The Messed Up Truth About The 2010s Music Industry

Digital downloads were all the rage when the decade began, but the era of carefully-curated iPods and MP3s was short-lived. According to The New York Times, everything changed in 2011 when Spotify launched in the United States, making it possible to stream songs using the internet and negating the need to own music at all. Other streaming services like Apple Music, Deezer, and TIDAL soon followed.

For a relatively small monthly fee, such platforms allowed users to listen to thousands of songs using a computer or smartphone — a deal so convenient and compelling that it even convinced people to pay for music again. Per the RIAA, streaming brought in 80% of the music industry's revenue by the end of 2019, saving it from the major profit losses it had experienced in the 2000s. There was just one problem: Very little of that money made it to the artists who created the music.

According to Digital Music News, one Spotify stream earns between $0.00121 and $0.00653 — mere fractions of pennies. To make matters worse, The Guardian notes that record labels take 50% of these earnings, the streaming platform takes 30%, and artists are left with a portion of the remaining 20%. For this reason, Taylor Swift removed her entire catalog from Spotify in late 2014 — with Spotify having to break the news (via Time) – having earlier written in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece: "Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for."

Ticketmaster has been a controversial company for decades. According to The Los Angeles Times, Pearl Jam lodged a complaint against the ticket agency with the United States Justice Department in 1994, claiming it had intentionally hindered the band's low-cost tour. They cited its hefty add-on fees, anti-competitive practices, and monopoly over ticket sales as problematic.

But Ticketmaster's power only increased. As The New Republic notes, the ticketing giant merged with the promotion company Live Nation — which, per The Guardian, managed artists and owned over 140 venues — in 2010, further increasing Ticketmaster's chokehold on live music. Per USA Today, Ticketmaster began implementing dynamic pricing for concerts in 2011 to combat scalpers. According to Rolling Stone, dynamic pricing causes ticket prices to change constantly to fit market demand rather than remaining at a fixed price point, similar to airline tickets.

In situations where demand is high, prices quickly become astronomical. Such was the case in 2018 when people attempted to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift's "Reputation" tour. Swift had opted to use dynamic pricing, meaning costs of coveted seats skyrocketed before fluctuating between $595 and $995. Fans were left frustrated, often paying hundreds of dollars over perceived face value for tickets, and many individuals in the concert business observed that Ticketmaster had essentially become the ultimate scalper. Indeed, Live Nation Entertainment saw steady increases in revenue throughout the decade, peaking at $11.55 billion in 2019, with $1.54 billion of this from ticket sales (per Statista).

With digital music and streaming now the dominant forms of music consumption, artists and labels quickly found new ways to manipulate the system in their favor. As Slate notes, it started in 2014 when Apple gifted everyone a copy of U2's latest album, "Songs of Innocence," against their will. While it might have seemed harmless, Apple had essentially purchased millions of copies of the album and added it to all of its user's iTunes libraries, giving it more album sales than it likely would have had.

Similar shenanigans continued throughout the decade. As announced by Billboard, the music industry started measuring success in album-equivalent units in the mid-2010s to account for digital downloads and streaming. The RIAA, for example, considers 1,500 streams equal to one album sale. Some artists took this information in stride. As Vulture notes, Chris Brown's 2017 album "Heartbreak on a Full Moon" featured a whopping 40 songs, likely to garner more streams. Brown's tactic worked — per Billboard, it reached number one on the Top Hip-Hop/R&B Albums chart that year.

Bundling was another effective strategy to inflate sales figures. According to Fader, rapper Travis Scott racked up thousands of album sales by pairing a digital download of his 2018 album "ASTROWORLD" with exclusive merchandise items, like limited edition t-shirts and presale codes for his upcoming shows. Desperate to collect them all, his fans bought thousands of copies of "ASTROWORLD," powering it all the way to the top of the charts.

Conceived by entrepreneur Billy MacFarland and rapper Ja Rule, 2017's Fyre Festival was supposed to be the greatest live music event of all time. According to CNBC, the pair promised an island getaway in the Bahamas, complete with fine dining, luxurious lodging, and performances by top acts like Migos and Blink-182. Following heavy promotion on social media — namely videos peppered with models lounging on the beach — the anticipation was so great that people paid up to $49,000 for tickets.

But when April 2017 rolled around, Fyre ticket holders were met with a very different experience. According to the BBC, excited festivalgoers arrived on the island of Great Exuma to find wet mattresses on the ground, disaster tents for lodging, and general chaos. Luggage was dispensed from a shipping container and attendees were left to fend for themselves, with most immediately seeking the next flight off the island.

