The music streaming revolution is here, thanks to these new streaming platformsThe current landscape of music discovery is vast, accessible, and can turn your phone into the echo chamber of everything you love about your favourite artists and genres. But is it killing the music industry?
As of 2022, there were almost 400 million people subscribed to any of the three top music streaming giants, according to Statista. To put that into perspective, that’s the entire population of the United States and Italy combined paying up to £11 a month to access over 100 million songs.

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The pay-per-stream model adopted by all three streaming giants works wonders for the Ed Sheerans of the world, who pockets a breezy £ 7.3 million per song on Spotify according to Cosmopolitan. But the approximate 0.007p per stream fails to impact your average musician’s bank account. In fact, because of this model, in addition to a powerful algorithm that works hard to keep consumers interested, listeners find it harder than ever to discover independent music, making it impossible for some artists to grow any revenue at all.
The EU recognises this problem. In January, members of the European Parliament voted for new legislation to address fairer payouts for musicians across revenue distribution in music streaming. Within the EU Parliament bulletin, three major concerns were recognised and flagged: unfair revenue distribution, an imbalance of visibility between popular and emerging artists and a lack of regulation surrounding AI.
Image: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
While this step is monumental in protecting artists and their music, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen work to fight against the streaming giants. Smaller streaming services have been working hard to tackle many of the above issues for years — democratising music, protecting the artist and their art, retaining the quality of the record, and ensuring that everybody has a chance to be heard without slipping through the cracks of the algorithm. Such streaming services are the new face of music discovery.
Understandably, there is a glaring problem here: the 400 million users of the giants aren’t going to cancel their subscriptions and move over to smaller services that offer a fraction of the music on offer for a higher price — we saw as much with the launch of Tidal. So, something has to change in our understanding of the relationship between the streamer and the artist, knowing that it can’t continue in its current state. At least, not if we want a flourishing global music industry.
Three up-and-coming streaming services have three different approaches to changing the industry, hoping to impact the artist, the consumer, and everyone in between.
A user using Qobuz on a desktop
The new kid on the block
Finding your way as a new business in any industry is not easy, especially when you’re working in a near-monopolised industry. Co-founder of sonu.stream Laura Jaramillo makes this issue blatantly clear. Jaramillo, alongside revered producer TOKiMONSTA, built the streaming service to help “increase the pie” for everybody involved.
“Right now, the economics of streaming are very broken,” she tells MusicTech. “It’s a tragedy that all these other ways that artists show up for the music industry don’t get reflected in what pays for the passive consumption of music.”
sonu.stream leverages Web3 technology — using a blockchain, it traces who creates and owns a song, ensuring that this data cannot be changed or altered. NFTs are often referred to as digital ‘collectibles’ (and notoriously volatile novelties) but Jaramillo sees them as a way to protect artists.
sonu.stream. Image: sonu.stream
“It allows you to create a strong foundation that decentralises the permission for AI-generated music,” she adds. “This kind of progress is only possible through the blockchain and this kind of tech.”
Tony Lashley, founder of Marine Snow and an ex-Spotify employee, has similarly demonstrated his apathy for streaming services that aren’t putting artists first. He hit headlines a year ago announcing that the platform will pay artists equal to 500,00 Spotify streams upfront.
The platform works by having exclusive streaming rights to a song for 90 days. However, Lashley has recently implemented a new structure, where all artists can pay a subscription — if they choose to pay more they’ll have more ownership of the platform, incentivising artists to care more about the platform.

