It's late on Halloween, just past midnight here in my home office/recording studio in Michigan, and one thing is on my mind: Ahh, we made it to November, the month that has Thanksgiving in it! Yay for us! I like to eat, what can I say? Actually, I have a lot on my mind as I contemplate my place in the music business. As it gets colder and our thoughts turn to things like eating and skiing, I find I’m thankful for being able to have my music be publicly available for streaming. It’s catching on slowly but surely with people around the globe, and I’m working on more to release in the future.
I know that you, as a reader of this blog, are probably psyched about that because you’re already “in-the-know” about my artistry. Yes, I’ll call it art. I’m that old songwriter/solo artist guy from Michigan you discovered who keeps consistently churning out new “authentic” (read: amateurish) music that sounds like it’s from an older time, quietly trying to keep you satiated, and hoping you won’t keep me a secret from your friends and relatives.
For those not in-the-know about my deal, I’m probably most well-known for a spectacular cover version of the title track of my 2014 album “Used To Be Good Looking” by the artist Ultimate Rick Jones a couple years ago, and also for my song “Mackinac Island” from my 2006 album Lakeside Landing that gained some popularity in the Great Lakes region.
I’m also old-school with my release tactics – opting for waiting until I have enough for a full album as opposed to one song at a time every few weeks. I have zero financial support, so it’s also because I’m on an extremely low budget, and the singles approach costs more. Similar to the old song copyright situation – I do the poor man’s version an album at a time for the simple reason that it’s cheaper than one song at a time.
It should be no surprise I’m a home recording guy. Speaking of poverty, I’m happy to report I wisely haven’t given up my day job. You might’ve heard it’s increasingly difficult to make any money with music in this day and age. I do it because I enjoy it, plain and simple. My writing and recording process is very fast once I have a song idea, and my limited free time and lack of patience doesn’t allow room for perfection. I like it that way, and I’ve gathered the fans do too.
I’m putting out music because I have fun with it, and each project is arguably like a little carefully-sequenced work of art for you. Despite what you may have heard, rock isn’t dead, and the album isn’t dead. Because I favor the use of acoustic over electric guitars, some think my music is all automatically folk, but whatever, you know that isn’t true. I suppose what I do is within the realm of Americana in some ways, leaning closer to rock and blues than country.
I think I recently realized that although I pretend to not take my music hobby very seriously, I actually am fairly serious about it. Although I’m obviously not a perfectionist and don’t spend much time on it, I admit I get a parental feeling from creating songs, and I want them to go out into the world and do well. So, there’s a side of me that becomes miffed by any perceived threat to the livelihood of my songs, or to my momentum as an artist.
This post is going to be about my take on the state of the music business for artists like me.
I used to make a little money from music streaming, and now I don't make as much anymore, despite releasing more music and becoming more popular. Why? How? I have a basic understanding that I can briefly explain.
Even though I've had my music available publicly for streaming for a couple decades now, making me an "established" artist of sorts, I'm still "emerging." I've heard that half of all music available for streaming is from unsigned artists like me now. The major labels and more powerful non-major labels understandably don't like this.
There are corporate major label artists, independent label artists, and unsigned self-releasing artists like me. "Indie" is too difficult to define in either terms of business or style. Those with the power want to curb the self-releasing people like me via imposing popularity thresholds for earning income.
They have the capitol and connections for marketing their artists, as well as the ability to take the associated risks, and they don't want half of all artists cutting into their pies. The term streaming "demonetization" has the word "demon" in it. The demons are now scrambling to acquire, consolidate, and get their market share back up to where it used to be.
I'm not a great artist, performer, or singer, but I have been approached by a company who wanted to buy the rights to my song catalog, believe it or not. I told them I wasn't interested. If I'm good at anything, it's the songwriting.
I do absolutely everything myself. 100% solo, DIY, self-contained, and self-taught in all of it. I've never paid anyone else anything to help me, except the fee to the distributor to get my music onto the streaming platforms. I suppose my catalog is big enough now that I could possibly approach them directly and cut out the middle man. My style of music isn't the type to ever get super popular, so I have no illusions about that.
