Cheer Up: The Music Industry Is in Good Shape, Despite What You May Have Heard (Guest Column)
Categoria: Musica
Today’s industry has its share of problems, but overall, it’s a healthier (and less centralized) business than ever before.
Por Billboard | 25/08/2026
Back in 2013, as the recorded music business grappled with an historic collapse in revenues, a hapless reporter asked two artist managers their thoughts on the plight of the industry. The response was bemused laughter. Their No. 1 client was a certain One Direction . Amid the wholesale collapse of the wider industry, they and their clients were having their best time yet. Related Live Nation Lost Its Monopoly Trial. What’s Next — and Could Ticketmaster Really Be Sold? Dale Morris, Nashville Manager Who Guided Careers of Alabama & Kenny Chesney, Dies at 89 HYBE Pledges Over $300k for Colombia Earthquake Recovery It’s a potent reminder that in neither good times nor bad is success or good fortune equally distributed in music. At the lowest points, someone somewhere is having a great old time; even in boom times, someone is miserable. Which brings us to summer 2026 and the mood of an industry which seems, well, muted at best. Scene One: a computer screen displaying a plunging music-company share price. Camera pulls back to reveal a trader staring aghast at the numbers. Scene Two: a cocktail party in the Hamptons. A slightly grizzled but certainly well-to-do musician bemoans his lot, fragments of dialogue emerging over the hubbub: “Everything’s too difficult… There’s no money in it… AI will put us all out of work…” Having taken an unfamiliar “break” from the business these past couple of years, noses far from the grindstone, deep in garden leave — you should see the dahlias — may we be allowed to share a little perspective. The music industry is in remarkably good shape. Related AI Is Scaling Biases That the Music Industry Has Already Built (Guest Column) For the best part of 15 years, during the rise of what deliberately set out to be a different kind of music company, we argued that the most significant impact of streaming would not simply be its desperately needed effect on revenues — and don’t forget those have doubled since 2013 — but the long-overdue structural changes it would unleash. We were right. For artists and songwriters, digital platforms have driven an unprecedented democratization of creation, distribution and marketing. Just look around: More artists have meaningful access to a global market, and more routes to earning money from recorded music than ever before. Social media has made marketing reach more accessible than ever. Streaming has led to significantly higher artist royalty rates based on a simplified business model. Songwriters collectively receive a materially greater share of recorded music revenues than in the pre-digital world. Independent artists and businesses command a greater share of the market than they have for decades. The impact on the business has been just as decisive. The economics created by streaming have helped enable artists and songwriters to sell catalogues for millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars; led billions of dollars of new capital to enter music,