“You can only help artists as much as you can capture money or attention from consumers. Otherwise, you’re building a very fragile ecosystem,” Lashley explains. “These big streaming services are consumer first and artist second, but I do think you have to focus on why consumers will pay for your product. That’s intertwined with how you help artists, and the best businesses are like that. You have to create new forms of value if you want to succeed.”
Meanwhile, Qobuz — described as a “cool record store version of a streaming service” — offers a human-curated collection of high-resolution music for streaming and purchasing.
“We’ve taken on this mantra of an old-school vinyl shop because everything is racing forward and is so algorithmic,” says managing director of Qobuz Dan Mackta. “The aim [of major streaming platforms] is to keep you listening no matter what. They don’t want you to turn it off, so they want to give you something that will go down easy and not make you stop and think ‘do I want to listen to this?’”
“The goal is to be the choice for the aficionados,” he continues. “We only really need to get to one per cent of the streaming market to be widely profitable at our size.”
“You have to create new forms of value if you want to succeed” – Tony Lashley, founder of Marine Snow
Interestingly, all three services, despite having different intentions, all found an issue in the way that the giants distribute music in such a non-selective way ‘en masse’, despite that being the main appeal of the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
“For an artist to be heard or discovered on some of the major streamers it’s all about being playlisted by the editorial, and that process is so opaque,” explains Jaramillo, “It’s what makes and breaks an artist — as well as maybe a TikTok moment.
“It’s fundamentally a flawed model for a main proposition to be around the volume of the content,” adds Lashley. “That makes it very easy for someone to sign up, but very hard to achieve business success when you’re saying that no song is better than any other and we’re going to give you a lot and hope you find what you want.”
Image: Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
How to make a good habit stick
It’s a herculean task to encourage listeners to leave a service that is useful, reliable and has every song at your fingertips. But the way these services are supporting the industry and artists has had an impact on the consumers who are making the switch.
“Marine Snow users are honestly tired of the streaming giants,” Lashley says. ”They may still use them but they want alternative solutions. We’re trying to cultivate a small, avid community rather than a large, dispassionate community. So far, we’ve been able to achieve that.
Interestingly, these ‘giants’ aren’t making much money from the subscriptions, instead mainly making revenue from the stock market, with Spotify’s current market valuation sitting at 53.30 billion dollars. Therefore, their apparent lack of care towards creating a committed community is seemingly not an issue. Instead, it feels as though they just want to make a popular company — something that can be achieved when appealing to the masses.
Image: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
So what would be more beneficial to artists?
“Artists really understand what we’re doing and it’s very much an easy sell for them,” Lashley continues. “Our equity model resonates with them, but decoupling the value of quality versus consumption also resonates with them.
“An artist can think they’ve written a really good song, and it can get 10,000 plays and it’s still a really good song, no matter how many plays it gets.”
“I would rather that the more equitable bedrock is what other streamers can build on top of and share across the different experiences as we get more nuanced with how we enjoy music” – Laura Jaramillo, co-founder 0f sonu.stream
“People are disappointed in these giants and they see sonu.stream as an opportunity for change,” says Jaramillo. “Artists and labels are extremely excited by the opportunity. It’s a chance to make more revenue and single out those people that show up for them.”
However, when it comes to Qobuz, Mackta sees the hesitation that many have moving away from an algorithm towards something that is hand-picked.
“We know that there’s a good fit for a certain kind of music fan, they see it, they get it, and they’re in. Some will write in and say they want more algorithmic, so we’re maybe looking to add an artist radio because people like that. People really dig the human editorial side. They know that there’s someone there listening to the music and writing a review — songs are placed on the front page with intention, and people respond well to that.
“We’re an interesting company at an interesting point in history. We make choices and when people respond positively, it’s the ultimate affirmation that we’re making the right choices and getting great feedback.”
“We don’t exist without the artists that make the music, so they should be getting everything that they deserve” – Dan Mackta, managing director of Qobuz
The future of streaming
The growth in these organisations shows a real mark in how the monopoly of music streaming is shifting. There is a desire for an antidote to the major streamers, and the power that they hold over an artist’s success.
“I’m trying to be the change that I want to see,” says Lashley. “You look at Marine Snow and see the problems in other services. The biggest is that most artists you speak to don’t know how to get others to pay attention to what they’re doing. They just make a song or a TikTok and they pray. That’s really hard and it’s not up to them who gets put on that path to success.
“I want Marine Snow to be one of those first steps in that path, knowing that it will lead to greater success.”
The mood is similar for Mackta, who says that Qobuz “gives a chance to artists that aren’t embraced or featured in mainstream streaming.
“We don’t exist without the artists that make the music, so they should be getting everything that they deserve.”

The core issue with streaming giants is not just how artists are paid, but also who is paid. Given the echo chamber nature of their algorithms, pushing the same or similar artists in the face of listeners to keep them on the app, or the difficulties that many face trawling through the millions of albums and artists to find anything remotely new or niche, these services are lacking the one thing that traditional music shops promote: choice.
It seems diabolical that services brimming with an endless supply of music leave listeners with little to no choice. The lack of transparency over new music and leaving the algorithm to do the work leaves the listener with little control over the outcome.
“I don’t want to live in a world where sonu.stream is the next behemoth streamer,” says Jaramillo. “I would rather that the more equitable bedrock is what other streamers can build on top of and share across the different experiences as we get more nuanced with how we enjoy music.
“Ultimately, it’s about making sure you have the licensing in place for the music that people want to see,” she adds. “That is what will make the user make the switch rather than it just being a ‘better place to be’. We need to give them a reason to keep coming back”.
The power that the streaming giants have in controlling the listening habits of 400 million people should not be understated. There’s a reason why artists, consumers and those who care about the health of the music industry want to act on this power. Maybe it’s time we all start to listen.
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Joe Biden suggests he wants to “ban AI voice impersonation” – a win or loss for musicians?Joe Biden has hinted at the possibility of making AI voice impersonation illegal, which could lead to both positive and negative consequences for music artists as a byproduct.
Per The Verge, the US President briefly brought up the topic during the State of the Union address last week (March 7) but didn’t expand much further on any potential proposals.

