The Price of Play: Why Musicians Are Having To Pay To Reach Their Own Fans

Payola was once the music industry’s dirty little secret.

Record labels funnelled cash to radio stations—sometimes via brown envelopes, sometimes through more creative perks—all to secure airtime for their artists. It wasn’t about what listeners wanted. It was about who could afford to play the game.?

The scandal broke wide open bringing a flurry of hearings and the eventual criminalisation of the practice. Payola, we were told, was over.

But recent conversations raise a?question already asked around the industry.

Is it back?

Over lunch yesterday I was venting to a friend in the industry about a recurring frustration: despite all the data Spotify has about me—what I listen to, like, download, add to playlists, as well as the artists I follow—it can’t seem to manage the one thing I actually want it to do: tell me when an artist I love has released new music.

“That’s easy,” they said…“That’s because the artist hasn’t paid to have Spotify tell you they have a new release”.

Spotify has long claimed to champion discovery, touting algorithmic playlists like?Discover Weekly?and?Release Radar?as tools for connecting listeners to music they may?love.

And to be fair, the platform has delivered on some of that promise—breaking artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish while giving independent musicians unprecedented access to global audiences in ways radio never could.

But what about connecting listeners to music and artists that they already?love?

That is different story altogether.

To be clear, this isn't anything new: It is a story that those within the music industry know all too well. However, it is a story that many fans and listeners may be surprised to hear, and one that needs revisiting given the ongoing challenges being faced by those in the creative community.

In 2021, Spotify introduced?Discovery Mode, a program that allows artists and labels to boost their visibility in exchange for reduced royalties. It’s not a direct payment, but the logic is clear: sacrifice short-term revenue to (maybe) get on more playlists, where the real money might lie. In addition, Spotify now offers paid notifications to artists—allowing them to pay for alerts to be sent to their followers.

In the days or radio payola, labels were forced to use their financial muscle to dominate the airways. Today, Spotify—the self-proclaimed great equaliser of the industry—is recreating similar dynamics.

While the mechanics have evolved, the core problem hasn’t: artists are still being asked to pay to reach audiences who should, by all rights, be hearing from them already.

The industry is pitched "tools to empower artists". But in reality, Discovery Mode wasn’t designed to enhance fandom; it was designed to gate-keep it. The growing disconnect between artists and fans isn't a bug—it is a feature in service of the platform.

Some might say that the market dynamics of programs like?Discovery Mode?might seem like a win-win. The platform gets paid, and artists get their music in front of more listeners. But that framing ignores the fundamental inequity at play. For major labels, the cost of participation is just another line item in the budget. They’ll pay what they need to maintain dominance. Independent labels and artists, meanwhile, are left in an impossible position: either participate in a system that squeezes their already slim margins, or risk not reaching your audience and fan community.

In a streaming economy that already undervalues artists and songwriters, should access to fans—especially your?own fans—be something you must pay for?

Visibility is no longer something you earn through talent, hard work, or even luck—it’s something you rent.

Is it really payola?

Some would suggest this is just retail merchandising in a digital wrapper. After all, brands pay for premium shelf space in grocery stores, movie studios pay for prime billboard placements, and clothing companies shell out for the best spots in department stores. Why should music be different, especially in an era where attention is scarce, and competition is everywhere?

In my mind, those comparisons fall apart when you consider the context.?

Spotify isn't a marketplace—it is the primary gatekeeper to music discovery. They’ve replaced radio, music television, and record store assistants as the primary curator of what we listen to. In that role, they wield enormous power, especially with algorithms that shape our experience based on opaque factors outside of subscribers’ control. This isn’t about a musician’s "product" competing for space on a shelf—it’s about paying a toll to access new fans and more importantly, the fans those musicians have already earned.

In a world where streaming is the dominant medium for music consumption, this distinction matters.

While Spotify isn't breaking the law, they are breaking something arguably more important: the bond between artists and their fans.

If the system tilts toward those who can afford to pay—and those who are already popular—it becomes a closed loop. The most resourced players keep dominating, while new voices struggle to break through. For the creative community, this creates a cultural bottleneck, one where diversity and innovation are stifled in favour of whatever’s already big and what’s easiest to monetise.

In Australia, the music industry is already facing an existential crisis: struggling to break new artists in a near-exclusively digital economy where radio’s impact has declined; where music television no longer really exists; and the festival circuit is on life-support.?

Artists and songwriters, meanwhile, are already grappling with the harsh realities of a streaming-led music economy—earning only fractions of digital cents per stream while facing growing competition from AI-generated fakes, bot-driven streams, and an influx of podcasts and audiobooks vying for attention on the same platforms.

In a pay to play environment, the stakes become even higher.

Australian artists and culture risks being drowned out in the global noise.

Popular artists from international markets become more popular, while local artists struggle to find and retain their own audience.

What more can be done?

I’ve written about it previously, but should the industry be lobbying for content quotas and prominence legislation, like what the local television and production communities have been pushing for when dealing with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon? Should there be stronger subsidies, rebate and offset programs at to support the creation of Australian music for local and international audiences, again in keeping with programs secured by the local film and television industry?

Whether through regulation, government investment and support, or collective action, more needs to be done.

Because if we don’t act, the music industry will continue to repeat itself, remixing the same structures under a shinier, more algorithmic veneer.?In doing so, it risks collapsing into an algorithmic echo chamber—where only the loudest, most profitable voices are heard, and the rich diversity of our local music community is drowned out.

That’s not just an Australian problem. It’s a fundamental question for music everywhere.