Detroit Mayor-elect city council president Mary Sheffield has joined U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib in a fight against record companies they say aren’t fairly compensating artists.
Tlaib recently reintroduced the the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which aims to increase the compensation that musicians receive when their music plays on streaming services.
The bill would create a new streaming royalty to compensate artists and musicians more fairly when their music plays on streaming services.
Currently, musicians make tiny fractions of a penny per stream, making it difficult for professional artists to support themselves, Tlaib said in a video posted to Instagram this week.
Streaming services have become the dominant method of music consumption, accounting for 84% of total recorded music revenue in the United States in 2024, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Revenues from paid subscription services have grown for 9 consecutive years and reached $11.7 billion in 2024, the recording association reports.
According to Luminate’s year-end report, there were more than 4.8 trillion songs streamed on demand in 2024.
Although the royalty rate varies slightly across streaming platforms, many artists earn a royalty rate as low as $0.003 per stream. At that rate, it would take more than 800,000 monthly streams for a recording artist to earn the equivalent of a $15-per-hour full-time job.
“Detroit and the surrounding region is home to thousands of artists who significantly contribute to the cultural landscape and continue the City’s global legacy as a hub of music and its significant contributions across various genres including soul, funk, R&B, rock,
blues, jazz, hip-hop, and techno,” Detroit legislative policy director David Whitaker wrote in Sheffield’s resolution.
Council president asked the legislative policy division to draft a resolution earlier this month.
Marcus Miller of of Menace Media came to council Tuesday to thank Sheffield and council for backing the effort to raise the payout for streaming artists.
“We built the middle class here, made it a viable thing for people to have a 40 hour working week; right here in Detroit,” Miller told Michigan Chronicle Tuesday.
Artists typically are able to make money from merchandise, sponsorships, gigs and touring, Miller says. The amount record labels and streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music take affects artists with big and small audiences alike.
“If you’re generating X amount up here, but you’re only getting X amount down here, it’s like for this to be a viable career you have to lessen that gap.”
The bill would direct a portion of streaming platforms’ subscription and non-subscription
revenue to a non-profit distribution fund that would pay artists proportionately to their
monthly streams. It also includes a maximum payout per track, per month, to generate more sustainable income for a broader and more diverse set of artists.
Sheffield has been a long supporter of the city’s hip-hop and entertainment community, hosting rappers at her annual Occupy the Corner events.
Sheffield has defended rappers against pearl clutching critics, saying she uses hip-hop as an instrument “to bridge the gap” and get more civic engagement.
“I actually got pushback when I first got in office because I associated with so many artists in the hip-hop community,” Sheffield told Axios in 2024 at a gun buyback and job fair her office hosted on the eastside.