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The idea is likely to have a mostly political purpose given that there was recently a spate of robocalls using an AI voice clone of the President attempting to dissuade people in New Hampshire from voting. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) subsequently issued a ban on such calls.
However, a total ban on AI voice impersonation would hold important ramifications for the arts and entertainment world. On one hand, artists could rest easy knowing the likeness of their voice isn’t being used for nefarious purposes, or as a way to earn money without fair compensation, but on the other, it could stifle creativity, and penalise those who use the technology fairly and give credit where it’s due.
Many musicians have been critical of the concept of AI impersonating their voices – Ariana Grande, for example, recently hit out at people attempting to recreate her voice using the technology, branding it “terrifying”.

In contrast, other artists have been more positive about the possibilities AI could bring to music, such as Damon Albarn, who said he was curious about the concept of posthumous AI releases following the success of The Beatles’ final song Now And Then, whose release was only made possible by the technology.
“It’s a question of scale: if enough people are interested, there could be hundreds of my songs released after my death, including songs that I would never have wanted to release,” he told Les Inrockuptibles. 
Grimes is another artist who has expressed particular openness towards the use of AI, saying last year that she thought it was “cool to be fused with a machine” and later launched AI software allowing users to mimic her voice in songs. Despite that, she recently performed a DJ set at an event calling for looser regulations of artificial intelligence, before telling the crowd that she is against “the sentiment of this party”.
Despite this, AI recreations of vocals have been continually doing the rounds on social media in recent years. One notable example was a song created by an artist named Ghostwriter977 called Heart On My Sleeve, featuring vocals which sounded like they were recorded by The Weeknd and Drake.
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The loneliness of the robotic humanoidPerhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, however, Digit stands alone at the supply chain show. It’s a testament to Agility’s healthy head start over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year […]
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Celestion Introduces Truvox 0615 LoudspeakerCelestion, manufacturer of professional audio loudspeakers for sound reinforcement, has introduced the Truvox 0615, a new six-inch mid-bass driver focused on superior quality at an affordable price point across a wide variety of use cases. Applications in which the Truvox 0615 excels include replacing six-inch drivers in fixed P.A. installations, OEM use in new portable or fixed cabinet construction, improvement upon factory car audio speakers, or virtually any situation where a compact, lightweight driver must perform bass-midrange or even primary woofer duties.  The Truvox 0615 is equally at home as the principal woofer in two-way cabinets or as the mid-bass/midrange element in three-way systems. It is also an ideal choice for door placement in cars, as many vehicles share its mounting specifications.

 The Truvox 0615 is the first member of a new product family drawing on Celestion’s long tradition of the company producing high-performing general-purpose speakers as well as the world’s most sought-after drivers for guitar amplification. Truvox was a brand known for its P.A. speakers throughout the mid 20th century, and in 1949, purchased the company then known as Rola Celestion. Thus, the Celestion brand added a broad range of P.A. drivers to its stable. Celestion will expand the Truvox line throughout 2024 to include eight-, ten-, 12-, and 15-inch sizes. True to Celestion’s ethos, each model will combine rigorous research and development with today’s best materials science, manufacturing processes, and quality assurance metrics. Celestion thus aims to make Truvox speakers the obvious choice when end users and installers alike are in search of outstanding value that refuses to sacrifice quality. “This latest incarnation brings the famous Truvox brand back to life in the form of a superior performing sound reinforcement transducer,” says Celestion Head of Marketing Ken Weller. “The Truvox 0615 meets or exceeds competitors’ specifications in all areas, with greater power handling and at a competitive price.” Learn more about the Truvox 0615 on Celestion’s product page here.

