Is the future of musicians in micro-payments?

In his 2013 book “Who Owns the Future?”, computer scientist Jaron Lanier imagines a future scenario in which all of us — willing or unwilling inhabitants of cyberspace — are finally recognized not as users but as people, through a reversal of awareness regarding the personal data we carry.

Lanier, one of the earliest web theorists and the man who coined the term “virtual reality” (one of those figures who, in the digital age, sits at the right hand of the father), proposes making this shift by introducing a system of micro-payments for the transfer of data. The Big Data mega-corporations that own the world, he argues, extract and exploit our personal information — the cyber-oil around which all of society now revolves — without giving us anything in return. The archives built from this data are the center of everything. Data is power. Data is money. And we hand it over without a word of protest. So why not get paid individually for every piece of data we give these companies?

The theory of micro-payments is presented in the book as a natural evolution of labor in the age of Capitalism 4.0. Only through these targeted, personalized payments, Lanier argues, can the system break free of a cycle that rewards predatory capitalism, replacing it instead with an approach that benefits everyone involved. Lanier's proposed model of economic redistribution through micro-payments seemed almost like science fiction back in 2013. Nearly a decade on, however, micro-payments are an increasingly common form of exchange. It's only a matter of time before this model becomes an ever more pervasive part of our lives, reshaping the world of work to come.

This introduction, which might seem to have nothing to do with music, was essential precisely to frame the pervasive nature and structural revolution that the micro-payment paradigm will bring to our society. And to music.

Let's look at the matter more closely in musical terms. After the pandemic (which accelerated a process that was already, in itself, irreversible), the global music market found itself completely at a standstill. With runaway inflation dealing the final blow in the wake of the war in Ukraine, artists worldwide are reporting how difficult, if not outright impossible, touring has become. Records are increasingly self-financed. The majors churn out one artist after another, tying them to short-term contracts devoid of any real guarantees, just to feed the utterly pointless playlist machine. Famous artists sell off their catalogues to major publishing groups, who will try to hold onto them tightly in order to squeeze out as much profit as possible in the years ahead. Perhaps the trick will work for a decade or two, after which many of these groups will be reduced to nothing more than an entry on some online encyclopedia. Music, meanwhile, will grow ever more standardized, since the technology used to make it will become increasingly accessible, its use ever more simplified and reduced to a reassuring, sellable gesture. It's practically a foregone conclusion: music will stop being the vast, exclusive industry — with its haves and have-nots — that we've known for the past hundred years, and will instead follow the same path already taken by the visual arts since the advent of digital photography. Barring rare exceptions, it's likely that most musicians will have no way of making a living from music alone. This direction seems all but certain.

Certain dynamics, however, can be changed with a bit of ingenuity. Even if musicians won't be able to live on music alone, nothing will stop them from increasingly relying on direct channels designed to financially support their artistic activities.

Today's music market is made up of individuals trying to get money out of one another. Producers chasing artists for money. Artists chasing publishers for money. And so on. It's like trying to squeeze water from a stone. Everyone pretends not to see the real underlying problem; there's another player chiefly responsible for the failure to inject money into the system: the audience. After the collapse of the record industry, whose ruins still make us believe that something resembling an actual industry survives, the easy way out was chosen: sweeping the problems under enormous rugs. Without an audience that buys (and there's nothing left to buy), it's unrealistic to think the sector can keep sustaining itself.

It's a paradoxical situation, because, at least in part, audiences believe they're doing their bit by paying for subscriptions to Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music and the like. But in fact that money goes toward the growth of those platforms, not toward supporting musicians. These platforms are the product of a market that is incapable of properly distributing the money it collects, concentrating vast sums in the hands of very few players. In the end, next to nothing — almost nothing at all — ends up in the pockets of individual artists.

It isn't easy to find reliable ways to sustain an activity like music in the internet age. The web has normalized every creative act, which is why there's little difference between posting a photo on some social network for fun and uploading a single to a streaming platform. Both could be works of enormous value and significance, but, given how the web is structured, they will simply become an expression of the current normal. And nobody pays for normal. Yet this is exactly where the enormous potential of micro-payments comes in.

The mere presence of direct economic feedback between audience and artists can create that divergence separating normality from originality, business from art. A virtuous system that supports artists allows them to break away from a relentless trend that can do nothing but standardize their work until it becomes essentially pointless.

Still very few in the music field have tried to channel the potential of micro-payments, directing their benefits straight to artists or content creators. There are extra-musical platforms that have done something similar in recent years — think of OnlyFans, Twitch or Patreon (founded by American musician Jack Conte). In music, Bandcamp still stands as a benchmark for a meeting point between audience and artists that can translate into actual earnings. Still, within the streaming landscape, its use remains far from seamless.

Perhaps, then, it's time for Spotify, Apple, Tidal and all their bigger and smaller streaming siblings to take a deep dive into responsibility.

Not only should these companies make it possible and immediate for users to send small or large sums of money directly to artists as a form of appreciation, but they should turn this into an automatic, ongoing flow. Given the nature of streaming services, these wouldn't strictly be payments. In different terms, we might call them "donations." The public would be paying for a service that has, in truth, already been provided. They would simply be given the option to give a little extra to an artist they particularly appreciate. A recurring prompt would do the trick: "We've noticed you're a big fan of this artist. Want to buy them a coffee?" Or breakfast. Or dinner. Or a bicycle.

Why do we assume the public isn't willing to make such a civil gesture?

Looking closely, Spotify already offers a service like this. It's called "Fan Support," a link found on the pages of artists who choose to add it. With one click, you can donate any amount you like to the artist via their personal PayPal link or other platforms. It's an optional feature that isn't promoted much, so much so that the vast majority of people have no idea it exists. Nor do many artists, for that matter. From Spotify's point of view, the reason for the lack of publicity around such a feature is obvious. The Swedish giant makes a point of specifying (in a line right on the link itself) that it won't take any cut from the use of this service. Spotify's thinking is surely this: if the public got used to the idea of paying artists directly, without intermediaries, why would they keep giving money to the platforms?

Spotify, however, forgets that the micro-payment model is currently the healthiest scenario for preventing the very industry it depends on from disappearing altogether.

The impression is that the streaming world doesn't realize that the micro-payment model isn't an add-on to the system the platform intends to represent, but rather its very foundation. In other words, if platforms want to have a future, they need to gradually evolve from being an untouchable, automated service into places that facilitate a virtuous trend.

Taking it as a given that music will never go back to what it was before, these new models of connection between audiences and artists are a tool for reimagining a future in which making music can be a little more sustainable for those who make it. That alone would already be a lot.

In any case, a serious reflection on this topic can no longer wait.

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