Is music discovery broken?
How do you discover music nowadays? If you’re under 40, chances are you’ve never ‘owned’ much of your music catalog. It’s also likely you get all of your music recommendations from algorithms. Whether it be the DSP’s (Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and the like) or Social Media (TikTok, YouTube Instagram, etc.), it seems humans are no longer at the forefront of music discovery. And if you do pay for a music streaming subscription, just know that your money is not going to the artists you are listening to.
The streaming platforms operate on the Pro-rata system, meaning that all of the streaming and subscription money is pooled together and paid out to the artists with the most streams on that platform. As a result, the majority of independent artists earn very close to nothing when their music is streamed. I don’t know how you feel about that, but as an artist myself, I think that’s pretty lame.
Do you agree that music discovery is broken?
Would you participate in a radio station that empowers independent artists and allows listeners to vote for the songs added to rotation?