, the combined market share of music sales and streaming controlled by the three major labels went from 64.9% in 2014 to 64.3% in 2023,estimates. That modest decline, which counts only music that the majors control rather than just distribute, came even as the companies bought market share with acquisitions of independent labels like 300 Entertainment, 12Tone and Alamo, plus buyouts of joint ventures. And it came about partly because about 5% of the global recorded music market — about $1.
In 2023, there were 106 million recordings that received between one and 1,000 streams , which together accounted for a total of 13.68 billion streams globally, according to Luminate. Since each Spotify stream is worth a global average of between $0.0038 and $0.0042, that suggests that, although it’s hard to measure the impact of individual services, about $33 million a year could flow from smaller artists to more popular ones that are disproportionately signed to major labels.
The model for streaming mechanical royalties changed in a way that will benefit the same players. Before the October 2018 passage of the Music Modernization Act and the January 2021 creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Spotify and other streaming services didn’t get the mechanical licenses they needed, and as a result faced multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, with potentially ruinous statutory damages.
That means that any unpaid mechanical royalties are subject solely to the Music Modernization Act, which says that after a certain amount of time they become eligible to be distributed according to “relative market share” of copyright owners “as reflected in reports of usage.” Essentially, the money is divided by market share on a given platform during a given time, which means that it will disproportionately go to larger publishers.