could you tell people about that?
Yeah, so we've had four songs kind of get into the next tier of streaming
where they just have a natural, like, they have their own inertia.
So like they, they get added to new playlists, not through
any effort of our own.
They're getting streamed by new people.
You know, they're just actually finding new listeners regularly.
How many streams have those songs gotten?
Um,
probably like a hundred million streams if Whoa.
Between a hundred.
Like all told, all to all the services, like between a hundred million.
I mean, not each, I'm talking about all of them together between
like a hundred and 150 million.
That's still a lot.
Yeah.
That's a lot.
That's like successful.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not, it's four of 75, it's four different
artists and it's, it's not, yeah, so it's not the traditional thing.
The song Confessional Track that's Gotten the Most Streams is a song
by Wild Child called Going In.
This has over 43 million streams on Spotify,
But like Walker said, not every song gets that amount of streams.
We took some confessions last March at Schultz Garden.
We chose one, we put it out, and then a bunch of people submitted songs.
So our winner was, we chose this song to Sunglass Town by Brittany
Binowski, who hadn't really released any music prior to that.
She's not, she's like.
Has not really done music with any seriousness for a couple years.
It has, it came out March 1st, I think, and it has 8,000 streams.
So song confessional songs get anywhere from 8,000 to 43 million
streams and song confessional.
and song confessional.
The label has a deal with the artists who write the songs that they put out.
They pay for the recording, so they take a hundred percent of the
mechanical royalties until they cover the cost of that recording.
Then they split the mechanical royalties with the artist 50 50.
The artist keeps 100% of the songwriting royalties.
And song confessional also has a deal with the distributor.
The song confessional label uses a company called one RPM for distribution.
And basically what that means is, uh, we, they upload our music to all the
streaming platforms and they actually even offer physical distribution too.
One RPM gives song confessional in advance.
Then one RPM takes a hundred percent of the income from the mechanical
royalties until they recoup or get all the money back from that advance.
After that one RPM takes 20% of the income from the mechanical royalties
song confessional and the artist get their cut of the remaining 80%.
And if Song, confessional song, and if the song, confessional song does
well, like the Wild Child song, then everyone song Confessional the
Artist and one RPM makes some money.
So there is a way to make money streaming.
Yeah.
Like through streaming y
Yeah, definitely.
Walker told us he also makes streaming income from his own music and from
music where he has a songwriting credit
Last year I made from Stream me personally, so not song confession,
not business, but just me.
I made like probably like 15 grand.
so that's songs that I wrote, songs that I wrote with other people, and songs
that I released or covers, I released.
So you could buy a car with that.
and Walker.
He sees the issues with streaming, but he also sees the benefits of it.
There's this general sense that streaming is like.
Not great for artists.
Yeah.
But you and I, you and I have talked about it.
Yeah.
And you have kind of like a more complex, you have more
complex thoughts, I feel like.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think it's fair to say it's not good for the artists.
Uh, it's, yeah.
I don't, I don't think that's fair.
It's not that simple one, because artists are also consumers.
And for consumers streaming rules, we have everything at our fingertips.
And if you're an artist, you are a consumer and you're
inspired by what you hear.
So to say that it's all bad is like, is being a little, it's, there's a
little cognitive dissonance there.
'cause I'm like, I don't know anyone who doesn't listen to streaming.
I mean, I, I think in that way, streaming is amazing.
And to say that it's not an incredible resource, it's really wild.
Uh, I also think that.
The music industry has always sucked.
It's always been bad.
We've always been getting taken advantage of.
You know, the, my favorite little quote is, I saw Ian Mackay give a talk from
Fugazi, and he just said, music is water.
Like we're talking about the container, we just sell you the container.
Walker made it clear that he's not totally pro streaming.
He knows that the way people get paid for streaming is not great, but he
thinks there's a way to make things.
Right.
I mean, that part, I, it's the fix is simple, right?
We have no protections for musicians and the streaming rate should be higher.
It's just that simple in terms of the fix to, to the streaming services.
Like there should just be a national law and it should go up
to a penny or whatever, you know?
Actually, there was a bill introduced in 2024 by Rashida TB and Jamal Bowman
in the US House of Representatives.
It's called the Living Wage for Musicians Act.
It was developed in collaboration with the United musicians and allied
workers, and it proposes to pay artists a minimum of a penny per stream
According to the United Musicians and Allied Workers website, this would be paid
for by an additional subscription fee and a 10% levy on non-subscription revenue.
We'll have the link in the show notes if you wanna learn more
about this possible solution.
Coming up after the break, we'll hear from one Austin artist who wants to build
an alternative to streaming platforms.
Welcome back to Pause.
Play a podcast about live music, why it matters, and what comes next.
In this episode, we're looking at the future of streaming.
Before the break, we heard about a bill that would raise streaming
revenue to a penny per stream.
And now we're gonna hear from one Austin artist who's hoping
to build an alternative to streaming services as we know them.
Meet Lauren.
Hi, I am Lauren Bruno.
