a simple but illuminating model from @createos:
if you an artist in an 80/20 label/artist royalty deal with a $300,000 advance, $80,000 recording budget and $150,000 marketing budget, your music would need to generate over 500M streams before you make just $1 on the backend.

play around with it >>>> https://dealsim.createos.app/ 

now let's plug in Kanye's contracts.

his sixth album was a 50/50 net profit split deal with an $8M advance (which is big!) and a $4M "recording fund." UMG took a ~25% "distribution fee."

with no marketing costs, Ye still needs to generate 3.2B streams to make $1 in royalties.

another point is that if your record does well in an 80/20 label/artist deal — which, in some circles, is "artist-friendly" — the label makes a ton of $$$ before the artist recoups! in the first example above, the label made almost $1.6M in profit before the artist made a dollar.

let's do one last example that's a bit more realistic for indie labels: $30K advance, $5K recording budget, $10K marketing budget, 75/25 label/artist royalty split.

the artist still needs 36 million streams before they recoup costs and start earning royalties. this is not easy!!

you can project onto this whether you think a label deal is a good or bad idea. personally, that wasn't my point. the fact that so many people are seeing this kind of clear financial modeling around a supposedly more "transparent" industry for the first time? THAT is the story.