Where did the wheels fall off?

In 1989 Karlheinz Brandenburg, a postgraduate student at the University of Erlangen in southern Germany was part of a team that developed the MP3 audio format.

MP3 compression made digital audio dramatically easier to store and share. It was one of the technological building blocks of the digital music revolution that followed.

We all know what happened next.

Music became files. Files became shareable.

First illegally via platforms like Napster, then “legitimately” via streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes.

(Although depending on who you ask, there’s still a faint whiff of robbery in the room.)

Now streaming is the dominant format. And streaming isn't just dominant. It's now the engine of the recorded music business. In 2025, streaming accounted for 69.6% of global recorded music revenue, while physical music actually grew by 8%. So physical isn't dead. Far from it. But streaming has fundamentally changed how music is discovered, consumed and monetised.

This, combined with other technological advances has created something close to a perfect storm for musicians.

Because here’s the part that sounds like progress… but isn’t entirely: Releasing music is now easy.

Anyone can write, record, and publish a track from their bedroom. What used to take months and serious money can now be done in a few hours for free.

Which sounds brilliant.

Until you realise what happens when everyone can do it.

Here's the problem

What happened next was we didn’t just democratise music creation. We flooded the system. Spotify itself says more than 100,000 new songs are released every day. That's not just competition. That's an extraordinary amount of noise for any artist trying to get noticed.

So now, it doesn’t matter how good the music is. An artist isn't just competing with other artists. They're competing for attention against an enormous catalogue of music, an endless stream of content and algorithms trying to predict what each listener wants next.

And that's the bit I think we've got wrong.

We've made making and releasing music easier. We haven't made getting people to care about it easier.

With the ability to self-release, musicians no longer need to rely on a record label for their music to reach an audnence. Back in the days of physical sales, there were countless record labels. Big ones, small ones, weird ones.

Now there are three:

• Sony Music Entertainment,
• Universal Music Group,
• Warner Music Group.

The major labels still have enormous influence, but the modern music market is more complicated than simply "three companies own everything".

Major-label market share also varies depending on whether you're measuring recorded-music revenue, streams, distribution or another part of the business.

The bigger change, for an independent artist, is this: you can now get your music out without anyone's permission.

The problem is getting anyone to notice that you've done it.

Let's talk about the money

Brace yourself. This is where it gets really 'icky'!

The first thing to understand is that there isn't actually a fixed "Spotify pays X per stream" rate. Spotify says royalties are calculated using streamshare, and the money flows to rights holders before it reaches artists and songwriters according to their individual agreements.

Which makes the economics rather less tidy than the internet's favourite "$0.00-whatever per stream" calculation suggests.

There is another wrinkle. Since April 2024, a recording needs at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months, along with a minimum number of unique listeners, to qualify for Spotify's recorded-music royalty pool. Spotify doesn't publish the unique-listener threshold.

So yes… technically you can earn money from your music. In the same way you can technically fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon.

But can't musicians earn money in other ways?

Well, yeah - good point but in reality, that's a bit of a patchwork quilt held together with hope.

Merchandise

T-shirts, vinyl, tote bags, the occasional questionable hoodie. It can work, but only if you already have an audience that cares enough to buy that stuff.

No audience, no sales. And even when it does work, margins aren’t exactly life-changing unless you’re shifting serious volume.

Performing live

Traditionally the safety net. The place where artists could actually earn something resembling real money.

Except the grassroots live sector has been under enormous financial pressure.

Grassroots spaces, the kind that build careers from the ground up, face rising costs and other pressures, and the issue has become a serious concern for the people trying to build careers at that level.

Which leaves most artists in a slightly surreal position:

They’re not full-time musicians.

They’re full-time people with jobs… who also make music.

The reality for a huge number of independent artists is that music isn’t their income stream, it’s their second shift. Evenings, weekends, spare hours stitched together between everything else.

Passion-funded rather than profit-driven.

And then there’s this

If you are one of the few who gets signed, you might find yourself in what’s known as a 360 deal.

The label doesn’t just take a cut of your recorded music, they take a slice of everything. Touring, merch, brand deals, the lot.

From the label’s perspective, it makes sense. If they’re investing in building you, they want a return across the board and frankly just relying on making money from the recorded bit just isn't enough anymore.

