Spotify

The music industry has been halved since the early 2000s. It’s simultaneously full of innovation and rife with problems, the biggest of which is the issue of payment. As music proliferates, how do musicians track who is listening to their music and where? Most importantly, how do they get paid?

David Lowery’s blog has ignited a discussion over how much, or how little, online streaming radio services, like Pandora and others, pay to musicians. Lowery says his song, Low, was played more than 1 million times on Pandora, for which he received just $16.89.

Getting your music off of the internet needn’t land you in court; several legal services now have catalogs voluminous enough to satisfy most appetites.