The music industry’s long-simmering debate over streaming royalties has officially boiled over. The sudden explosion of AI-generated music has pushed legacy compensation models to their breaking point, exposing a system ill-equipped for a world where anonymous, algorithmically-optimized tracks can dominate the charts. As headlines question the legitimacy of streaming numbers, fans are left wondering where their subscription money is actually going, and artists are questioning a system that seems increasingly easy to game.
This chaos is forcing a reckoning with a problem the industry has kicked down the road for years. We spoke with Thomas Sachson, a technology and entertainment executive whose career puts him squarely at this intersection. As the former Vice President and Head of Monetization for Sony Immersive Music Studios, he argues that before any real progress can be made, the solution must honor the "three Cs: consent, compensation, and credit" for original artists. But to fix the economic model, he proposes a complementary solution rooted in radical simplicity.
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Power to the people: "The simplest solution is to not have the debate. Let the fan decide," Sachson says. For him, the answer isn't to find one perfect economic model, but to empower listeners to choose where their money goes, creating a more meaningful bond between artist and fan. "As a listener, it gives me something other than just the dopamine of listening to the song. It gives me that satisfaction of supporting that artist more directly."
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Stream schemes: The current default for many platforms is a "pooled model," where all subscription fees go into one giant bucket and are divided by total stream share. But this system, Sachson explains, is vulnerable. "With the pooled model, there are ways for a bad actor to generate inauthentic plays," he says, allowing them to siphon more money from the collective pot. An alternative "artist-centric" model, where a user's monthly subscription fee goes directly to the artists they listen to that month, is more resilient. "A system based on artist-centric subscription fees is more difficult to manipulate because bad actors have to pay more to participate, and that might undermine the economics of cheating."
A system based on artist-centric subscription fees is more difficult to manipulate because bad actors have to pay more to participate, and that might undermine the economics of cheating.Thomas Sachson - Technology & Entertainment Executive | Ex-Sony MusicSachson sees real potential in the artist-centric model, especially for emerging talent. Unlike the pooled system, which spreads listener payments across all artists, the artist-centric approach sends a user’s money directly to the musicians they actually listen to. That means superfans can directly support smaller or independent artists, giving them a financial boost that’s otherwise hard to get in today’s system. "The impact of the superfan can drive a higher and better outcome for that smaller artist," he explains.
But he acknowledges that both the pooled and artist-centric models have merit, and in light of AI’s growing influence on the music ecosystem, the best long-term solution may be to simply let fans decide. "Give listeners the option each month to direct their subscription dollars into the pooled model, the artist-centric model, or even split their contribution between the two," Sachson suggests. "As a fan, if I believe the artist-centric model is more fair to human creators, I can reflect that belief by allocating my fees accordingly. And if I’m a superfan of certain artists, I might even be willing to pay a bit more each month for that control."
- Herding cats: Sachson is quick to defend the industry’s tangled infrastructure not as a failure of design, but as a byproduct of its scale and evolution. “This is the miracle of the music industry,” he says, pointing to the sheer complexity of tracking royalties through a labyrinth of songwriters, performers, producers, and rights holders. “You’re talking about herding cats, with billions of little tiny fractions of pennies flying around every single day.” And that chaos is only intensifying as AI-generated content floods the ecosystem, blurring the line between creator and code, and adding even more endpoints to an already overloaded system.
For Sachson, the music industry's current turmoil is just a preview of a much larger technological shift. "I honestly don't think we're even in the first pitch of the first inning of AI and robotics, to be honest." But far from a threat, he sees this as an unprecedented opportunity. "I think it's going to possibly turn every human being on planet Earth into a creator. So this could very well mean the golden age of creativity. There will never be another Mozart who goes undiscovered because these tools enable that talent to surface and be discovered, not only by third parties, but through self-discovery."