For Musicians, A Way To Turn Streams Of Pennies Into Streams Of Dollars

Over the past 18 months, much of the conversation about streaming has revolved around the tiny royalty rates paid out by services. That’s part of what prompted Taylor Swift to pull her music from Spotify—and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke to dub the Swedish company “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.”

Indeed, per-stream rates are usually just a fraction of a cent, derided by many as “a stream of pennies.” Spotify pays rights holders an average between $0.006 and $0.0084 for every spin,...