I am an artist, a nonprofit director of $3 shows and the founder of Prosper xo.
Lauren moved here in 2009 after graduating from Berkeley College
of Music, and she came here like so many people do to play live music.
She arrived here with an eight piece band called Polly Sky, and soon after a
friend of the band suffered a tragedy.
When I moved here, there Was a band called Bankrupt in the Borrowers.
They went through a house fire and their trumpet player, John Petti,
passed away in the house fire.
And you know, the band that I was with, we, we knew at that time we
wanted to start an organization that connected the arts community
with the social issues community.
We were just trying to figure out how that was gonna begin.
And then this house fire happened and they needed to raise funds for the funeral and
they wanted to support Sims Foundation.
And so it all came together and our backyard.
And we had our first, um, $3 show, which is the organization that I have
been directing for a really long time.
$3 shows is a nonprofit that $3 shows is a nonprofit that throws
shows where the entry fee is only $3.
Each show raises money for a different Austin nonprofit.
Lauren played with Polly Sky for a while and then she started
another band called Les Rav
I did find some success in performing.
But to be honest, I always found myself spending more money than making money.
She did find success in sync licensing,
The main way to be honest, that I, I made money in my career
as a musician, was getting my music into film and video games.
but.
I did reach a point where it was not sustainable.
Right.
Entirely.
When Lauren came to town in 2009, streaming was in its infancy.
Most people made CDs and sold them at shows or through a distributor,
and I was making records in 2009 and making money with recorded music.
It was just easier to wrap your head around.
Most artists in Austin are independent, meaning they're not signed to labels
and they put out music by themselves.
and the math, it was like simple.
So say it took $10,000 to record a record, you know, pay for studio time,
pay the band, pay the graphic designer and say each CD costs you $2 to reproduce.
And say you sold your CDs at your shows for $10, maybe you
got $5 from a distributor.
So you could calculate more or less how many CDs you would need
to sell to make your money back.
It was like kind of easy addition and then division, do a little math
and you knew you had to sell around 1500 records to make your money back.
That is so much easier than trying to figure out this streaming thing.
Yeah, I know.
And to be clear, a lot of times people did not make their money back, but
they had a sense of how it all worked.
And you know, now that's not the case.
and there's more,
do either of, you know, how many songs a day are uploaded to streaming services?
Oof.
I maybe like 3000.
We should find that out.
I do know the answer to this, you guys.
I'm so excited.
It's 99,000.
Oh wow.
A day.
Oh my God.
I just got the chills.
I did not know.
That's statistic.
Oh my gosh.
So almost a hundred thousand songs are uploaded to streaming services a day.
So when you put out music, you're competing with a
huge amount of other music.
and like we talked about earlier, when it's all said and done, artists make about
a third to a half of a penny per stream.
To even make minimum wage, you have to have 800.
Thousand streams a month
And there was something else that bothered Lauren about how we do streaming,
I started learning about streaming and the reality of data.
So something we didn't touch on yet is that, you know, when an artist
uploads their music to a platform like Spotify, you know, Spotify owns 95% of
that data and what they use that data for in, in simple terms, the granular
raw data is to incur more revenue, uh, through sponsorship and add placement.
, And that granular data holds a lot of power because that's all
about your audience as an artist.
I mean, down to, you know, location and emails and just behavior and mood.
And, you know, Spotify has most of that on lock.
But artists don't have access to all that data.
Spotify for artists lets them see some of it in broad strokes,
but the majority of that granular data isn't available to artists.
So if you're an artist with music on a streaming platform, you are like one small
part of this huge amount of music that's being released and it's hard to make
much money on your music and you don't even have full access to your own data.
It's understandable that so many artists feel discouraged.
And Lauren, she felt like she wanted to do something about it.
I was led to a place also just in terms of seeing what the industry was experiencing.
You know, artists giving up, friends of mine, giving up, uh, friends of
mine, taking their lives, you know, really hearing at the ground level that
this was no longer a sustainable path.
And, and seeing it, you know, in my friends.
But it just reached a point when I started learning more about the realities of
where the industry is at, and then hearing that statistic that 61% of musicians in
America are living below the poverty line.
I knew enough where it was just like, I can't not do anything,
There's a lot going on in the industry that society doesn't really know, but also
artists themselves aren't really aware of.
So for me, it began as in that mind frame of I, I called
Prosper XO a movement, right?
Because first and foremost what I feel is most important is,
again, education and listening.
So, you know, and then the whole, the whole aspect of the technology is we
came to a point where it, we need to build tools, solutions, we need to go
towards solutions because we could talk about this all day long, but if we're
not going towards solutions, you know.
Where were we gonna be left at?
That's why a couple of months ago, the idea of Prosper XO was born.
Lauren said that she sees Prosper XO as an artist centered tool.
And there are a couple of different things that Lauren wants
to accomplish with Prosper xo.
First off, she wants to look into other ways of getting money
into the hands of musicians.