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Playing ZX Spectrum’s Manic Miner on the Arduino UnoComposite output shield with audio driver and controller inputs for Arduino Uno (Credit: Scott Porter)
Although it seems many have moved on to 32-bit MCUs these days for projects, there is still a lot of fun to be had in the 8-bit AVR world, as [Scott Porter] demonstrates with a recent Arduino Uno project featuring his game engine running a port of the Manic Miner game that was originally released in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum. For the video and audio output he created an add-on board for the Uno that creates a composite signal using two resistors, along with an audio driver circuit and control inputs either from the onboard buttons or from a NES controller. Audio can be sent either over the composite output or via the audio jack.
A demonstration of the game is provided in a number of videos on [Scott]’s YouTube account, which shows off a few levels, at 256×256 resolution. It contains all 20 original levels, with a few quality of life upgrades with animation. It also features original music, which may or may not work for you, but music can be turned on or off in the main menu. Compared to the 3.5 MHz Z80 MPU in the ZX Spectrum, the 16 MHz AVR of the Uno is a lot beefier, which raises the hope that a color version like the ZX Spectrum one is also in the future, even if it may require an add-on board with a framebuffer. As [Scott] notes, the weakness of the Uno is that the ZX Spectrum has significantly more RAM, which limits what can be done.
Thanks to [256byteram] for the tip.

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Hack Makes Microwave Cookies Fast and Not TerribleMaking a chocolate chip cookie is easy. Making a good chocolate chip cookie is a little harder. Making a good chocolate chip cookie quickly is a pretty tall order, but if you cobble together a microwave and a conventional oven, you just might get delicious and fast to get together.
The goal of this Frankenstein-esque project is to build a vending machine that can whip up a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie on demand and make [Chaz] wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. We’re guessing at that last part; for all we know his goal is world peace through instant cookies. We’re fine with the idea either way, and his previous work on the project resulted in a semi-automatic cookie gun to splooge the dough out in suitable dollops.
The current work is turning those into something edible, for which a microwave seems a logical choice. Experience tells us otherwise, so off to the thrift store went [Chaz], returning with a used air fryer. He ripped the guts out of a small microwave, slapped the magnetron onto the side of the air fryer, and discovered that this was officially A Bad Idea via a microwave leakage tester. Round 2 went the other way — adding a conventional heating element to a large microwave. That worked much better, especially after close-up video revealed the dynamics of microwave cookery and the best way to combine the two cooking modalities. The result is a contraption that makes a pretty tasty-looking two-minute cookie. World peace, here we come!
Of course there’s plenty to say about the safety of all this, much of which [Chaz] himself cops to in the video. It’s important to remember that he’s just prototyping here; we’re sure the final machine will be a little more sophisticated than a heat gun duct-taped to the side of a microwave. Those cookies aren’t going to bake themselves, though, so you’ve got to start somewhere.

Air are playing Moon Safari in full at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate its 25th anniversaryAir’s seminal debut album Moon Safari turned 25 last year and to celebrate, the electronic duo have recently been playing the album in full at a slew of shows across the UK and Europe. Following its success, with all dates selling out, they’re going one bigger by announcing more dates, including a show at London’s legendary Royal Albert Hall.
The duo will be coming to the capital in a couple of weeks for a date at the Coliseum Theatre on 24th March, but they’ll soon be back to play the prestigious Royal Albert Hall on 30th May.

READ MORE: Joe Biden suggests he wants to “ban AI voice impersonation” – a win or loss for musicians?

“We were a duo doing some electronic thing, dreaming of selling 10,000 copies and being recognised by other musicians as cool,” says AIR’s Jean-Benoît Dunckel in a press release. “Then suddenly, we met the world.”
In addition, they also have numerous dates lined up across various European festivals, including Spain’s Sonar Festival, France’s Days Off, Zitadelle Spandau in Berlin and Medastadt Open Air in Vienna – find tickets at their official website.

Their current run of dates marks the first occasion they’ve ever played the 1998 album in its entirety live. In addition, they have commemorated its landmark birthday with a reissue containing a remastered version with Dolby Spatial Atmos, along with rare or previously unreleased tracks. It also contained Mike Mill’s 1998 documentary film Eating, Sleeping, Waiting & Playing, filmed during the band’s first ever worldwide tour.
Moon Safari spawned singles including Kelly Watch The Stars, All I Need and Sexy Boy, which not only put AIR on the map but had an influence on the late 20th century output of artists from David Bowie to Madonna and Beck. Its impact has also continued to be felt in modern music, such as through the music of Tame Impala.
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Karno form SMK distribution arm Karno's existing distribution will now be handled by a new SMK brand, allowing them to continue developing their own technologies and products.