For many years a new disruptor happened in the industry. We all know by now. Napster, pirate music, etc. Then comes streaming services and become the standard.
People start "consuming" music in bulk, on streaming platforms, they stop finding reasons to buy CDs directly from artists, and some called it progress.
And I know, in most cases reminiscing in the past, dwelling into nostalgia and thinking everything was "better" as it was, it's not always the best mindset, or not a true statement.
Before streaming became the standard, musicians wanting to break through had a hard time being "discovered", because that used to happen through media that was owned by others you, usually, wouldn't have access to. You needed a label, an infraestructure, real contacts to place your song in radio or for it to appear on TV. Making music was relatively easy, but, getting it heard or discovered wasn't.
So, streaming services democratized the "access to getting discovered". Now you can have your music profile and catalog next to the "big and popular stars". People don't have to wait to discover you through radio. Now, they can discover you through an algorithm that lives on a platform that charges the listener few dollars a month. You, as an artist, on the contrary, get paid cents. But hey! What an honor to be on the same platform as all the famous artists.

A discovery tool with nothing left to discover

In 2026, streaming gets talked about like it's a discovery tool, a way in, not a way to make a living. Fair enough, mostly. But what does it mean for something to be a discovery tool when it's also the tool that grants full access to the thing being discovered?
Beyond the song, there's nothing else "to consume." A musician makes music. Period.

On top of that we can brainstorm other side-hustles that will make turn the music and the artist into a brand. And hey! I love doing this type of creative work. But that doesn't take away that music is still the product everything orbitates to.
If that music is already available everywhere; free, or for a few dollars a month that goes to the platform holding every artist's catalog, not to the artist whose song just played, why would anyone feel compelled to support that artist further?

Ok, some will feel compelled to still support the artist. And we end up monetizing a narrow slice of those special listeners: the ones who still love a handful of artists wholeheartedly (to them, thank you). But most people don't want more than the song. Fair enough.

So "discovery tool" is really a rebrand. From the listener's side, streaming is the product, full stop. From the artist's and marketing team's side, it gets called a discovery tool because (almost) nobody can make a living off the plays alone, so it has to be repositioned as a first step, not a destination. Something built on top of what the music can do, rather than what the music is.

So, what's actually on top?

Sync is my favorite route, honestly (getting music placed in film, TV, ads, games). In the best, rare cases, it can support an artist for life. More realistically, it supports them for a year. Either way, it's real money, paid for actual use, not a fraction of a cent for a stream nobody can verify was ever really heard.

Touring gets sold as the obvious next step, but for a lot of artists with real audiences, it doesn't pencil out anymore. Travel, rehearsals, accommodation, venue costs… ticket sales often don't cover it for most cases, and the math is fragile at best. The industry will call it an investment. And sure, for the acts that made it, looking back, it was. But for most working, self-funded artists, that same "investment" is what breaks the band, not what builds it.

We could also discuss merchandising, which is something I'm very passionate about, and I think it can be a great route, but not the main one, it's simply a secondary route that musicians and bands should not miss, but shouldn't put on the center.

Then there's the label route: get signed, get an advance, let someone else fund and develop the career. I think this can be one of the worst places a talented, freedom-valuing artist can land; and I say that having worked inside labels, with nothing against the people or the model itself. It's just a different game with different survival rules. A label works something like a bank, or an angel fund: build a roster, bet on many, let the ones that break big cover the ones that don't. Recoup enough across the portfolio and the business survives; salaries get paid, catalogs get owned, and those catalogs keep paying out for decades. It's not far from how VCs treat startups: fund a lot, expect most to fail, let the rare breakout fund everything else. (Simplified, but not by much.)

The music industry sustains itself. Its players, in most cases, do fine. The people actually making the music are, in real monetary terms, the ones valued least.

No one to blame, really. We're all adults. We all know, on some level, which game we're playing, and we all have the free will to stop feeding systems that don't value our work. But now that you do know, what happens next?

Everything is rented

Big artists often don't own fully their masters. Small artists mostly don't own their audience. Listeners don't own the music. Everyone is renting.

Your audience can disappear the moment you lose access to a profile (a hack, a ban, an algorithm shift.) A listener's entire library can disappear too, if a platform folds or pulls a catalog (unlikely enough that most people never think about it, but not impossible). In exchange, the listener gets the comfort of renting every piece of music ever made, one click away, without owning a second of it.

That's the trade-off. It's just rarely named as one.

But for the artist, the game is getting harder as we speak. Now they also have to prepare themselves for potential AI plagiarism of their music, they have to keep building on an industry that is not designed to value the music alone, the product that everything else feeds from.

I thin, musicians need to build careers far from streaming services.

So, I wonder. What if artists start to literally treat them as discovery tools?
Imagine in 2027, musicians start uploading 30 second tracks that slowly fade out and the song finishes with a recorded voice memo that says something like: Enjoyed the preview? There’s more to hear. Get the full song plus access to my complete catalog at [my website]. Listen. Discover. Go deeper. → [my website]

And you could do this with all your past catalog as well. Literally, no one is stopping you.

Of course, if this were to be done only by a small group of artists seen as "romantic and naïve", nothing would change. But if this was done at a scale, in a loud way, by finally musicians coming together once and for all, things would definitely start to change. And this time, musicians and their product, music, would be valued again.

There's nothing to lose, when no one knows your name

What do the majority of musicians have to lose? Nothing or not much. They are not making a living off their music on streaming platforms anyway. And they don't have systems outside the music streaming services to build something with their music (meaning, most artists promote their music with the end goal to bring their followers or listeners into the place where they can listen to the music. Which proves my point that music is actually the piece that matters most in the music industry (sounds obvious but it's not, in practical terms), but many seem to have forgotten about it).
Also, AI is flooding streaming services. We are competing with robots that have been trained on our music without our consent.

I don't know what else we need to come together, right now, over me...!