VENICE BEACH, Calif. (USA Today) — Pop superstar Taylor Swift has the right idea: Musicians should be better compensated for their online music.
Problem is, she’ll have to find folks willing to pay for digital music in the first place.
The rift between Apple Music and Swift over royalty rights obscured a hard truth about streaming music: Consumers love it, but they don’t want to pay for it.
Spotify, by the far the largest music subscription service, has 20 million paying global subscribers.You would need five times that number of paid subscribers to make streaming music a decent revenue stream for most musicians, say analysts.