Who Wins and Who Loses in the Streaming Era: The New Map of the Cultural

In just over a decade, streaming has gone from a technological curiosity to the backbone of the cultural industry. The music streaming through earbuds, the film watched on the home sofa, and the series discussed in family group chats now almost always arrive via the same route: a monthly subscription. This seemingly simple habit shift has completely reshaped who makes money from culture — and who has been left behind.

From the Shelf to the Endless Catalog

To grasp the scale of the transformation, we need to go back to the early 2000s. The recorded music industry was in its deepest crisis: file-sharing programs like Napster popularized free downloads and toppled CD sales worldwide. The first response came from digital stores that sold individual tracks, followed by a more radical idea: instead of selling music, rent access to it. Spotify, founded in Sweden, turned this model into a global standard — today any subscriber carries in their pocket a catalog of tens of millions of tracks.

In audiovisual, the trajectory was similar. Netflix began as a DVD-by-mail rental service in the United States and, when it shifted to internet streaming, it forever buried the video-store model — the bankruptcy of the giant Blockbuster became the emblem of that shift. Then the company took another step: it started producing its own movies and series, forcing century-old Hollywood studios to launch their own subscription services to retain viewers.

Music: The End of the Album as an Economic Unit

In music, streaming logic has flipped priorities. Previously, the product was the album: an artist spent months in the studio, released a record, and lived off the sales of that collection of songs. Now, the product is attention. Platforms pay per play, with rates amounting to fractions of a cent per stream — meaning only massive volumes of plays generate meaningful revenue.

This math produced clear winners. Platforms retain a significant slice of each subscription. Major record labels, which hold the most valuable catalogs and negotiate licenses in bulk, have regained the breathing space lost during the piracy era. And megastars, capable of amassing billions of streams, are earning like never before. Listeners also benefit: for a monthly fee comparable to a pizza, they have access to virtually the entire recorded music history.

The losers sit in the middle of the pyramid. Independent or niche artists, who previously survived by selling a few thousand records to a loyal audience, have found that the same audience, listening via streaming, generates far less revenue. The outcome is familiar to any Brazilian musician: income has shifted to concerts, fairs, merchandising, and social media. Recording, once the core of the business, has become almost a calling card.

There were also aesthetic effects. Since platforms count a play within the first few seconds, songs have become shorter and more direct, with choruses arriving earlier. Mood and occasion playlists — music for training, relaxing, working — have become as valuable as old-time radio, and getting featured in them has turned into an industry obsession. Curiously, the reaction also emerged: vinyl, once declared dead, has been growing year after year and has become a coveted object precisely because it offers what streaming lacks — ownership, ritual, and attentive listening.

Cinema: The Shrinking Window

In cinema, the revolution struck a centuries-old pillar: the so-called exhibition window. For decades, a film premiered in a dark theater, months later arrived on DVD, then on pay-TV, and finally on broadcast TV — each stage generating a new revenue round. Streaming compressed this cycle. Many titles began debuting directly on platforms, and the pandemic accelerated the process, with studios releasing blockbusters at home and in theaters simultaneously.

Who benefited? The viewer, who can watch productions from around the world without leaving home, and creators from countries outside Hollywood’s traditional axis, who have found a global showcase — Korean, Spanish, and Brazilian series have shown that a well-told subtitled story travels. Who lost? Movie theaters, which now rely on a few blockbusters to survive, and a large portion of audiovisual professionals: residual rights, which used to pay cast and writers each time a film aired on television, have shrunk under the subscription model. Unsurprisingly, the issue was at the heart of the historic 2023 strikes by writers and actors that shut down Hollywood.

The Brazilian Case

Brazil experiences this transformation with particular intensity. The country is among the largest streaming markets worldwide in terms of users, and local tastes have shaped the platforms: sertanejo, funk, pagode and gospel dominate the local charts, with play counts that astonish the world. Streaming has also shortened the path for Brazilian music to reach abroad — artists from the country now appear on global charts and gather listeners in Europe, Africa and the rest of Latin America, something extremely rare in the physical-record era.

In audiovisual, original Brazilian productions from international platforms have taken national stories to dozens of countries. At the same time, the sector debates how to ensure foreign platforms invest in local production and fairly compensate creators — a discussion that involves regulation, national content quotas, and copyright, and that will occupy the country for many years.

What Changes for the Viewer

For the reader, several practical lessons emerge from this new landscape. First: a streaming catalog isn’t yours. Films and albums come and go from platforms according to licensing contracts — anyone who wants permanent access to a work still needs to purchase it. Second: the total of subscriptions deserves attention. With the proliferation of services, the full package can cost more than old-school cable; rotating services—subscribing to one at a time and canceling when you’ve finished what interested you—has become a common household-budget strategy.

The third lesson matters to those who care about artists: on streaming, listening does little; buying tickets, physical records, and shirts helps a lot. As recording revenue has shrunk, direct audience support has become the difference between a vibrant music scene and a cultural desert.

A Contract Still Under Negotiation

Streaming solved the problem that gave rise to it — piracy — and gave the cultural industry a viable business model. But the new contract among platforms, creators, and audiences remains contested. On one side, the broadest access to culture ever seen; on the other, an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a few global firms and a remuneration structure that still leaves the base of the creative pyramid uncovered. The outcome of this negotiation — in courts, parliaments, and the daily choices of those who press play — will determine not only who makes money from culture, but what culture will be possible to create.