109MUSIC · The Money Side
The
Money Side
Royalties, rights, contracts and how the industry actually pays.
How the money works
The pieces that explain the machinery. These do not expire.
Market your release like JENNIE: one drop, two productsMonths of live seeding before any announcement, a reveal split across two dates, a digital EP of 3 tracks against a physical of 6, and 3 random photocards from a pool of 9 in every order. Five mechanics from the Fallen Angel rollout that scale down to independent budgets.
4 new ways your music pays in 2026Four revenue lanes opened for independent artists in one month: paid fan remixes on Spotify through the Merlin deal, TikTok LIVE gifts on original songs, SoundCloud's hand-picked The Upload, and YouTube fan funding that stays at 500 subscribers while ad thresholds double in 2027.
Spotify deleted 75 million tracks. What it means for youSpotify removed about 75 million spam and AI-generated uploads in 12 months and begins badging AI acts in mid-September 2026. Badged profiles are excluded from personalised recommendations by default, which hands recommendation slots back to human catalogues.
What just changed
The same subject as it happens. These also appear in News, in date order.
Global streams up 9.8%, but US growth is half thatLuminate's midyear 2026 report puts global on-demand streams up 9.8 percent to 2.8 trillion, while US growth reached only 4.8 percent. CD sales rose 16 percent and Spanish-language music now takes roughly 10 percent of US streams.
EU AI Act labeling rules are now in forceSince 2 August 2026, AI-generated or AI-edited audio and video distributed in the EU must be labeled, with machine-readable markings required. The rules affect any artist using generative tools in their music or their content.
SoundCloud's The Upload picks emerging tracks with no follower minimumSoundCloud launched The Upload on 3 August 2026: a weekly human-curated discovery playlist with editorial commentary and no follower requirement, positioned as an answer to algorithmic fatigue.
Bespoke work
We run this for artists, not just write about it.
Meta ads, release planning and playlisting for independent artists. Tell us what you are putting out and we will tell you straight whether we can move it.
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