I released a lot of music this year. Probably more than I should have. When you’re not signed to a label, you can do whatever you want. The labels offer quality control. I should’ve exercised more of it myself, but didn’t. I released more music than usual, with an overall quality level slightly below my own standards, which were pretty damned low to begin with. A label would never have allowed this to happen.
Arguably, some of it was alright. A couple standout songs on that last album, maybe. A few others that might be regarded as release-worthy hidden gems. A lot of the “deep” cuts could’ve and should’ve been left out, but they weren’t. I’m a part of the problem of too much low-quality music being in the world. Just letting you know I understand, but with no one to keep me in check, sometimes I can’t help doing whatever I want at the time.
I do it for you, not for the purpose of making any money. I’ve got a couple more new songs finished since my last album went out back in June, and we’ll see how the productivity goes music-wise in my free time. I just realized I’ve blogged a lot (for me) this year, so if I take a break from typing about myself and my thoughts, I’ll have more time for writing and recording to get you more art as soon as I can. In what is likely my last post of the year, I’m going to reflect on my journey of becoming a solo artist and the state of things for artists like me.
When digital music “aggregator” distribution companies like CD Baby started popping up in the early/mid 2000s in partnership with music download/streaming platforms like Apple iTunes, I jumped aboard this new ship. They allowed individuals to upload their music to make it available. It allowed artists who probably would not have been signed to labels to be able to distribute their music. The idea was that the people decided what they liked instead of the record companies. Due to the low costs, I was able to break into the scene as an "emerging" artist and early adopter. Although I sold some CDs back in the day, eventually this combination of technologies led to most people favoring MP3s. Downloads peaked about 10 years later, and since then it's all been about streaming. My music has been available in all of the major streaming platforms for a long time.
The gatekeepers let me in, and now they're slowly taking things away. The democracy of it has dwindled. They don't pay much (never have), and now they're increasing the gatekeeping to require a certain number of streams in order to receive any pay at all. Some are going so far as to outright remove music if it doesn't get streamed enough. This is the situation I find myself in as an artist with 20+ years of public music availability and over a dozen full-length albums in my released catalog in 2025.
Even if you’re not a songwriter or musician yourself, you’re probably a music fan. Even as just a music consumer, you’ve probably heard by now that it’s fairly inexpensive for anyone to make music inexpensively at home and upload it for online streaming. You can do it on a phone. You’ve also probably heard by now that because it’s so cheap and easy, there’s way, way more music available now than ever before, but also that the songwriters and artists hardly get paid at all for the streams. You might even have an idea that the tech companies and record labels are partially to blame for this, but as a consumer, it’s someone else’s problem, and you don’t really care.
I remember back in the late 90s / early 2000s when my cousin was proud of not only being able to pirate movies/cable TV/software, but also music. He once bragged that he could download any song by any artist and put it on a disc for me for free. It was almost cool to be a hacker and stick it to the man (corporations), and I was impressed, but it felt wrong. As someone who creates music, it made me immediately think songwriters need unions, and that there must be some checks against the capitalism in the music industry. Now more than ever, when AI is creating songs, something must be done. One thing I have going for me is that the music I make is never mistake-free, therefore obviously not made using AI.
Now the streaming platforms + record labels are starting to just straight-up remove (delete) songs that didn’t get streamed enough from people like me. It was bad enough that my thousands of streams have only resulted in a few pennies, but now there’s no chance for it to catch on someday. It doesn’t seem fair, but it doesn’t seem like something that can be stopped either. There are physical servers somewhere with my songs on them that take up some disk space and are apparently too costly. They think they need to draw a line somewhere, and some of my songs (and entire albums, apparently) are below it. There’s that labor for them to make it available to stream, wait a year, check the stats, then remove it, which is apparently less expensive for them in the long run than not removing it.
