In 2024, the music industry looks, more than ever, a lot like the story of David and Goliath. The forces raking in enormous profits in the industry tower in comparison to the people who are actually making music.
CEO of Spotify Daniel Ek — in justifying paying artists $0.004 per stream — compared being an artist to being a pro footballer. In 2023, his net worth was reported to be $3.7 billion.
Ticketmaster’s hidden fees are so egregious that a $20 ticket to see The Cure on their last tour more than doubled in price to $47.15. Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, which earned $22.7 billion in revenue last year.
Universal Music Group, the biggest music company in the world (which reported $10.2 billion in revenue in 2021), recently warred with TikTok, the biggest music promoter on social media and a subsidiary of ByteDance (which is currently valued at $85.2 billion). UMG and TikTok were disputing their licensing deal when their contract expired on January 31, 2024, and they finally came to a new agreement on May 1.
While these two giants were sparring over profit margins, UMG removed its expansive catalog from TikTok. The company claimed to be looking out for the artists, but as the negotiations ensued, artists suffered the most. Especially midrange artists.
Artists with a small audience don’t make money on TikTok, and artists with a major following are already making their money. Midrange artists who are gaining momentum were stifled by their inability to use TikTok to its full potential.
Take Deadbeats for example. Deadbeats is the record label run by the prominent electronic act Zeds Dead, but here’s the road block: UMG distributes Deadbeats releases. In short, that means the high-quality video content some artists create for a song’s release was off TikTok, making that work nearly ineffective.
“[In] the last three to four years we’ve been told how important [TikTok] is for artists … and suddenly they’re handicapped in their ability to engage with the audience on there,” says Harrison Bennett, label manager for Deadbeats. “People on the lower rungs are suffering because people on the higher rungs are trying to save their [own] ass.”
But those independent creators have something the others don’t. A love for music that is stronger than the money. It seems to ask the classic question: Will love win? Can David defeat Goliath?
Of course, it’s more complicated than that. It’ll take more than one secret weapon to end this one.
It’s more than the royalties
“I think they have to fall apart,” says longtime music journalist Kat Bein. “It’s just about starting something else in their place.”
Bein has seen the industry change after more than a decade of writing for major publications like SPIN, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and Vice.
However, having credits in respected publications doesn’t guarantee a lucrative career. Many journalistic institutions exist under corporate umbrellas and many more are being downsized or disbanded.
Recently, Vice Media announced the shutdown of Vice.com. Pitchfork, one of the most notable music publications since it launched in 1996, laid off numerous employees and was absorbed into the lifestyle publication GQ. GQ is owned by another media giant, Conde Nast, who also owned Pitchfork even before the two merged.
From 2016 to 2020, Bein was on retainer at Billboard (which is owned by the corporate media entity Penske Media Corporation alongside Rolling Stone, Variety, and dozens of other publications), heading up their dance and electronic music coverage.
But following the pandemic, Billboard reduced their freelance budget to $0, leaving Bein without work.
In order to make ends meet through a shrinking media landscape, Bein is juggling freelance work and a job as an assistant digital editor at Modern Luxury.
She still sees music journalism as essential. She loves it.
“Rather than just listening to a song, when you’re able to hear something about how it was made or the artist who made it, it becomes more personal because you realize that that person is just like you,” Bein says. “The more you’re able to understand the context of art, the more you’re able to enjoy it. Music journalists give music that context.”
At points in her career, Bein has poured that immense passion into her writing, and as a result, some of the larger, more corporate publications have asked her to tone it down. Essentially censoring her irreverence to ensure they don’t alienate any potential readers who are a means to profit.
So, to create without inhibition, Bein has launched her own media platform: Super Kat World.
Super Kat World combines multiple outlets including her Twitch interview series, Kat Calls. Bein started Kat Calls during the pandemic, and she’s currently producing the fifth season. Throughout the program’s history, she’s interviewed legends in dance music like deadmau5 and Carl Cox.
There was a time when Kat Calls was under the SPIN umbrella. In 2020, Bein hosted the program through their platform once a month, and they were in talks to make the program a permanent fixture of their digital output. However, they were ultimately unable to reach an agreement on how to move forward, and Bein continued producing Kat Calls independently.
