The pandemic vs. the leverage of gigantic music streaming platforms over artists

Opus Foundation
2 min readJan 7, 2022

It probably comes as no surprise to you that most of the artists around the globe barely make a living out of their music. It is only a small fraction of popular musicians that can sustain themselves purely out of this source. Nonetheless, even among them, the pandemic has had a detrimental effect — mostly because in today’s world one of the biggest, if not in many cases the biggest source of income for the artists are live performances.

Given the imposed restrictions on public gatherings, it quickly became obvious that these are not going to return any time soon in many countries globally. Such a situation meant that the artists have been living at the mercy of the streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music, whose leverage over those behind the music have been furtherly increased.

The industry leaders’ offerings in terms of how big percent of artists’ revenues they actually receive are most likely only going to decrease given the current trends. Once again, platforms might simply try to benefit from the hardship artists are going through.

Nonetheless, there is a huge potential for change. Opus offers over 90% of artists’ revenues to the artists, compared to around 60% offered by the current industry leaders. Be a part of the change. Together, we can move heaven and earth — alone we can do nothing. Join Opus now and contribute to the transformation of the music industry.

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Opus Foundation

Opus is a open-source decentralized music sharing platform with demo based on Ethereum and IPFS.