From the artist’s perspective… it’s a bit like finally getting a seat at the table and realising you’ve brought the food, cooked the meal, and still owe rent on the chair.

So yes, there are other revenue streams.

But most of them either rely on having an audience you don’t yet have… or sharing the income once you finally do.

The death of innovation

There is incredible music being made right now. I hear it all the time. Even in my 50's I still get that buzz when something genuinely new hits my ears.

But here’s the uncomfortable question

When was the last time a genuinely new musical movement completely changed the mainstream?

Hip hop? That’s over 40 years ago.

And yes, there are plenty of counterexamples. But it can feel as though mainstream success increasingly rewards what is already recognisable.

Take Ed Sheeran. Hugely successful. Clearly knows what he’s doing. His music sits comfortably within traditions that would be recognisable to someone 50 years ago.

How many big artists can you name that are pretty much doing what Ed does? It works. That’s the point.

That doesn't mean there isn't innovation. It means the most interesting innovation isn't necessarily happening where the biggest audiences are.

The big three labels who own the lion's share of the market are just playing safe and selling what sells.

Meanwhile, the real risk-taking is happening elsewhere.

Independent artists, with less to lose, are experimenting more, pushing harder, making genuinely interesting work. I’ve heard it firsthand.

Through projects like The Jam, the live music project I run, I’ve filmed over 90 independent artists in the last year alone. Every year I produce a music video for one of them for free (see one here).

And this is the bit that keeps coming back to me.

There is no shortage of talent. There is no shortage of ideas. There is no shortage of brilliant music. What there is a shortage of is attention.

This is where things are actually evolving. The concern is… it’s happening way too quietly.

My worry is that the real innovators don't disappear because they lack talent, but because they lack visibility ... and eventually money.

What about artificial intelligence?

Oh yeah! Just as things weren’t complicated enough, along comes AI.

We’re now at a point where music can be generated, styled, and even performed without the artist ever stepping into a studio. Which means talented musicians aren’t just competing with other musicians anymore… they’re competing with an explosion of AI-generated content as well.

And in some cases, they’re competing with versions of themselves too!

AI models are already being trained on existing artists, cloning voices, styles, even entire sonic identities.

The legal and creative arguments around training data, imitation and consent are still evolving, so I'm not going to pretend we've got all the answers yet.

To be clear, this isn’t all bad. There’s potential here. Tools like this could open up new creative directions and lower barriers even further. But it does add another layer to an already crowded space.

I’ve gone deeper into this in another post (worth a read if you want the full rabbit hole), but for now it’s enough to say: The game didn’t just change. It’s still changing.

What's the solution?

In theory it's easy but in practice much harder. Independent artists have to do everything that a record label would have previously done for them. They have to operate like a small business.

So they have to step up and learn all the things they didn't need to know 20 years ago.

Marketing

Content

Audience building

Distribution

Management

Finance

Not just creating music.

Because in a world driven by algorithms, visibility isn't a byproduct anymore.

You can argue that the industry itself needs to take more risks. But independent artists can't sit around waiting for someone else to fix the system.

There is a future for new music but it's a very different one to the world we were living in when I had a wall of CDs in my living room.

Is there a future for new music?

It certainly doesn't look like the music industry I grew up with.

If you're a music lover

Start digging. Don't rely on Spotify's algorithm to serve up music for you There are more ways to discover music than simply waiting for an algorithm to hand it to you.

Get out there and start looking for new music. Visit small venues and support unsigned artists. Follow them on social media and encourage them. Pay them for their talent and start supporting them.

If you're a musician

The job has changed whether you like it or not. Making great music is still the foundation, but it’s no longer enough on its own. You have to think like a creator and a distributor.

And you have to think about the bit that comes between "I've released my song" and "people care about my song."

That means understanding how attention works, building an audience, showing up consistently, and giving people a reason to care before you ask them to listen.

Because followers aren't automatically fans. Views aren't automatically fans. Streams aren't automatically fans.

The real goal is to turn attention into people who actually give a shit about what you do.

It’s not about selling out, it’s about not being invisible.

There is still an incredible amount of brilliant music being made.

The problem isn't finding music. The problem is making sure the right people find yours.

And that, more than anything, is what I think is broken.