In the 2020s, You’ll Be Paid More for Reacting to Music than You Will for Making It
Whether you’re a maker or a consumer of music (and I happen to be both), it’s clear that in the last twenty years, and especially in the 2020s, careers and communities are increasingly (and arguably to a disproportionate extent) built online.
Back in the summer of 2024, I discovered a content creator who made a genre of YouTube videos I’d previously not experienced: reaction videos. Their content is exactly what it sounds like: videos of them listening to full albums by different artists and reacting in real time, often providing their critique on songwriting, performance and production at the completion of each song. Their YouTube content is shortened versions of their full-length streams on Twitch; back in July 2024, they had just under 850,000 subscribers on YouTube; as of today, May 29, 2025, they’ve surpassed 1.01 million. This creator has successfully parlayed their audience on both platforms into a sizable Patreon community. But a recent discovery made me realize just how successful they are: after doing some simple math--calculating their monthly subscription tiers by total patrons on Patreon, all public information on their own Patreon page—I discovered that this creator is generating, at least $5.7 million annually in revenueon Patreon alone, assuming every user is subscribed at the lowest tier: 5 dollars a month.
$5.7 million a year. For making videos of themselves reacting to music.
Nearly half a million dollars—every month—paid directly to one creator, just to watch them react to listening to music? A generous take on the reaction-video-maker phenomenon is that it could, quite possibly, be regarded as the burgeoning new era of music journalism. But since when are music journalists making half-a-million dollars a month to offer their two-cents on what music is good? And when, if ever in history, did music journalists ever out-earn the people they reported on?
So what's the problem here? Is there one? If people love what you make, and they're willing to pay you for it, why wouldn't you say yes? In a way, isn't that the dream? Maybe even the American Dream? But once I understood the math, it started to bother me—not emotionally, but ethically.
This creator earns several dollars per person, directly, just for reacting to music. Meanwhile, in the post-internet era, actual creators of music—the artists or even just the rights holders themselves—have not had nearly as direct or lucrative a path to compensation, at least not through mainstream platforms.
Spotify Premium costs $11.99 per month — or as low as $5.99 with a student discount. That’s comparable to the $5 and $10 Patreon tiers this creator offers. In other words: for roughly the same price one can pay to watch one person react to music, they can pay to Spotify to access the entire global music catalog. But while a Patreon subscription goes almost entirely to the creator, a Spotify subscription gets split, pro-rata, in tiny micro-fractions, between countless artists, labels, songwriters, and rights holders around the world.
How does it make sense that a person making videos of themselves reacting to music—music they stream through Spotify—is being compensated as though they are Spotify? They’re earning full-value, direct-to-creator income from the emotional world that the original artists created.That economic inversion should be setting off alarm bells, not just for artists, but for anyone who cares about the future of music.
It’s striking that someone reacting to music can earn millions annually through direct support —
while the artists who created the music still operate in a system where it can be a challenge to earn the equivalent of a minimum-wage income.
Again, this isn’t an attack on the creator — or on any reaction video makers or content creators.The sad reality is, in my time in and around the music industry, I’ve seen how many artists, label teams, and other members of the industry have become exhausted by the fight for fairness in streaming and have effectively thrown in the towel. After years of trying to raise the issue, many have given up: not because it stopped mattering, but because for whatever reason it was too challenging to impart upon the consumer in a meaningful way.
It’s understandable, when back in the early 2000s the industry was reeling from widespread piracy and illegal MP3 downloads. iTunes and eventually streaming emerged over the decades that followed as an imperfect solution with virtually no visible alternative. Even if the payouts were small, it was at least something — at a time when “something” meant the survival of the industry itself. Making some money was certainly better than making none at all.
But 25 years later, the landscape has changed. Today, content creators use subscription models on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Patreon to sell virtual content directly to consumers. They're being compensated directly and generously—while consumers likely have no idea how much more generous they're being to these creators than to the musicians they love.
This being said, it is arguable, despite the inequities it points to, that this moment—of the prevalence and success of direct-to-creator, exclusive digital content subscriptions—very well might be the greatest opportunity the music industry has had in over 20 years to revisit this issue. The rationale that people aren’t willing to pay for entertainment if it doesn’t take the shape of a physical product, while true and massively disruptive 25 years ago, simply no longer holds weight. People do it, somewhat thoughtlessly, all the time.
The fact that, in the case at hand, almost 100,000 people are willing to pay a guy whose vibes they like enough, to watch him sit and listen to albums for hours, completely counters two of the most persistent, negative narratives I hear in the music industry. First: that audiences aren’t willing to pay for music. Second: that young people don’t care about albums anymore.
These beliefs aren't rooted in malice—they're rooted in exhaustion. They reflect a collective disillusionment from years of watching the streaming economy fall short of its promise, combined with what I'd argue is an over-investment in incomplete data. I can't say whether reaction video creators and their economics come up in label meetings, but I hope they do. They should.
