Jimmy Iovine says that Drake and Kendrick Lamar are among the select few artists who actually profit from the streaming model. He discussed why the process is broken and theorized that it will come to an end in the next few years while speaking with David Senra for a new interview.
He explained: "Those deals are reflective of the iTunes download market, 70-30. That was the same business as the download market. So they just copied that, which is not a great bit model for that. Why? Because you have not enough money in the streaming service in order for it to really live. So they got to now go out and find different versions of revenue, right? And they pay 70% or whatever it is now, 72%, 70%, 60%. I don't know what the negotiations have been since then. It's structured in a really odd way, because let's say, for example, you're married, you have two kids, and you have a family plan. And, you and your wife play The Clash, The Police, etc, but your kids play Drake and Kendrick Lamar all day. Most of the money from your house goes to Drake and Kendrick Lamar. What you're hearing about is that the artists are like, they used to be able to earn a living like that. But now, unless you're in that top chunk of heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy streaming, the money's not really meaningful."
From there, he complained about the playlisting system and remarked that streaming services are "minutes away from being obsolete." He also reflected on his own start in the music industry and how it's changed over the years.
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Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been dominating the streaming market over the last several years. In August of 2025, Lamar surpassed 50 billion total streams on Spotify, making him only the 14th artist to ever do so. Among rappers, he was just the fifth.
On the other hand, just weeks into 2026, Drake eclipsed the one-billion streams mark for the year. At the time, no other rapper had even reached 500 million.
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