The music industry has vastly changed in the past 20 years with the advent of digital, peer-to-peer networks such as Napster. Once these networks became popular, physical sales of CD's, tapes and records hit all-time lows. As a direct result, live performances have become the primary sources of making a living for artists. However; since the pandemic began, the vast amount of live shows have been canceled or postponed thus destroying much of that revenue. 

More recently, apps such as TikTok have become alternate ways artists can gain notoriety. Users of the platform can post videos with songs by popular artists and lesser-known ones. Although artists can sometimes benefit from this if a video "goes viral" where their song was featured, this is not a reality for most. To make this personal, my band Shytown has a song called "Olive Garden." It's on TikTok and has been used in 70 different videos. Some of these videos have tens of thousands of views! Music is being used freely and widely without the artist making so much as a dime -- just like the P2P networks of yore. 

I propose music streaming giants such as Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes etc team up with TikTok. Each view of a video that uses a particular song would then count as a stream on those said platforms for that respective artist. This way, we would finally receive proper streaming residuals that are due. Artists are ALWAYS getting the short end of the stick. It's time we start getting what we've earned.