The way I enjoy listening to music is typical of the experience of most people I know. As a fan of many solo artists and bands, I never do anything except find their music and listen to it. I pay the monthly streaming service fee to be able to access all music by all artists, find what I like, and stream it. Occasionally, I’ll look up more information about their discography on Wikipedia or on their website, where I also might learn a little more about them out of curiosity, but that’s it. I recommend to friends and they make recommendations to me. I appreciate music journalism and algorithmic suggestions for discovery. We need curators and tastemakers to find out about new artists. I occasionally check out the NPR tiny desk concerts online or read their lists of best new artists, for example.
Once in a great while, I’ll go see one of them play live. I’ve bought a t-shirt or two in my day, but otherwise, I’ll never be a superfan who collects vinyl or joins fan clubs to get special VIP stuff. I don’t have any desire to pay a bunch of extra money to be able to meet them backstage or anything. I may check out a music video or live video they have on YouTube, but otherwise, that’s the extent of my involvement with artists I like. I don’t need to know a ton about them. I just like their music, and that’s enough for me.
I subscribe to YouTube Music, and I love it. It’s worth the monthly price for me. I like being able to just tell Google to play a song by an artist on my home speaker, TV, computer, or phone, and it just works. You also get the integrated music videos from regular YouTube, with no ads, and the suggestions of similar stuff you might like. I hardly ever listen to radio, just once in a while in my car. I grew up with radio and going to brick-and-mortar record stores to buy albums, like actual vinyl records. I still own a bunch of cassettes and CDs, but rarely play them. Yes, the quality was better, but it doesn’t trump the convenience I get now. I suspect a majority of people I know consume music the same way I do, only most use either Apple Music or Spotify. YTM is better for many reasons, in my opinion, but that’s a topic for another post.
Since I’m a music artist myself, I imagine most of my fans would enjoy my music in the same manner as I’ve just described above. In fact, I pretty much know that’s the case. Some visit my website to learn a little more about me, some visit my (this) blog to read what I have to say about being an indie/DIY/singer-songwriter and to learn more about any upcoming new music releases, and some check out my music videos on my YouTube channel. Most just like finding my music on their streaming service of choice, and then listening to it at their leisure when they feel like it. They don’t demand anything more from me than that. I like it that way, and so do they.
They say I should be doing so much more. As a music consumer, you don’t care if things have changed, and you hope artists and songwriters get paid, but it’s not a big concern, which I totally understand. I’m supposed to go to extreme lengths now to get noticed more in the public eye, and to cultivate my relationships with you, my slowly growing fanbase, if I want to continue to offset my costs of getting music out to you with royalties. I need a thousand streams of every song, every year, or I won’t get paid. Gotta hustle, do whatever it takes. Keep improving the quality so I sound like a fake major label pop artist while constantly finding ways to get more attention, despite my lo-fi DIY style becoming more popular all the time. I have to do all this to stave off elimination, which is what the powers that be want.
I’m supposed to feel lucky they let me in, in the first place, as they increase their distribution prices to further weed people like me out. Blogging about how I used to make more pennies than I do now – despite increased streaming stats - isn’t going to prompt record labels and streaming services to bend their rules to help people like me out. In fact, the opposite is increasingly true. I’m supposed to be happy they are planning to phase me out so their artists make more, in the name of quality, and not notice what they’re up to.
Biologists would probably confirm the premise is false, and that a frog that is gradually heated in a pot of water will jump out to survive. The metaphor that a frog will not notice and be boiled alive can be used to describe the plight of self-releasing independent music artists.
The music streaming platforms, along with the major record labels, have devised an "artist-centric" model to prevent "content clutter" from DIY hobbyists and "drowning music in a sea of noise".
According to Spotify, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate recorded royalties. Supposedly this is to increase payments to those "most dependent" on streaming revenue, or in other words, artists who are already popular enough and already earning. Labels have the power through their connections and marketing expertise to ensure their new artists meet this threshold.
