Fair pay, loud intent: Second Press rewrites the economics of streaming
In a landscape long defined by fractions of a cent and opaque royalty flows, a new entrant is attempting something unusually direct. Second Press, an independent music streaming service founded by working musician Nic Munnelly, launches today across Australia and New Zealand with a model that redirects 85 per cent of subscription revenue back to artists and rights holders.
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Built over five years of lived experience inside Australia’s independent music circuit, the platform positions itself as a structural response rather than a cosmetic alternative. It arrives with a curated catalogue of 60 founding artists and a clear proposition: no advertising, no AI-generated music, and a payment model designed to significantly outpace traditional per-stream rates.
Subscribers pay $12 AUD per month for unlimited streaming. Of that, 70 per cent is distributed directly to the artists each listener engages with, paid monthly, while a further 15 per cent is allocated to songwriters via APRA AMCOS. The company states this equates to approximately five to nine times the per-stream return offered by major platforms, depending on listening behaviour.
“I’ve watched how hard it has become for independent artists to make a decent income from their music, often around a third of a cent per stream on most major services,” said founder Nic Munnelly. “At the same time, more platforms are adopting practices many artists feel disconnected from, including AI-generated music trained on artists’ own work without consent, and broader investment choices that sit uncomfortably within the community.”
Munnelly frames the project as an attempt to close the gap between artistic labour and platform economics. “I went searching for an ethical alternative and found none that reflected the realities of working musicians. So I built one instead, something shaped by the community it serves, and designed to pay people properly for their work.”
Rather than algorithmic curation, Second Press is assembled by hand. Its launch roster spans indie, rock, alt-rock, surf, psychedelic, post-punk, country, folk, experimental and electronica, featuring artists including Baby Cool, GIMMY, Magic Machine, Fungas, Late Night Therapy, Druid Fluids, Seaside, Media Puzzle and horse. Listening is delivered through a dedicated iOS app, reinforcing a contained, editorially guided experience rather than algorithm-led discovery.
A limited introductory offer will see the first 100 subscribers able to access a Founding Member rate of $9 per month for the first year using the code FOUNDER100 at sign-up. Not only is it cheaper to access music for fans than most commercial streaming platforms, the money is directly returning to the artist.
Munnelly is set to relocate to Berlin next month, with early groundwork already underway for a European expansion planned for 2027.
Watch this space as Second Press promises to put the power back in the hands of the artist.
To find out more about Second Press or to subscribe or list your music, head here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source fortemagazine.com.au ’
