The Shapley index for music streaming platforms
Gustavo Bergantiños, Juan D. Moreno-Ternero
TL;DR
This paper addresses revenue sharing for paid music subscriptions on streaming platforms by introducing the Shapley index, derived from the Shapley value of a cooperative TU game that associates each streaming problem with a value function based on users who stream only a given subset of artists. It formalizes the model, provides a tractable closed-form for the Shapley index, and develops axiomatic characterizations showing that the Shapley index is the unique rule satisfying additive, fairness-oriented, and symmetry properties (with alternative axiom sets offering equivalence under certain conditions). Through comparisons with pro-rata and user-centric rules, the work situates the Shapley index as a principled alternative that emphasizes equality of per-user allocation across streamed artists and equal global impact of users, while highlighting trade-offs such as the lack of pairwise homogeneity. The results have normative and practical implications for revenue sharing in platform ecosystems, offering a rigorous foundation for policy decisions and possible extensions to related digital-content markets.
Abstract
We study an index to measure the popularity of artists in music streaming platforms. This index, which can be used to allocate the amount raised via paid subscriptions among participating artists, is based on the Shapley value, a centerpiece in cooperative game theory. We characterize this Shapley index combining several axioms formalizing principles with normative appeal. This permits to place the index in the literature, as an alternative to the well-known (and widely used in the industry) pro-rata and user-centric indices.