UK music stars young and old - including Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Robert Plant, Stevie Nicks, Sting, Roger Daltrey, Chris Martin, Kano, Noel Gallagher, Mike Skinner, Damon Albarn, Wolf Alice, and around 150 others - have called on the UK government to reform the way musicians are paid when their songs are streamed online, NME reports. They point out that "songwriters earn 50% of radio revenues, but only 15% in streaming". On streaming services, labels retain the majority of the money - with the artist receiving about 13% on average, and session musicians receiving nothing.

Apple Music has published last week that their average per play rate is $0.01, which is roughly double what Spotify pays the artists. But it's not that simple - MBW and Trapital explain Apple Music's and Spotify's models, their reach, the number of users, and how much exactly they pay to the labels (not directly to the artists, actually). Variety also points out, with word of an unnamed executive, that the best option is "a lot of users streaming a lot of music”, which would in return mean a lower per-stream rate. For example, if one artist were racking up a high percentage of streams on a less-popular streaming service, their per-stream rate would be quite high — but they’d actually have fewer streams than they would on a site with more users. Spotify has an industry-leading 155 million paying subscribers and 345 million active users, according to its most recent report, while Apple last reported more than 60 million Music subscribers in June 2019.

Apple Music told artists and labels it pays a penny per stream, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apple's penny-per-stream payment structure is roughly double what Spotify, the world's largest music-streaming service, pays music-rights holders per stream. Spotify pays an average of about one-third to one-half penny per stream. However, Spotify's larger user base generates many more streams.

The staff of The Verge recommend their favorite music straming services:

Radio Dismuke, a little-known streaming service with a constant diet of pop and jazz from the early part of the last century

Soma FM - has tons of different genre stations

YouTube Music - incomparable catalog

8tracks - lets users upload playlists of at least eight songs, possible to get three skips per playlist per hour

KEXP - consistently excellent music selection by the public radio station based in Seattle

Aux Live - a music-focused service with a range of live concerts and documentaries

Qobuz - a place with higher-resolution music

Spotify - a nice user interface and compatibility with almost every piece of streaming hardware on the market

Apple Music - does a great job of syncing all of the music across devices

Live Music Archive - over 200,000 concerts in lossless audio quality for free

"I love streaming. I stream a lot of music myself. The access we have to all kinds of music from all over the world is incredible. But I believe streaming must be fixed" - Nadine Shah tells the Guardian about the issue ahead of a publication of the UK parliamentary report about it. She and other artists, such as Nile Rodgers, Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, as well as songwriters for stars such as Kylie Minogue, have hit out at an “archaic” streaming model that allows major labels to maximise their revenue while some musicians struggle to make minimum wage.

Catalytic Sound, a cooperative organization comprising 30 avant-garde instrumentalists and composers, launched their own streaming platform Catalytic Soundstream. It charges listeners $10 per month for between 100 and 150 albums available at any given time and new ones swapped in and out every day, including records by out-jazz and free improv luminaries live Joe McPhee, Tomeka Reid, Tashi Dorji, Ikue Mori, claire rousay, Chris Corsano, and Luke Stewart. The majority of the albums include a note from one of the partners, Pitchfork reports.

The European independent music companies’ association proposed a 10-point plan to reform the streaming economy. IMPALA has some good ideas: higher payouts for longer songs; higher payouts for tracks that users specifically search for (as opposed to encountering them via playlists or radio); assuring there will be no features that recreate elements of payola; boost local repertoire and languages.

Routenote brings the numbers in - lists the ten largest music streaming services by number of tracks in their catalogue. The undisputable No. 1 is SoundCloud with 200 million songs, Deezer follows with 72 million songs, while the next five - Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon, Qobuz - host around 70 million songs each. Napster follows with 60 million, while YouTube Music and KKBOX round up the Top 10 with 50 million songs each.

Music streaming increased 13.4% in 2020 in the US compared to 2019, generating $10.1 billion last year compared to $8.9 billion in 2019, according to RIAA. Music streaming is accounting for 83% of the total revenue of the industry now. Vinyl sales have increased a whopping 29.2% to $619.6 million, compared to $479.5 million in 2019. Streaming has driven the industry to grow for the fifth consecutive year, with revenues increasing 9.2% in 2020, generating $12.2 billion in total.

Performers and songwriters "make all this stuff and we are last in the chain when it comes to remuneration", Blur drummer David Rowntree - now a city councillor - told BBC about unfair music streaming payments to songwriters and artists. "If something isn't done about it, that is terminal for the music industry" he said - "bands like mine will be fine, but the next generation of bands will be hit - bands living hand-to-mouth like we did for the first 10 years".