Does Non-Commercial Music Have a Future?

It must. Music is too important to our wellbeing, our rituals, ceremonies, celebrations as well as providing a bespoke soundtrack to our individual passage through time. Music, in all its forms, brings joy, reflection, meaning and excitement to our lives– a sort of magical ingredient that we can add to our daily routines either as a player or listener. Music helps satisfy our spiritual, emotional and creative hunger excites or calms our moods through a somewhat esoteric process to which we all have access. Having a large recipe-book of different musical dishes from which to choose is therefore to be encouraged; we don’t all share the same tastes or have the same needs! To do this musicians/songwriters need to receive recognition for their work, encouragement and financial reward.

Musicians, particularly indie artists, rely on the effective distribution of their work, the marketplace for their artistic produce – the place where buyers and sellers come together in time honoured fashion to exchange money for goods. This process is now almost exclusively in the form of downloads /streaming services. This marketplace is controlled by big corporate distributors mostly, such as Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Tidal etc. Their current business model appears to have shifted towards maximising corporate wealth by rewarding artists as little as possible for their skill, creativity, time and hard work. A few artists get good rewards for sure, mostly the mainstream pop music target group providers who may well enjoy corporate funded airplay as well - for a while – if they stay on product – are in fashion. For the rest it can be a tough old world with royalties from the sale of their art controlled by the distribution cartels. In a recent interview (2024) Rick Wakeman, a highly successful veteran of the UK music scence, referenced payments by Spotify, or 'Shitify' as he refers to it, as a 'pittance.'

For illustration, the below examples are taken from my own royalty/download returns but are fairly representative based upon industry averages – the figures will vary though depending upon distributor, artist and and demand:

Example of payments made to creators per download:

What many artists get paid by the distributors (Spotify,Apple, Netease, Amazon, Pandora etc etc): An average, from a sample of my own returns from distributors, works out at (sample of four different platforms) $0.00632 per download. An artist would therefore need to have 1580 downloads to make $10 or 15,852 to make a $100.

Streaming songs also attracts royalties but again, if we base it upon Spotify’s standard payments (and Spotify is one of the best) amount to between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream.

Artists used to be recognised financially to a much larger extent (everything is relative though) and creative diversity was tolerated/encouraged to a much higher degree. The reason for this, many argue, was due to the fact that many of the executives responsible for decision making were also lovers of music, they championed the cause! This, I feel, was a much healthier situation. Such risk taking was however, also often rewarded: artists that would now be deemed a commercial liability, found audiences, and some then went on to become mainstream successful.

Without some corporate risk taking the scope for musicians to experiment is minimised, well if they have families/commitments or a life they wish not to condemn to poverty, it does! Thus, musical conformity is the safe option. Result: society ends up with ‘more of the same’, a kind of dumbing down of our auditory senses. And yet we seem to like artistic surprises, the leftfield approach that sometimes challenges but also rewards. It’s a relief that some still get through but a disappointment that many do not, the victims of ‘target group focus’ thinking, shareholder wealth creation imperatives and strategic blandness.

Music industry financial executives seem increasingly profit focussed and I feel, are no longer on the side of creativity. Perhaps they never have been? Profit figures now seem to drive all boardroom thinking. In an industry historically populated by those who are no strangers to the exploitation of the weak (musicians desperate to find an outlet for their talents) they have fine-tuned their game. As a result, musicians (the non-mainstream bunch – the wonderful creators on this site for example) could well be on a future artistic ‘endangered species’ list! Who will want to try to come into and industry where so many produce so much for so little? My guess would be a lot of musicians will continue, myself included, despite the poor financial prospects. Why? Well we simply would not contemplate abandoning that activity that we love most: to make music. Businesses understand this. They use this knowledge as leverage. They have the strength, and they mostly control who gets the opportunities and the rewards. But what about the rest?

Who are the rest?

Well, a quick scan across the artist roster on this site probably represents a good cross section of niche group creators, none particularly mainstream, but a vital culturally/creatively important group for sure with a huge wealth of skill, tradition and performance experience. For such creators, it’s a somewhat challenging outlook in my view unless they have a busy performance schedule and in-demand merchandise. Returns from the sale of music seem increasingly being marginalised, thus payments to artists, in terms of royalties, end up being derisory, difficult to track and, with some distribution platforms, payments are not made at all.

So, are things getting worse?

In a recent article on VIRPP (a distribution platform) the current equivalency rating for streams/albums is around 1500 streams equal to one album sale in terms of the financial return to the artist. This seems to represent a substantial diminution in reward. Coupled with this is the spawning of a whole new raft of industry which is currently emerging to ‘support’ the artist to get airplay or get onto playlists. These new ‘services’ - some of which seem to be making somewhat dubious claims about their success rates, must also be paid for, thus additional costs for musicians.

In summary:

The future of music making now seems to be based upon paying creatives as little as possible for their important contribution to the quality of our lives. This trend is a more recent development as albums/cassettes/discs are replaced by music on demand streaming and downloading services. There are a few notable distribution alternatives emerging though, Bandcamp being one. Can non-mainstream music survive though? Well, musicians made music long before there was any financial incentive to do so. My view is that this will continue to be the case, payment or not. In terms of the contribution music makes to the quality of all our lives, its overall value, as an artform, seems to be being manipulated downwards. Imagine for a second, a world without it. Quite!