Daniel Ek is worth $8.7 billion.
Why Streamline exists, where we are right now, and how to find us.
He's never written a song. Never loaded an amp into a van. Never been in a studio for any reason that wasn't a press shot. He just built a thin layer between musicians and the people who want to hear them, and made more money off it than any working musician alive.
That's Spotify.
Apple, Google, and Amazon run the same play. Tim Cook does it as a side hustle for a $3 trillion company. Sundar Pichai folded YouTube Music into the Google ad machine. Bezos uses Amazon Music to lock you tighter into Prime. None of them belong here.
The going rate they pay is $0.003 — $0.004 per stream. That's $3 to $4 per thousand plays. To clear $400 a month, a band needs 100,000 streams. Not rent in most cities. In 2024 Spotify changed the rules so songs under 1,000 plays a year earn nothing at all. Most working bands lost three dollars a month and a chunk of dignity.
You can't even upload directly. You pay a distributor — DistroKid, TuneCore, CDBaby, pick your toll booth — for the privilege of being there. Then the DSP takes 30% off the top. Then they decide what to pay you.
Pay tribute or be invisible. That's the racket.
Bandcamp used to be the way out. Then Epic bought it. Then Songtradr bought it from Epic. Then Songtradr laid off half the staff and broke the union. The URL still works. The thing Bandcamp was — the alternative to all of this — is gone.
So we built Streamline.
It's owned by Streamline Foundation Incorporated, a New York 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We built this. No investors. The structure literally can't be sold the way Bandcamp was — that's the whole point of being a nonprofit. Surplus goes back into the platform and back to artists. We don't take a cut for ourselves.
We're in beta and moving fast. iOS hit TestFlight, Android is in development. SOUND — your personal music server that allows you to access your library, anywhere. Come help us finish.
We're trying to build the platform music actually deserves.
If you want to see it: streamline.club. Invite-only for now — ask and you'll get one.
If you just want to hang out and talk music: the Discord is live. discord.gg/NkrF4crQ
Not many of us yet. Come change that.
— admin