When I was working with the $3 shows, what I was seeing that was
really incredible was, sponsors wanting to directly sponsor artists.
So for $3 shows in our sponsorship deck, we had that as an option as.
A sponsor just directly sponsoring an artist.
So Prosper XO could be a tool that connects artists with local sponsors.
I mean, we all know how supportive and like loving the local business here in
Austin is of, of supporting artists.
And Prosper XO could also be a way for musicians to have more
access to their own data and to reframe how they think of data.
The data is important, but first party data is different
from third party data, right?
So all of this data that's on these platforms, it's called
third party data, right?
And most of it has to do with the granular, raw numbers,
but first party data.
A lot of it can be about like, an artist likes to work with mental health
organizations or their lyrics, or, there's so much in the world of data
that you can learn about an artist and look at it in a different perspective.
That is even more valuable than numbers.
And Lauren Envisions legal help as a part of Prosper XO as well.
The other piece too was within this tool that we're building is
we could put everybody together, but if they're not protected,
what is it gonna matter?
So there's a legal aspect to all of it
Prosper is only at the very beginning of their journey and they've done
some things that you can check out.
So we just released open letters to the global music industry and the Austin
Music Industry, uh, and to artists.
You can read those on their website.
There's a link in the show notes.
And then we also released our surveys.
They're really about listening and learning about what artists are
experiencing, not just artists, brands, industry, fans, community.
Um, they're really short, but it's, it.
Again, we wanna start with listening.
We'll have the links to the surveys on the show notes page as well.
And they're gathering people together in real life.
All of this is online, right?
We think it's very important to remain in person too.
And continue the conversation in that way.
So we started these monthly meetups that will be happening at Capital Factory and
those, you know, we want for networking, we want to start conversations with
people that are already really active in building resources or already have
made steps towards solution and change.
Lauren told us she sees Prosper XO being built out in five stages.
You know, phase five, I'd like to build an alternative to Spotify.
Spotify, I realize the name.
Let's collaborate.
Let's build a better alternative together.
It's not clear what will happen next, but maybe Lauren and the team
at Prosper XL will make something that works better for artists.
Think for me it was like, these platforms have us all in a choke hold.
It's time to create something different, that really gives more empowerment and
equity to the artist, because here's the thing, , without the artist,
where would these platforms be?
You know?
And so it really was that moment where I was like, okay, like.
It's time to build the solution.
And we're gonna start taking steps towards that.
we wanna thank Lauren and Walker and Carrie and Tribe Mafia for talking
to us about streaming and after all of this miles, what do you think
about the future of streaming?
Ah, I'm so conflicted, Elizabeth because I literally use streaming every single day.
I mean, I pretty much, I think I'm signed up for almost every single platform,
which I need to go check my account for that, but that's neither here nor there.
But I still feel like as the consumer, I'm getting the better deal than the artist.
I'm consuming their music on a daily basis.
They're setting my frequency every time I get in my car when I'm out and
about with my friends, and we're using our Bluetooth speakers and we can, we
have access to all of this music at our very fingertips, but the artist is not
getting paid the amount of money that they should for what I'm consuming.
So I just wish that we had something out there that was, you know,
better for them to make a living and to continue making music.
I totally agree.
I mean, like you said, I also use streaming all the time, and I agree with
Walker that from an artist's perspective, having access to so much music, so
much inspiration is like a great thing.
But yeah, these platforms are just better for consumers than they are for creators.
And I also kind of have this hunger for something else.
I think if there was an alternative out there, I would definitely use it.
Something that treated artists better.
Right now there's really not, you know, other than just like
not using streaming at all.
But I really hope that in the future there is a platform that treats artists
a lot better than these platforms do.
In the next episode we'll be talking about AI and music and we wanna hear from
you, how do you feel about AI and music?
You can head on over to our Instagram pauses, play pod
and DM us and let us know.
we'll DM you back and you may make it in the episode.
I like going to get cds
Deep thoughts.
You know, I see Walker's point.
Having all of recorded music at our fingertips is pretty great
from an artist perspective.
But it's just so much more complicated to make money from recorded
music now, especially if you're a band or artists that may have an
audience, but it might not be huge.
This system, from my perspective really puts mid-level artists
and below at a disadvantage.
And now these streaming services are making deals with AI companies, so there's
going to be this flood of AI generated music -- it doesn seem like we're going to
need some kind of fix for the whole thing.
Deep thoughts.
You know, I see Walker's point.
Having all of recorded music at our fingertips is pretty great
from an artist perspective.
But it's just so much more complicated to make money from recorded
music now, especially if you're a band or artists that may have an
audience, but it might not be huge.
This system, from my perspective really puts mid-level artists
and below at a disadvantage.
And now these streaming services are making deals with AI companies, so there's
going to be this flood of AI generated music -- it doesn seem like we're going to
need some kind of fix for the whole thing.
In the latest episode of Pause/Play, we dive into the world of streaming — how
artists really feel about it, the benefits and challenges, and how one austin
artist is trying to build an alternative