Trevor DeHaas' tweet featuring a now-iconic picture of an uninspiring cheese sandwich — served in place of the five-star catering that festival promoters had promised — concisely summarized the catastrophe. Blink-182 also took to Twitter amidst the turmoil to cancel their performances, stating that they did not think they would have what they needed to put on good shows. Per NBC News, MacFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2018 and was ordered to pay back everyone he had conned into investing in his various schemes — a sum totaling $26 million. He was also sentenced to six years in federal prison.

As online platforms replaced radio and music television, artists and record labels began searching for new ways to get heard. Naturally, money talked. According to a 2022 study published in UC Irvine Law Review, labels could pay for ads — which got songs played with higher frequency — petition Spotify editors to add their artists' songs to curated playlists streamed by millions, or pay third-party companies, like Playlist Push, to locate and pitch songs to popular playlist curators or influencers.

A successful playlister campaign typically costs about $500 to $1,500 per song. To ensure the job gets done, Playlist Push often pays up to $12 for the song's consideration or addition to a playlist. TikTok campaigns are a little cheaper: $300 gets a song added to a list that influencers can choose from. If the song is used in a TikTok video, Playlist Push pays the influencer $10.

According to Rolling Stone, Spotify's new promotional tool, Marquee, comes even closer to payola. Launched in 2019, Marquee presents pop-up ads that remind users of new songs and albums on their release day. Spotify requests a minimum of $5,000 per such campaign, charging 55 cents every time a user clicks on a pop-up. In exchange, it promises over 9,000 new listeners per week. Like radio payola, the system favors the already wealthy, which tend to be mainstream artists and major labels. But unlike radio stations, online platforms do not fall under the FCC's jurisdiction and remain unregulated.

In 2019, 10 years after Michael Jackson's death, HBO released "Leaving Neverland," a four-hour documentary showcasing the struggles of Jackson's now-grown victims Wade Robson and James Safechuck (per Rolling Stone). According to the documentary (via Rolling Stone), Jackson groomed and later sexually abused both men when they were children. It wasn't the first time the King of Pop had faced such accusations: Jackson was arrested for child molestation in 2003, but was later acquitted following a 2005 trial. And, per Money, he had settled earlier child abuse accusations out of court in the 1990s.

In light of the #MeToo movement and docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly," which saw the singer dropped from his record label, Jackson's fans had to question if separating the art from the artist was still a viable option. A few took action: Radio stations in Canada and New Zealand boycotted his music, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis removed his gloves and fedora from display, and the producer of "The Simpsons" pulled his 1991 episode.

But for the most part, Jackson's legacy was unscathed. Spotify and Apple Music did not pull his music, and his streaming numbers remained high. According to Forbes, Jackson's estate — which vehemently denies "Leaving Neverland's" accusations and even sued HBO over it (per Rolling Stone) — has made $2 billion since his death, meaning the music industry continues to profit off Jackson. In fact, according to Forbes, his U.S. streams increased from 1.8 to 2.1 billion in 2019.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Music industry monopolies really started flexing their power in the 2010s and aren't likely to relent any time soon. With its near complete control over ticket-selling technology, venues, promotion, and major artists, Live Nation Entertainment — formed from Live Nation and Ticketmaster — had tremendous power over live music — capable of putting rival venues out of business, charging increasingly outrageous service fees, and cutting off anyone willing to oppose its practices (per The Arts Fuse). According to The New York Times, Live Nation promoted over 30,000 shows, sold around 500 million tickets, and controlled over 200 venues in 2018.

Similarly, Wired notes that three major record labels — Sony, Universal, and Warner Music — dominated the music industry throughout the decade, determining which artists got played on the radio, streamed, promoted, or signed at all. This control is evident in the decade's hits: 90% of the 2010s' top 10 songs were by artists on major labels. Diversity plummeted as few new songs even made it to the charts. It's the same in streaming: Two platforms, Spotify and YouTube, grew to host 75% of the world's streams, and, as the next decade dawned, Spotify started leveraging its power over labels and artists to demand higher fees and royalty portions, in exchange for reach.

Unchecked consolidation over the 2010s has given a select few companies control over every aspect of today's music, and, as Newsweek notes, at the top of it all sits one billionaire: John Malone (pictured), who owns large portions of Live Nation, Pandora, SiriusXM, and iHeartRadio — a massive swath of the music industry.