The Resurrection and the Problem

The recorded music industry nearly died in the 2000s. Piracy through Napster, LimeWire, and BitTorrent cut global revenue from a peak of $23.3 billion in 1999 to a low of $14 billion in 2014. Streaming reversed the decline, and revenue surpassed its previous peak by 2021, reaching over $26 billion in 2023.

But the way streaming distributes that money is deeply controversial. The pro-rata model pools every subscription fee into one pot, then pays out based on total play share. Stream for stream, a megastar and an unknown draw from the same pool.