Music industry executives capture billions while paying musicians near zero per stream.

Evidence

The experience of the top executives and financial vultures in the music industry is somewhat different: when UMG went public through an IPO in 2021, executive Vincent Bolloré’s stake was worth nearly 10 billion and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square hedge fund held a 5.4 billion stake. Daniel Ek, cofounder of Spotify, has amassed over 4 billion dollars by paying musicians around 0.004 per stream. In 2022, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino had the biggest paycheck and the widest CEO-to-worker pay gap of any Fortune 500 executive, with $139 million, 5,414 times as much as his firm’s median pay. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 232