A model for a new music streaming industry.

I could write volumes (and already have) about the insights Mark Mulligan shared in his post on LinkedIn yesterday (this post is a response, and I even used the same title to anchor it).

I want to focus on three things that resonated most:

1. When you read artist-centric licensing, you should translate that to UMG and Spotify-centric licensing, as “UMG and Spotify get richer, and the rest, well, who really cares?” See the shocking number Mark Johnson shared on LinkedIn yesterday about the effective per-stream rates for one of his “demonetised” artists. Spoiler: it’s not just the songs beneath the 1,000-song threshold; the entire catalogue suffers.

We have a name for the model that works for all artists: pay for play. It’s built into our brand name and everything we do. Ironically, UMG would make 8x more on Sawtooth than Spotify, but they’ll figure that out soon enough.

2. Yes, the long tail feels the pain first, but that was always the case. The challenge is for those top-tier indie labels in the messy middle. They are doing well enough to survive, although not thrive, in the current system. The risks of staying are real and worsening, but better options aren’t yet mature enough to replace lost revenue (especially true for Sawtooth).

They must decide when and where to invest their time, energy, and money. Waiting for a winner to emerge is how they ended up in this mess. No one has the luxury of sitting on the sidelines, not even indie stalwarts like Merlin.

3. It’s all too easy to forget about the fans in these discussions. Streaming won on convenience, but fans realise there’s a high cost to free or cheap access to all music, and the real ones pay for it with every ticket purchase, limited edition vinyl release, and merch. Even still, so little goes to their favourite artists, which defeats the point.

Fans are the ultimate arbiters of what comes next, but nothing happens without transparency and trust. Give them that, and the entire market can shift.