According to Deezer & Universal Music Group, you don't have a "career" and are not a "professional artist" unless you have a minimum of 1,000 streams per month by a minimum of 500 unique listeners. If you don't meet this threshold as an artist, they don't pay your distributor. In addition, and this is the real kicker, they remove the tracks and albums with "low engagement" (not listened to in the past year) to "declutter" their platform.
The accounting is challenging to decipher, but from what I can tell, the very small amount of money I've made in the last couple of years has been due to one song, "Mackinac Island" that consistently earns over 1,000 streams per year. Before that, I got a small check once in a while, presumably for the streaming royalties of my entire catalog, and I also sold some CDs.
Since the advent of digital aggregator music distribution services in the early 2000s, my streaming counts have slowly increased. I'm established, yet still emerging. The bottom line is that I make less now, despite my catalog slowly catching on and getting more popular.
There are probably not a lot of completely independent, self-releasing solo artists not signed to a label who have released 13 full-length albums like me since this became possible.
Protesting doesn't seem to be something that would make a difference. Marketing, advertising, promotion, publicity, etc. all would probably make a difference. Beyond the obvious - higher quality songs and recordings - these would all require some time and money that I don't have.
Seems like songwriters and artists need to stand up for themselves somehow. The value they bring warrants standing together for change to a more favorable situation with record labels and streaming services. I consider myself a non-performing, "pure" songwriter. It's what I identify with most out of all the things I do, but I don't really know how to go about pitching songs I write to artists, so I mainly write for myself.
I take on a solo recording artist role in my free time outside of my regular non-music-related day job. Since songwriting is a side hustle at best for me, it would be strange to seek out participation in any collective action for solidarity, and if I ever did successfully pitch an artist and get a cut, it would be more of a contractor situation I would imagine. I would love to be a pro staff songwriter full-time.
It is my dream job, but I don't have the current ability to move to Nashville and start networking and pitching and dealing with rejection for years until I got lucky somehow. Seems like a major uphill battle. As aforementioned, I’m kind of old now. I've listed my songwriting services on these creator marketplace sites that have popped up in recent years, with extremely reasonable rates I might add, but have never been contacted by anyone looking for songs. I'm not aware of a union I could join like those for screenwriters.
So, I’m an artist, and I get the distinct impression the record labels/music streaming services would love it if I and those like me quietly went away. They are implementing policies to push me/us in that direction. Since anyone/everyone can make music and upload it inexpensively, there is way more music than ever before, and they want to curb that in whichever way they can get away with while putting a spin on it to make it seem fair and in everyone’s best interest.
Such is the state of the music business. If I jump out of the pot, so to speak, it eliminates my chances of becoming one of those artists who become popular way after they started. Discovery and surges of interest can happen late in careers. Although unlikely, the potential is there if I remain findable and playable. If Deezer stops removing my music, I could be big in France like Daft Punk later in life, you never know. Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones, Bill Withers, and Seasick Steve all experienced popularity surges later in their lives. Thankfully, you can still find and play their early music from before those surges.
Then you have to consider the possibility of posthumous discovery and popularity. Nick Drake comes to mind. I suppose that as with the case of Connie Converse, someone could potentially re-discover my music long after I’m forgotten, only with me they would then need to effectively “re-release” my music to the same music streaming services that had previously removed it due to a lack of popularity in my lifetime.
As a self-releasing independent solo artist not signed to a record label, I’m probably considered by some in the music industry as a “long-tail” artist who has been a victim of the “artist-centric” model imposed by the major record labels and music streaming services, meaning if each song I release doesn’t get at least a thousand streams per year, I don’t get paid any royalties, and further, that I am subject to discretionary outright removal of entire albums due to a lack of popularity.
I’m supposed to be like a frog in a pot of boiling water, happily swimming around unaware that I’m slowly being killed. The “major labels + streaming services” expect me to remain thrilled that a lack of industry gatekeeping in the last couple decades have allowed me to remain findable and playable alongside the ultra-popular artists while they make more money. The already-popular get richer, the rest get nothing. In reality, it seems to be increasingly less than nothing.