“I was very proud of the fact that I started something that was making me money, and ultimately I am a music journalist because of all the SPIN magazines that I read as a kid. SPIN is a really holy place in my lore,” Bein says. “There was a conversation about bringing me on in a more official capacity. The way those conversations happened did not seem secure to me and did not make me feel like it was in my best interest to align my brand with them so entirely.”
Bein holds the value of her personality as a journalist in the highest regard. She knows she’s a good writer. She knows she has a solid narrative voice. Super Kat World allows her to express that unimpeded.
She’s currently only netting around $200 a month from Super Kat World. But in her eyes, she’s already a success because she gets to do what she loves every day and can still afford a roof over her head. The crumbling of music journalism institutions empowers her to use her slingshot to shift the nature of music journalism in the fallout.
An industry breaking and building
“Change is inevitable,” Bein says. “The real opportunity comes in what comes next. Independent creators are powerful in that aspect. If you’re willing and able to try new things and bet on yourself, you’re going to start to create the next paradigm.”
Arielle Lana LeJarde is building the next paradigm based on inclusivity.
Like Bein, LeJarde is a music journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, Mixmag, DJ Mag, and more.
She is also the leader of Heads Know, an event brand based in New York City that’s recently expanded to Los Angeles as well. Prominent artists like Daedelus, Hudson Mohawke, and DJ Slink have played Heads Know parties.
Unfortunately bringing in a big headliner doesn’t equate to significant profits.
“I lose a lot of money, but it’s always worth it,” LeJarde says. “I think even if I go back to having a corporate job I’m still going to be doing Heads Know. … I know I’ll still be doing it because I love it. It’s an extension of myself.”
Beyond great music, Heads Know is an extension of herself because LeJarde is doing her best to book lineups that honor the diverse cultural roots of hip-hop and electronic music — something corporate entities like Live Nation have historically failed to do.
She believes independent creators like her can rebuild the institutions of the music industry. “I’m just hoping that things will actually become different,” she says.
As Bein says, when things do fall apart, there is opportunity. Delusional Records is another label ready for it. And the motivation is reciprocity — to give back to the underground community that birthed the scene in the first place.
“I don’t want to be Taylor Swift or Carl Cox. I want to be in my little underground universe where we really co-create and there isn’t this desire for these crazy amounts of success. We can just make art where everyone’s hand isn’t always in the pot. To me I’m so happy and grateful for just that,” Delusional’s Maude Vôs says.
Vôs built a network in sync licensing. Sync placements are a coveted source of income for independent artists because, unlike viral videos on TikTok, artists are legally obligated to compensation from sync licensing. Plus, independent artists can set their own rates.
It’s community building, and it’s also problem-solving. Problems Davids have solved in a plethora of ways throughout history.
Changes on repeat
The music industry will become something different. But then again, it has always been changing.
In 1977, plenty of young independent artists wanted to be hip-hop DJs. So when a blackout struck New York City, tons of people broke into music stores and stole the Meteor Clubman DJ mixer. We don’t condone crime of any sort, but because those aspiring DJs went looting, numerous new DJs popped up around New York City and sparked a hip-hop revolution.
Independent creators are still implementing creative solutions to this day just as Bennett has done with Deadbeats.
From the outside, it may seem like having the Zeds Dead name would make Deadbeats a hit from the start, but when they launched Deadbeats, Bennett ran into an unexpected problem: All the demos he received were aggressive dubstep. Though he certainly had aggressive dubstep in the catalog, the goal with the label was to release music that reflects the wide range of tracks, to span house, techno, midtempo, drum and bass, and other genres.
To solve this problem, Bennett came up with a creative solution. They asked artists for tracks they liked but didn’t know where to release. The reject toys.
“We were filling that void in the label ecosystem in terms of giving a home to stuff that wouldn’t otherwise have a home. We were also filling a void with the artists where we were giving them an outlet to be a little more experimental,” Bennett says. “Those couple elements really helped shape the foundation of the label and helped us start to gain a bit more trust from the artists. We weren’t just looking for the quick buck.”
Now close to 10 years later, Deadbeats has built the exact kind of diverse reputation they always intended to, using the same slingshot as so many independent creators before them.
Goliath will be Goliath, but for the love of the craft, there will always be space for independent creators. For more Davids, crafting their slingshots.
