Bands and artists on independent record labels get less than their fair share of access to the most popular playlists on streaming platforms such as Spotify – argues a new paper from the University of East Anglia. The paper, published on Tuesday, looks at whether streaming platforms offer a level playing field for artists and record labels.

It finds that major labels have an unfair advantage when it comes to playlist access, and that they take the lion’s share of subscription revenue as a result. As a possible remedy, the research team suggests changing the payment system, so that royalties generated by individual listener subscriptions go direct to the labels, bands and artists they are listening to. They also recommend more transparency in how playlists are created and how the algorithms behind music recommendations work.

Continue reading “Independent music squashed out of streaming playlists and revenue” →