The 35-page report said that the global music industry revenues (recordings, publishing, live, merchandise, sponsorship) fell by 30 percent in 2020 due to the combined impact of COVID-19 and a recession.

While streaming has created a song economy, making the song more important than ever, music publisher royalties are more than three times smaller than record label royalties.

It is predicted that streaming will bring further strong industry growth, reaching 697 million subscribers and $456 billion in retail revenues, but the royalty imbalance means that label streaming revenue will grow by 3.3 times more than publisher streaming revenue.

However, the current royalty system assumes all songs are worth the same - they are not - and rewards poor behaviour that dilutes artist and songwriter royalties

Music subscribers believe in the value of the song twice as many state that the song matters more than the artist, than think the artist matters more.

They also believe that songwriters should be remunerated properly: 71 percent of music subscribers consider it important that streaming services pay songwriters fairly.

The report said that while the song has become more important paradoxically, the songwriter has less income and influence.

Big record labels have weaponised songwriting and to try to minimise risks, bigger record labels are turning to an ever more elite group of songwriters to create hits.

Writing and production are fusing as music production technologies have become more central to both the songwriting process and to the formation of the final recorded work, there has been a growing fusion of the role of production with writing.

This has led to a growing body of superstar writer-producers.

Songwriting has become industrialised with record labels are reshaping songwriting by pulling together teams of songwriters to create "machine tooled" hits - finely crafted songs that are "optimised for streaming".

While this gives more work to songwriters is more work, they have to share a small streaming royalties pot with a larger team of creators and co-writers.

Of total royalties paid by streaming services to rights holders, between a fifth and a quarter is paid for publishing rights to the song. Labels are paid more than three times higher than publishers on streaming.

An independent label artist could earn more than three thousand dollars for a million subscriber streams, whereas a songwriter could expect to earn between $1,200 and $1,400, and even then, only if they are the sole songwriter on the track. On average, songwriters will therefore earn between a third and a half of what artists do.