Resumen de Music streaming: how to make it sustainable for music creators

Helienne Lindvall, Tobias Stenkjær

• After over a decade of decline, music industry revenues have witnessed a resurgence thanks to the rise of music streaming. However, the rapid transformation of the industry has maintained old inequalities and created new challenges for composers, songwriters, and musicians, who consider the current streaming ecosystem to be unsustainable. This article identifies and discusses the main issues facing the music streaming market, highlighting the European Parliament’s recent report on cultural diversity and music streaming and other policy initiatives. It also advances a series of recommendations for making streaming more sustainable, including ensuring more fairness in revenue distribution, addressing the high level of concentration in the music rights sector, improving the identification of music creators on streaming platforms, reassessing the legal classification of a stream, and increasing the transparency of streaming platforms’ algorithms and playlists. Only by addressing all these issues in a holistic manner can we ensure a fair and sustainable future for the entire music ecosystem.