I’m in favor of the concept of a flat income tax. By that, I mean if we vote on a percentage, say 20%, then whether you make $50,000 per year or $50,000,000 per year, twenty percent of it goes to the government. I don’t think the rich should pay more than the rest of us. The current reality is that they have the power to hire attorneys and accountants to find and apply tax avoidance loopholes and strategies to pay less than what they should, which isn’t fair to the rest of us. I would vote for a flat tax with no exceptions to be enforced for all Americans.
Existing alongside the greats for a couple decades now, and gaining slow-but-steady traction along the way, I’ve earned my share of the fractions of pennies (until the last couple years when the artist-centric demonetization began to be imposed). Deezer outright removed several of my least popular albums entirely last year without warning or justification, and if you were a major label, you’d want the other mainstream services, or digital service providers, to similarly follow suit for me and any other artist with my same popularity stats or worse.
There will always be alternative places for us – the Soundclouds and Bandcamps – and we’ll be expected to get used to moving our “content” over to them. They’ll tell us we’ll have other ways to monetize – virtual tip jars, etc. Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, etc. will be for the real pros, and the rest of us will need to become accustomed to knowing our place in the minor leagues of music. They’ll tell us to cultivate superfans, do short Tiktok videos about the making of the music, try to sell t-shirts on Shopify, etc., use crowdfunding platforms, and wish us the best of luck. They’ll be happy about the return of their power and profits.
My fans have shown their support primarily via their plays on the streaming services they pay for. Since they are already paying for Spotify or Apple Music, they don’t want to go anywhere else to find Scott Cooley. They like it that my music is available right there in the same place where they stream Beatles, Dylan, Neil Young, etc. They aren’t going out to Soundcloud or Bandcamp because it’s free. That’s what young people do when they can’t afford a music streaming subscription yet. They’re sticking with what they’re already paying for and comfortable with, so my new music needs to be there for them.
It's safe to say I appeal to adults, and am realistically not the type to attract a teenager crowd, which is fine. The Instagram and TikTok users are not my crowd anyway, not likely the demographic I should pursue if you were in charge of marketing me as an artist, right? I know my audience fairly well, and know they’re not a whole lot different with their music consumption habits as I myself am. I like knowing that. So, I’m in a good place, as long as I can stay on the mainstream DSPs, but they seem to want to weed me and others like me out. It’s very cool that the fans decide what they like now, and my breakthrough potential is likely behind me, but I need to remain discoverable in the major leagues of music streaming.
Personally, I’m not the type to crave attention and popularity, never have been. My fans can probably identify with me because of this. I’d like to elevate the audience to more of a fanbase I guess, but I’m not out to aggressively convert everyone to superfandom in any way. I’d like more streams, but I’m not one to focus on building my brand or offering extra special things to reward their loyalty.
They are like me, and they’re not into that kind of stuff anyway. They just like the music, and like knowing when there’s more, and that’s about it. I’m cool with that. They wouldn’t like it if I got relegated to the minors and they couldn’t get my next album on their Spotify or Apple Music they’re used to and instead had to go to some other place and go through the hassle of leaving me a tip once in a while.
Also personally, I want my favorite artists to remain on YouTube Music indefinitely, regardless of how unpopular they are, because I pay for YouTube Music every month and that’s what I like to use to listen to music. They need to stay on there, or I’ll just move on without them I guess, but I’ll be bummed about it…until I forget they ever existed. That can happen.
Years later, something will remind me and I’ll say to myself something like “oh yeah, whatever happened to that artist?” and upon further investigation learn they’ve released several more albums of new music I never found out about that I have to go to Bandcamp to check out, and I probably will go there and check them out, but it would be way better if they were still on YTM.
I think this scenario will unfortunately happen increasingly in the future, and it doesn’t sound ideal to me. Future Nick Drakes won’t be possible. What I mean by this is that there was this cool artist named Nick Drake who released a few albums that hardly anyone bought or heard back in the early 70s, then decades later, people discovered his music and it finally got popular.