The fact that people are paying $5, $10, even $20 a month to subscribe to creators who react to music proves something powerful: audiences are absolutely willing to pay for music-related digital content when the experience feels personal, emotional, and direct, rooted in true music appreciation. This strongly suggests that consumers today would pay to support artists directly, if given the right opportunity and information.
While reaction creators may brand themselves as everyman figures, they're out-earning most artists, songwriters and producers by an extreme margin—to an extent that would likely shock their subscribers. This is exactly why we need to reinterpret consumer behavior. It's no longer valid to suggest that 'consumers just aren't willing to pay for music.' They clearly are, just not in ways that are obvious to the industry, or even to themselves
According to a 2018 study conducted by the University of Michigan and published in the journal Psychology of Music (in part popularized CBS Detroit’s reporting of said study,) fans listen to their favorite song an average of 650 times per year. This kind of high-frequency engagement became increasingly common during the rise of streaming platforms. The study found that 86% of participants listened to their favorite song daily or a few times a week, and 43% of daily listeners replayed it at least three times a day.
Based on Spotify’s payout range of $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, the streaming behavior of a fan’s favorite song might earn the rights holder between $1.95 and $3.25 per year, on average. On Apple Music, that behavior would generate about $6.50 per year for the rights holder; on Tidal: $8.13.
Now let’s say that same fan is a big enough fan to buy the vinyl. Vinyl records have experienced a significant resurgence, with revenues growing 7% to $1.4 billion in 2024, marking the 18th consecutive year of growth. Notably, vinyl accounted for nearly 75% of all physical format revenues, and for the third year in a row, vinyl albums outsold CDs in units.
Interestingly, many vinyl purchasers don't own record players. Instead, they buy vinyl as a tangible representation of their musical taste and identity, and utilize it as home decor, or a visual identity signifier to create content with to share on social media, as a way to express themselves. This behavior underscores that consumers of music still are real fans: they have enough emotional resonance with the work of their favorite artists to buy something with little functional value for them, just because they love it. It shows an appreciation for and willingness to invest in music, even when what’s being purchased is not being used as the medium for listening at all.
With many modern vinyl editions (available at Urban Outfitters, let’s say) priced at $50, and with the rights holder typically receiving 30% of that sale, the copyright holder would earn approximately $15 (and with the records available at that particular venue, the rights holder is the record label most often and not the artist, though they may receive a cut of that, depending on their deal structure.)
That same $15 could also be earned over three months of a $5/month direct-to-creator subscription for exclusive digital content — a decision that may feel casual to the subscriber, even easily forgettable. But for the artist, that low-friction subscription generates predictable, recurring income that is nearly impossible to generate by any other means. Even on the highest-paying platform, Tidal: one listener’s streaming behavior, assuming the artist made their favorite song that year, earns the copyright holder just over half of 15 dollars— in one year of favorite song listening.
Unlike streaming — where the copyright holder is paid only when the fan actively engages — a subscriber on Patreon or a similar service might remain subscribed to the artist because they like the access, the updates, or just the feeling of supporting their favorite artists directly.
It is my belief that the average music fan today isn’t willfully underpaying. They may be aware that streaming doesn’t pay much, but they often have no idea of the full extent of things.
Putting real numbers in context — $3.25 for daily listening vs. $15 for a vinyl purchase or three months of direct-to-creator support — helps clarify what the current system obscures:
It’s not that people won’t pay for music. It’s that we haven’t yet figured out a way to do it that has adapted to the 2020s — where people are more than willing to pay $5 a month or more for exclusive digital content, direct-to-creator.
If we’re serious about making streaming more fair and sustainable for music creators,
maybe it’s time to rethink what a streaming subscription could actually look like.Maybe the future of streaming doesn’t mean simply raising the monthly price for everyone.Maybe it means rethinking the structure entirely — building in both a platform fee and a direct-to-artist model.
Imagine a two-part subscription:
1) A baseline “access” fee that goes to the platform itself — Spotify, Apple Music, etc. — covering infrastructure and operations.
2) A direct-to-artist subscription layer, allowing listeners to support the artists they care about most, intentionally and transparently.
A model like this wouldn’t just be sellable — it could actually benefit everyone, including the listener.
Because when it comes to what people are willing to pay for music, it needs to be understood that how much people might be willing to pay for music might not have as much to do with the dollar amount as much as how much sense it makes to them, which seems easier-done and more happily done when the consumer knows that the artists they care about the most are getting compensated for directly.
This isn't about blaming creators who have figured out how to monetize their presence. It's about asking why the people who create the actual work that fuels those reactions — the artists, the writers, the producers — still don’t have access to that same level of support.
If thousands of people are willing to pay $5 or $10 a month to watch someone listen to an album, it’s not because they don’t value music. It’s because the psychology of how we support art has changed — and the structures for supporting musicians haven’t caught up.
Maybe we need to pay closer attention and notice that they are, but that how they are has changed. Perhaps we stop tasking the consumer with the responsibility of monitoring the inequities of the music industry, and take a second to recognize how the tide has turned. Maybe the real question is: “What would happen if we gave them a clear way to do it?”
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