There’s been much criticism of streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify for paying relatively small sums to artists, but a new report today suggests there’s some good news in the mix.

Independent labels now represent 40% of the music market, twice the share they had back in the days of physical music sales, and they have never been more optimistic about the future …

CNET reports that playlists surfacing lesser-known artists has been key.

That’s resulted in the most upbeat feeling ever seen in the indie sector.

“The Kool-Aid of the majors is over,” Allen Kovac, CEO of independent rock label Eleven Seven, said in an interview. He referenced a Worldwide Independent Network report: that indies represent 40% of the market, double their level two decades ago. “That tells you everything” […]

Streaming’s format — making virtually all the world’s music available to hear and personalizing it to what you like — works in favor of independent labels and musicians, said Brian Whitman, CEO of recommendation machine-learning startup Canopy who was one of Spotify’s personalization scientists for nearly three years.

“People’s diversity of listening trends upwards the more discovery features you send at them,” he said. “Even if not every single listener wanted to hear indie music, they’re more likely to be exposed to it.”

Playlists have dramatically changed the way we listen to music. Instead of playing an entire album, we’ll sample tracks from a much greater variety of artists, including ones who would never before have made it onto our radar. That’s true of both Apple Music and Spotify, the effect applying to human-curated playlists and algorithmic ones alike.

That means having a hit single or album is far less important than it used to be.

Indeed, one distributor of independent music went as far as to say that streaming services have actually created a new indie sector.

Apple Music pays the highest sums to creators at $12-15 per 1,000 streams, while YouTube pays the lowest at just $1 or so. Payments are typically split between artists, songwriters, and labels. Bad metadata can, however, see some artists and songwriters missing out.

Eddy Cue recently revealed that Apple Music now has 60M paying subscribers, adding 10M of them in the last six months.

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