People finally realized how great it was, and if it had never been re-issued for streaming, it might not have ever happened. He went from obscurity to fame long after his untimely death as a young man, and it’s great that this was possible. Streaming made it possible for him to remain findable, discoverable, recommendable, and popular to this day.
Popularity threshold failure can not only result in demonetization, it can now result in removal. Does this bother anyone? I don't know. Are corporate record labels desperately hard up for profit these days? Does anyone care? Are they evil? My beef is that they pressured Spotify to give their artists more money by not paying everyone else unless their songs get 1,000 streams per year. They have the huge advantage of their power for promotion and marketing to guarantee their own artists exceed it.
I have one song that gets over 1,000 streams per year, so now that's the only one that will generate any income at all. Deezer took said pressure a step further and just straight up removed some of my albums entirely without warning because they presumably didn't meet their discretionary streaming thresholds. They accepted distribution of my most recent album, but who knows how long they'll keep it available. If I all of a sudden experience a surge in popularity elsewhere, would they reinstate or re-shelve my past releases they removed?
It's annoying and disappointing for those of us who could be the next Nick Drakes of the music business. What I mean by that is he was an artist who released 3 albums in the early 70s that hardly anyone bought. Years later, his popularity saw a steady resurgence, and now a bunch of famous artists list him as an influence. There are so many others, so much music that has seen an increase in appreciation long after release, because it remained available. How long will it be until the majors regain full control of the music business and the gatekeeping power they lost over the last couple decades?
They never would've let me in their exclusive club in the 90s. If the CD Babys, Tunecores and Distrokids of the world didn't exist to offer independent artists the ability to self-release with their inexpensive digital music aggregator distribution services, no one would have ever been able to stream "Mackinac Island" by Scott Cooley. Their trend-chasing, algorithm-driven analytics and business intelligence that makes them decide what kind of music the world should like is pretty out-of-whack right now if you ask me.
The popular stuff keeps getting more manufactured and fake-sounding. The creativity and artistry is being increasingly replaced with A.I. Songwriting now is some digital studio guys in Sweden who just keep creating these "stems" or "beds" of perfectly quantized tracks, then there's a rotating cast of pop "stars" who are young, and good looking, and have dance moves or whatever to come in and sing, then they artificially tune up the vocal to perfection, quickly get them on a photo shoot for Instagram, then on to TikTok to do short videos, and tell the young music fans of the world that this is what they should listen to. Then they pay for popularity, whether via ethical means or otherwise, and force this stuff on us.
Often, you don't know about new businesses and products unless they are advertised to you. You see ads for them on TV or on the internet somewhere, and that's the only way you would've known they existed. You need to be made aware something is available in the first place. Other businesses, products, services, etc. do well via a steady word-of-mouth recommendation. The brick-and-mortars, the mom-and-pops. The MySpaces, Bandcamps and Soundclouds of yesteryear when no corporations were involved. They are the ones I like to give me business to, but they become the “minor leagues” of music if they don’t also offer the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, know what I mean?
I’m not in this to make money, and they know that. There are millions of us. We do it because we love it and because we can. It’s allowed, for the time being. Technology changed the music industry, and temporarily, some of us have been allowed in who maybe would not have been 20 years ago. It’s been fun to have my music be publicly discoverable. It’s been great to earn a few fractions of pennies, but eventually, they’ll remove my music, and relegate me to the minors. I see it coming, and I’m not happy about it, and my fans won’t be happy about it. I could be a future Nick Drake, probably not, but right now I’m feeling like a boiling frog. I’m not smart enough to predict the future, but I would like to think I can read the writing on the wall.
I'm pretty exhausted now, and shouldn't have been bloggin in this state, but I did anyway, and I'm pretty sure I've beaten some dead horses in here, but I'm too tired to edit, so I'll wrap this up and call it a year.
Enjoy my music now on your streaming app of choice while you can. As always, I appreciate your support, in whatever form that may take. Happy holidays!
